On Sun, May 29, 2005 at 10:46:13PM -0700, Mark Williamson wrote:
On 29/05/05, Chad Perrin perrin@apotheon.com wrote:
Say what? If you're so convinced you know what my opinions are and how I'll respond, perhaps you should just write a bot with my name and have a conversation with that instead of me.
If I knew a programming language, perhaps I would. But that would probably be an enormous waste of time.
That was sorta my point.
All of that seems to indicate positive evolution of the language.
"Positive"? What do you mean?? That "snotor" just plain doesn't make sense as a word meaning "wise"? That phonetic spelling is bad (that is actually how those words were pronounced at the time - the spelling used in the original _is_ phonetic)? Or something else that makes more sense?
I mean that changes that arise because of a need rather than because a bunch of people start misspelling things due to a lack of education are positive. By contrast, then, changes that arise because people are uneducated and don't know how to use a dictionary are negtive.
As far as I'm concerned, anything that arises from willful ignorance is a "negative".
See, "corruption" is where I believe you're wrong, and what is essentially the problem between descriptivists and prescriptivists (more like proscriptivists).
Maybe people with the attitude you're trying to ascribe to me are not actually "prescritivists". Maybe you should be referring to "proscriptivists" instead.
You characterise all those letter-droppings and corruptions of perfectly good existing words and improper usages which got the language from Proto-Indo-European all the way to Modern English as "good" and "making sense", yet anything that occurs _now_ is bad, ignorant, "corrupt", and "incorrect". Except, of course, the things that happened before you were born, which you accept as prized innovations (contractions, for example - they save oh-so-much time! the fact is that contractions have always been used, they have just been kept to speech most of the time)
No, actually, I don't. I do, however, object to the addition of a K to the word "renowned" just because some critical mass of people who can't spell all make the same mistake on a regular basis. The same goes for use of "infer" to mean something that is almost precisely its opposite. I don't much care when it happens: if it's a good change, it's a good change, and if it's a bad change, it's a bad change. The coining of the neologism "cyberspace", which did indeed occur within the span of my life, is a good thing. So, too, is the arrival of terms like "Linux" and "wiki" in the English language.
To judge by the descriptivist approach, though, we should start calling it "The Wikipedia", rather than "Wikipedia", because so many people call it "The Wikipedia" out of ignorance. By the same token, "Perl" should be changed to "PERL", "Linux" should start being pronounced "Lynucks" (the spelling soon to follow), and Internet Explorer should be called "The Internet" now.
The simple fact is that prescriptivists, in any language at any time, have been saying the same thing. You can find it in the Appendix Probi
- it's _bad_ to use anything other than the most proper Latin! But
then through the magic of language change, the same language one-and-a-half millenia later is being praised by French prescriptivists as the most logical language ever, and they want you to use it a certain way that would've given the author of the Appendix Probi a heart attack because it's such an abomination of Latin.
I'm not the most strict subscriber to prescriptivist notions in the world, obviously, but I certainly sympathize more with the notion that there's a "correct" way to use the language than the attitude that supposes it's okay to confuse words with their antonyms.
And finally with English. The writers of Beowulf were probably not prescriptivists, but they would've told you that the language we're using today is most certainly not "Englisc" as they knew it, or if it is it is a nasty vile corruption of it. Not just the spelling - no, to them our grammar, syntax, and usage of foreign words would sound like a foreigner's poor attempt at producing coherent speech.
Maybe so. Too bad. The change is already accepted practice in academia. What I'm not happy with is the acceptance of any old change at all based on nothing more than a statistical survey among those who don't care.
B) a given example of linguistic "evolution" you presented only looked like it differed by way of spelling changes.
So, o snotor guma, work you use such sel words at least once a decade in your English speech and writing as "bearn", "wrece", "drihtguman", "gebidan", or "unlifgendum"?
I meant a previous example. I thought that was clear, since I was talking about something I'd said prior to your example from Beowulf.
Modernising their spelling doesn't help much either, seeing as they have no cognates in modern english and quite simply can't be modernised.
Words falling into disuse hardly constitute an argument against prescriptivism, anyway.
Now that you are so sure that Old English is only incomprehensible because of the way it's spelled, let's see how you handle some respelt Chaucer:
When did I say that?
Just now - "a given example of linguistic "evolution" you presented only looked like it differed by way of spelling changes."
So you're using something I said AFTER you made that assertion to support the assertion, as though that was your justification at the time? That's absurd. Furthermore, as I stated, my reference to something only looking like it differed by way of spelling changes was about your archaic-spelling modification of original content, not your quote from Beowulf or Chaucer.
Also, there's the use of the pronominal triplet he - him - hir meaning actually they - them - their. And words which you probably don't know at all (at least not in such a normal sense) such as "anon" which means "forthwith", and you wouldn't say "befell that" but rather "it befell that" or "it so happened".
It's nice to see that occasionally grammatical rules that make sense become more widely used.
"That make sense" - can you give me, please, some examples of grammatical rules YOU enforce that are nonsensical? Or do you believe that they all make sense?
What the heck is that all about?
Like any believer in any religion believes that his is the one true path, the only RIGHT religion, any prescriptivist from any language at any time believes that the form of the language HE promotes makes the most sense, and would like to beat to a pulp with a pencil those future prescriptivists who would say differently.
As far as I'm concerned, anyone suggesting a better use of the language than the current standard who presents a reasonable method of implementing it is welcome to do so.
