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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Less and fewer
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Also in the Cambridge Grammar of English Language, some interesting counter-examples:
she left less than ten minutes ago.
you pass if you make ten mistakes or less.
you must drive at less than 30 miles an hour.
we paid less than 30 dollars for it.
The first is not a counter-example: time is continuous. The third example is similar: speed is also a continuous quantity. In the fourth example, although money isn't continuous, it's not integer: "less than 30 dollars" is probably $29.99.
The second example is an example of incorrect usage. ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
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Shubenacadie
Shipmate
# 5796
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Posted
Does anyone else think that '10 items or less [items]' is wince-inducing whereas '10 items or less [than 10 items]' sounds perfectly OK? Or is it just me? I'm not sure if it's logical when you think about it, but who says language has to be logical?
I think perhaps I have something of a prescriptivist heart and descriptivist head -- language changes, but we don't have to like it. And while it's changing, it can cause confusion or unintentional amusement. A few years ago I remember it being reported on the radio that the OED (or some such) had said (as descriptivists) that the non-literal use of use 'literally' as an intensifier was now acceptable (a change for the worse in my view -- what are you supposed to say when you really do mean 'literally'?). The presenter (James Naughtie if I remember rightly) said something along the lines of 'never mind whether you're allowed to say it -- it still sounds really silly', with which I agree.
('...which I agree with' would also have been OK at the end of the previous paragraph ![[Smile]](smile.gif) ).
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Huia
Shipmate
# 3473
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Posted
I have been a prolific reader since I was quite young. At that time (no TV) the publishing market was divided more clearly and books in NZ were sourced in Great Britain.
When more books from the US became available I remember having to broaden my understanding of grammar and the way words were used. For some years I would stop mid read, jarred by an unfamiliar construction or usage.
In the school where I volunteer getting the children writing seems to be the focus in the early years, rather than strict adherence to the rules of grammar, which is introduced as they move up through the various levels.
Huia
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Posts: 10382 | From: Te Wai Pounamu | Registered: Oct 2002
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
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# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Shubenacadie:
Does anyone else think that '10 items or less [items]' is wince-inducing whereas '10 items or less [than 10 items]' sounds perfectly OK? Or is it just me? I'm not sure if it's logical when you think about it, but who says language has to be logical?
I think perhaps I have something of a prescriptivist heart and descriptivist head -- language changes, but we don't have to like it. And while it's changing, it can cause confusion or unintentional amusement. A few years ago I remember it being reported on the radio that the OED (or some such) had said (as descriptivists) that the non-literal use of use 'literally' as an intensifier was now acceptable (a change for the worse in my view -- what are you supposed to say when you really do mean 'literally'?).
Semantic shift often happens when there's little use for the original restricted use (cf. "begging the question" spreading from its original sense of assuming the conclusion). How often do you literally mean literally? (Did you see what I did there?)
It is also a regular development for adjectives to become mere intensifiers and then to lose their intensity. Was that pizza from that cheap place really awful or just not very nice?
Anyway, the erosion of the original sense of "literally" is not new, as is often thought. Is the 18th Century old enough? http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_good_word/2005/11/the_word_we_love_to_hate.html
For all the talk of ambiguity, in reality it doesn't happen. In the same way that we cope unambiguously with "more" as the antonym of both "less" and "fewer", people who use "less" in both senses do not generally find there is misunderstanding, howsoever some may contrive theoretically ambiguous sentences.
I'd agree that knowing the rules of standard English is a useful skill, but we should, I think, steer clear of confusing "non-standard" with "wrong", and not be amongst those who treat a person less favourably should their English not comply with our personal standards, or consider them "uneducated".
[ 15. January 2018, 22:39: Message edited by: Karl: Liberal Backslider ]
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Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
If you want to say 'literally' in a literal sense, you say 'literally'. The fact that a word can be used non-literally doesn't mean that its literal sense is wiped out. Otherwise there would be no literal senses left. For example, I can talk about the root of a problem, but I can still talk about the parsnip roots in the ground. And so on. Language is always splitting in terms of usage, but each branch does not destroy the other branches, nor are there less branches. Ha.