Other than those examples, to point out that prescriptivism changes... contractions are much more widely accepted today than perhaps a century ago.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say.
You would probably have no problem with the sentence "A girl riding on a bus", but it is quite 'wrong' because it 'should' read "A girl riding on an omnibus". You probably have no problem with "Zoology is fun", but I do. It 'should' be (and I would write it as) "Zoölogy is fun" (dieresis on the second o because it is pronounced separately - it's not z+eulogy, it's zoo+ology). You would have no problem with "A trip to the zoo" but it 'should' infact be "A trip to the zoölogical garden". This isn't having to do with the dieresis so much as the usage of "zoo" rather than the more 'proper' "zoölogical garden" which nobody would expect today.
Since when did I express a problem with contractions and abbreviations?
You never did. That's exactly my point. Had you been a prescriptivist of yesteryear, you would've. But you're not. So you don't. What was once illogical, ignorant, and incorrect, is now greasing the wheels of communication without invalidating the more lengthy and precise terms from which they're derived.
Frankly, if I thought there was a way to rewind that, I might actually like to do so. I have the language I currently have, though, and I'll work with it. Contractions are a mixed bag, though. It's difficult to determine whether or not they're for the best, at least from where I'm sitting.
I certainly try to avoid them in most formal essays.
They grease the wheels of communication without invalidating the more lengthy and precise terms from which they're derived.
If I said "I go store tomorrow in blue bus with Jenny", that would certainly be more compact than "I'm going to go to the store tomorrow in the blue bus with Jenny", and in that way it would grease the wheels of communication without invalidating the more lengthy and precise rules from which it was derived, but would you allow it or would you look down your nose at it and scoff at its ignorance, lack of education, etc etc etc?
Compactness that actually violates grammatical rules by omitting terms useful to clarity of meaning are not particularly good. Compactness is not the sole point of measure for the worth of a contraction or abbreviation. Your first example in that paragraph is actually confusing and lacks clarity of meaning due to the structure of the sentence, even after staring at it for a while. For one thing, "store" has more than one meaning. Replacing "store" with, say, "supermarket" would make it clearer in that one instance, but it still creates a structure that fails when other words are substituted. As such, it's a net loss as an "evolution" of the language.
On the other hand, I am a little disappointed that in cases where longer terms are appropriate people have chosen to eschew accuracy without any particular good reason. Then, of course, other people have chosen to chronicle the abbreviated terms as "official" parts of the language. The word "zoo" was, orginally, an abbreviation of "zoological [noun]" (modify spelling as necessary to make it strictly accurate, using the correct character set -- which I apparently don't have installed on this computer). A dictionary reference to "zoo" as a slang term is appropriate when zoo enters common usage, and ultimately removing the "slang" reference might be appropriate as well, but including (for instance) reference to "imply" as a synonym of "infer" in the dictionary is absolutely NOT appropriate. Given a couple decades, however, it might end up being an accepted synonym for a significant portion of the population because dictionary editors have started making unironic reference to this supposed synonymous meaning.
"because" dictionary editors have? In a century, imply will probably mean the same thing as infer even according to the most conservative of prescriptivists, and the fact that they once meant what they supposedly do now (I must admit, I use them "correctly" and am irritated when they're used "incorrectly", but I am irritated with my irritation because I know it's silly since language change is natural) will be an interesting footnote in the long history of English.
Yes, because dictionary editors (and others in similar positions) do that sort of thing. If it was never acceptable to educators (whether by trade or by accident), it would never become common practice. Do you really think it's a good idea to reverse the meanings of words like that and declare it official? How confusing do you think it would be to be commanded to refrain from touching something because it's hot if "refrain" and "hot" both had alternate meanings that made perfect sense within the context of that sentence? What if that confusion led you to third-degree burns on your hand?
Communication is important, and accurate communication moreso. Giving "infer" both its proper meaning and the meaning of "imply" strips communication of all that value of accuracy.
That's a brief explanation of how your attempted characterization of my intent missed the mark, and how I actually feel on the matter. I want accuracy and precision, not stultifying adherence to tradition.
Like this sentence because not long but still accurate? (Do you like this sentence, because it is not long, yet it is still accurate?)
Like? No, not particularly. Accept, because this is a casual conversation and not likely to be taken as a canonical example of proper English? Well, sure. You may note that my adherence to strictly proper use of language has slipped a bit here and there in this discussion, but this isn't exactly a textbook, either. Slang and colloquialism have their places. Textbooks meant to teach a language aren't those places.
Some of your later examples of shortened sentences, on the other hand, ARE really bad. They modified the meanings of the sentences, which isn't really even acceptable for casual, colloquial conversation. The mere omission of the word "may" is a clear example of that.
Essentially, as far as I'm aware, prescriptivism is about defining the language according to its rules, and descriptivism is about defining the language according to the way people who don't know, or ignore, the rules use it. As far as I'm aware, neither one is trying to say that the language did or did not evolve from any given set of standards, though they may say that it should or should not have evolved the way it did.
No, it's about who is competent.
Presciptivism takes those nose-in-the-clouds approach and says that only people who study "rules" which are not based on modern usage "know the rules of the language", while descriptivism takes the down-to-earth approach and says that any native speaker who is fluent in the language "knows the rules of the language".
I reject your definitions of prescriptivism and descriptivism on the grounds that they don't even seem to apply to observed behavior of prescriptivists and descriptivists, let alone their self-described purposes.
-- Chad Perrin [ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]