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
Literally stands to be the next word lost to the unnecessarily-large pool of words that all mean roughly "a lot."
"Really" used to mean "in reality" (as opposed to metaphorically). Now it means "a lot."
"Very" used to mean "in truth" (as opposed to metaphorically). Now it means "a lot."
"Truly" is almost gone. "Literally" is going.
Eventually when we want to say "he was dead, and I don't mean metaphorically, but he was dead in the literal sense of the word, his pulse had stopped, his brain waves had gone cold" we will have to use nearly as many words, because all the one-word adverbs for what we want to say will have been sucked into the "a lot" pool.
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
If you want to say 'literally' in a literal sense, you say 'literally'. The fact that a word can be used non-literally doesn't mean that its literal sense is wiped out.
No. It means you can't be sure though. If I say "I was literally dead" you don't know if I was just in great pain, or really tired, or if I had in fact shuffled off the mortal coil, albeit temporarily. If the word has a non-literal sense, then you have to flag it in some way to indicate you're using the literal sense. In which case, the literal sense is kind of worthless by itself.
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Yes, the notion of descriptive versus prescriptive, makes various approaches to language clear.
Anyone who thinks 'prescriptivist' is the name of a wrong or mistaken approach is not a descriptivist.
FWIW: I believe the term sought is "proscriptive", as in forbidding something.
There's a saying that "English grammar is descriptive, not proscriptive". Mostly true, but we have to have some rules so we can understand each other.
ETA: Or do I have that wrong? Long day.
[ 16. January 2018, 00:56: Message edited by: Golden Key ]
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Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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Gee D
Shipmate
# 13815
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Posted
I am probably in the minority here, but agree totally with what Mousthief has said about the difference; less is for quantity and fewer for number.
Another bugbear, along the same line as "literally" is the use of verbal when what is meant is oral. It's hard to think of a contract that is not verbal; easy to think of one which is at least partly oral.
None of this is snobbery, it's about making accurate use of a rich language.
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
FWIW: I believe the term sought is "proscriptive", as in forbidding something.
There's a saying that "English grammar is descriptive, not proscriptive". Mostly true, but we have to have some rules so we can understand each other.
ETA: Or do I have that wrong? Long day.
It's prescriptive.
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ian Climacus:
Does anyone use "farther" anymore? I rarely see it, except in my own writing, or books.
Oh well, the people have spoken.
I think this may be a pond thing. I hear it (and use it) a lot. I definitely use the old "farther in space and further in sequence, or metaphorically" rule. Nothing could be further from the truth, but my house could be farther from Pittsburgh.
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Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
Shall we do "which" and "that" too?
And making and taking decisions about things down the pike or pipe. Traditional meaning usual these days. Unthaw meaning to thaw or refreeze, who knows?
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
Shall we do "which" and "that" too?
And making and taking decisions about things down the pike or pipe. Traditional meaning usual these days. Unthaw meaning to thaw or refreeze, who knows?
The brown bear, which lives in these woods, is a fierce animal.
The brown bear that lives in these woods is a fierce animal.
These really mean two quite different things.
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
hosting/
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
Shall we do "which" and "that" too?
Please no. This thread is alive and in Purgatory for as long as it doesn't descend into a "my pet grammar peeves" thread. It was doing quite well there for a while; fewer derailments, please.
/hosting
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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SusanDoris
Incurable Optimist
# 12618
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
One grammatical idiosyncrasy which seems to have crept in everywhere is ‘different to’. I was taught ‘different from’ and ‘similar to’. ‘Different to’ always grates on my ears. Yet less for fewer doesn’t bother me at all.
Ah, yes, I was going to mention the 'different from' too! The problem is that 'difficult to' is so much easier to say and quicker too!
The use of disinterested when it should be not interested, or uninterested, though, I will not become tolerant of. But I don't mind ending a sentence with a preposition!
[mended code]
[ 16. January 2018, 05:23: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
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I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
hosting/
I think that was a cross-post, but it's a perfect example of where this thread shouldn't go. There's plenty to discuss apart from simply listing our grammatical bugbears.
/hosting
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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SusanDoris
Incurable Optimist
# 12618
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Posted
Apologies of course - I didn't see your first hosting post until I had posted mine.
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I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
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balaam
Making an ass of myself
# 4543
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ian Climacus:
Does anyone use "farther" anymore? I rarely see it, except in my own writing, or books.
Oh well, the people have spoken.
Yes, I pronounce it ferther because I have a northern English accent, but it is still in common use as the comparative adjective of far.
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Posts: 9049 | From: Hen Ogledd | Registered: May 2003
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
One obvious solution to the 'less/fewer' difference is in terms of dialect. Standard English doesn't permit forms such as 'there are less lions in the world today', but many dialects do permit this. In fact, it's favoured over 'fewer lions'.
Standard English is the prestige dialect of British English, and therefore, people tend to say that other forms are 'wrong'. Of course, this applies to many other phrases, such as double negatives, which are perfectly well-formed in some dialects.
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balaam
Making an ass of myself
# 4543
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Posted
Grammatical rules have exceptions driven by context.
John has an apple, Jane has a few apples. Saying John has fewer is correct, but it is less ambiguous in this example to use less.
"Would you like more or fewer than six eggs?" just sounds stilted compared with, "Would you like more or less than six eggs." The proximity to more makes less sound better. Sorry grammar pedants, I will continue to use it.
But in the supermarket I will abide by the rules. If my trolley contains three items, say wine, beer and bread. I will be in my rights to go down the 10 items or fewer isle with my eight bottles of beer, four bottles of wine and my six loaves of bread. If you want to be pedantic about the meaning of the checkout label, then you have to allow me to do that.
What matters here is that 8 beer, 4 wine and 6 bread are outside what is meant by the label and it is clear that my trolley load is outside what is meant. Ten items or less is clear in its meaning.
The rules of grammar are there for a purpose: To make things understood. I cannot understand those who would use grammar rules to complain about things that are understandable. That is not the purpose of grammar.
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Posts: 9049 | From: Hen Ogledd | Registered: May 2003
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balaam
Making an ass of myself
# 4543
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Standard English is the prestige dialect of British English, and therefore, people tend to say that other forms are 'wrong'. Of course, this applies to many other phrases, such as double negatives, which are perfectly well-formed in some dialects.
There is a difference between correct grammar and acceptable usage. Phrases can be both incorrect grammar and acceptable usage.
[Tangent]Double negatives have always been a feature of English. Double nagatives are those who complain about them.[/Tangent]
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Posts: 9049 | From: Hen Ogledd | Registered: May 2003
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by balaam:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Standard English is the prestige dialect of British English, and therefore, people tend to say that other forms are 'wrong'. Of course, this applies to many other phrases, such as double negatives, which are perfectly well-formed in some dialects.
There is a difference between correct grammar and acceptable usage. Phrases can be both incorrect grammar and acceptable usage.
[Tangent]Double negatives have always been a feature of English. Double nagatives are those who complain about them.[/Tangent]
Well, correct according to who, I mean whom! I don't see how one group of dialect speakers get to tell another group that their linguistic forms are incorrect. Having said that, Standard English users have often done just that, but that is the nature of privilege.
But the notion of acceptability is certainly interesting, and became widely used in linguistics, to get away from the language of wrong and incorrect.
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
It's the useful distinction. A fossilised rule written in a book is just an description of the writer's preferred usage. That he's somehow come to the conclusion his usage is "right" and other usages "wrong" is a manifestation of prestige dialect rather than any objective "right" or "wrongness".
I mean, I hate innit, my internal grammar can't cope with an "isn't it" that doesn't refer back to an "it is", but that it's gained currency amongst certain speech communities demonstrates that that is not universal.
This is perhaps what some prescriptivists misunderstand about descriptive grammar. It's not "anything goes". Rather, it's about whether a particular usage is in use, whether it's dialectically limited or not. "He done good" is grammatical (within certain dialects, and note that the terms are "grammatical" and "not grammatical" rather than "correct" and "incorrect") not because someone somewhere said it, but because it is an accepted form within those dialects. *"He doed good" is ungrammatical because there are no dialects where it would be an accepted form.
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Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
Black English (or whatever you call it)*, has often been heavily censored for its constructions, which diverge from Standard English. A form such as 'he been done work', is well-formed in some dialects, and it just seems bizarre to me that a Standard English speaker comes along and says, 'incorrect'. Go away.
*African American Vernacular English, I think in US linguistics.
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Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Well, correct according to who, I mean whom! I don't see how one group of dialect speakers get to tell another group that their linguistic forms are incorrect.
...but on the other hand, individual speakers of particular dialects correct the speech of other speakers on a continual basis. Usually, we call these people "parents" and "teachers".
I certainly teach my children to say "I wrote" rather than "I writed", although the latter is both perfectly comprehensible, and an entirely normal stage that children's language development goes through. And when they're old enough to understand the discussion, we'll talk about strong verbs and weak verbs, and how language changes and we don't say things like "holpen" any more.
Which makes things like "in use" a little tricky to define. "I writed" is in almost universal use in my local preschool community.
[ 16. January 2018, 11:37: Message edited by: Leorning Cniht ]
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balaam
Making an ass of myself
# 4543
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Posted
What is true of words may not be true of phrases. If I were to use the word summat just about anywhere in England it would be understood as meaning something despite its use being more or less confined to the North. The same applies to the word nowt for nothing.
But when speaking to someone from, what sounded to me like Sarf Landon (again I understood the dialect) and used the phrase "It's summat and nowt," there was no understanding, as they did not use something and nothing to mean of little consequence below the Thames.
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Posts: 9049 | From: Hen Ogledd | Registered: May 2003
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Well, correct according to who, I mean whom! I don't see how one group of dialect speakers get to tell another group that their linguistic forms are incorrect.
...but on the other hand, individual speakers of particular dialects correct the speech of other speakers on a continual basis. Usually, we call these people "parents" and "teachers".
I certainly teach my children to say "I wrote" rather than "I writed", although the latter is both perfectly comprehensible, and an entirely normal stage that children's language development goes through. And when they're old enough to understand the discussion, we'll talk about strong verbs and weak verbs, and how language changes and we don't say things like "holpen" any more.
Which makes things like "in use" a little tricky to define. "I writed" is in almost universal use in my local preschool community.
Not really. The generalisations language learners make (including children) are not considered part of the accepted language of the speech community. It's not like no-one's thought of this before
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Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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RdrEmCofE
Shipmate
# 17511
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Posted
quote:
quetzalcoatl Black English (or whatever you call it)*, has often been heavily censored for its constructions, which diverge from Standard English. A form such as 'he been done work', is well-formed in some dialects, and it just seems bizarre to me that a Standard English speaker comes along and says, 'incorrect'. Go away.
How far can a language diverge from the standard form, before it becomes another language altogether.
My answer would be once it becomes substantially unintelligible to everyone except the users of the new variant.
The English of The Venerable Bede and Alfred the Great is pretty much unintelligible to all English speakers except experts in the field of Saxon English. Historically it may be 'English' but to all intents and purposes it is a 'different language' than today the one we all call English.
So far American 'English' has not diversified sufficiently to render it unintelligible to an educated person in the UK who writes, speaks and understands the actual English language, with all its evolved grammatical, syntax and spelling rules.
Were Black 'English' to depart any further from the already variant 'Americanised' English it would have crossed the line of unintelligibility which would mark it out as a quite separate but historically related language. It would have a distinct identity of its own and could no longer be regarded as any kind of communicable English language, by virtue of the fact that it had become impossible to use it to communicate effectively with actual English speaking people.
Divergence and innovation is fine, within limits, but unlimited variance can only lead to meaningless babble from the perspective of anyone relying on the standard form for accurate comprehension.
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Love covers many sins. 1 Pet.4:8. God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, not holding their sins against them; 2 Cor.5:19
Posts: 255 | From: Southampton | Registered: Jan 2013
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Black English (or whatever you call it)*, has often been heavily censored for its constructions, which diverge from Standard English. A form such as 'he been done work', is well-formed in some dialects, and it just seems bizarre to me that a Standard English speaker comes along and says, 'incorrect'. Go away.
*African American Vernacular English, I think in US linguistics.
The problem I have is not that it is corrected, but that it is generally treated as a lesser variation than white variations. My own mother corrected my speech to standard English despite her word usage and accent being other than standard. My family code switch, but we do so knowing the standard.
The problem is not acknowledging variants as variation; it is the judgement often attached to that is problematic.
Such as statements like this:
quote:
Originally posted by RdrEmCofE:
Were Black 'English' to depart any further from the already variant 'Americanised' English it would have crossed the line of unintelligibility which would mark it out as a quite separate but historically related language.
Lad, have you been outside of Southampton? This intelligibility problem already exists within the UK between white dialects of English. I've heard accent throw people though the grammar was perfectly correct. Why should Black be different?
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Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
Going off topic really, but we would start getting into creoles and pidgins, some of which can become independent languages.
But I think plenty of black dialects are nowhere near this, and are English dialects. I don't know enough about US dialects, but I'm not aware of any UK black English dialects which might become separate. Of course, some of them are hard to follow because of the accent, but that is also true of other English dialects such as Geordie.
Fun fact: my grandad still used 'thou' and 'thee' when I was a kid - living near the Humber.
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BroJames
Shipmate
# 9636
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by RdrEmCofE:
<snip>So far American 'English' has not diversified sufficiently to render it unintelligible to an educated person in the UK who writes, speaks and understands the actual English language, with all its evolved grammatical, syntax and spelling rules.<snip>
I think the terminology you have chosen for the distinction between "American 'English'" and "the actual English language" is a little tendentious. It could quite fairly be argued that modern American English and modern British English are both cousins, descendants of 17th Century English.
This piece in The Atlantic is helpful on the problem of distinguishing languages and dialects.
Quite apart from the broad differences between American English and British English, there are language differences of usage, vocabulary and grammar in what are recognisably variants of English within the British Isles which are greater than those separated by the Atlantic.
The one I know a little is the Doric (from the North East of Scotland). Sometimes the relation to contemporary English English is clear (to me at least) so "fit ye gan ti dee we yirsel fan yer aller?" obviously (to me) translates to "what are you going to do when you are older?" whereas while I know what "the loon is a richt glaikit crattur" means, the connection between it and "the boy is a very silly creature" is less obvious.
This is one among a number of websites which celebrates the language, as does this call centre sketch. (Partly I enjoy it because my grandmother was Duguid.)
Posts: 3374 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2005
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
That's a very decent article in the Atlantic, making the point that 'language' is a political as well as a linguistic unit.
I think creoles also show this, as they were often seen as inferior and even degenerate forms, because the people who spoke them were seen as inferior. Possibly, they have gone up in the world, partly because people in linguistics have been fascinated by them.
In fact, there is a hypothesis that English is a creole. Or there was a hybrid between various sources, e.g. French, Norse, Old English, and other stuff.
Quite controversial, but an interesting idea, although you might then claim that all languages have been creolized partly. But a creole is not just a mixture, so that is a strong argument against.
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RdrEmCofE
Shipmate
# 17511
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Posted
quote:
Lad, have you been outside of Southampton? This intelligibility problem already exists within the UK between white dialects of English. I've heard accent throw people though the grammar was perfectly correct. Why should Black be different?
It isn't. It just happened to be the example I was replying to. The instance was entirely chosen by the original producer of the text I quoted at the begging of my comments. I was not specifically citing 'Black English' as being in any way different than any other 'variant' of or departure from standard English.
Nevertheless when variant language becomes unintelligible to a person who understands standard English, they are no longer listening to standard English, but something other than English as understood by English speakers or writers.
At the risk of being considered really offensive by people who do not properly understand the technical terminology I could correctly refer to all variants of standard English, as 'bastard English',
And if you had read my profile you would realize how inappropriate the term 'Lad' is when addressing me. Though by all means keep it up, it makes me feel like I am, once again, young enough to be back in school.
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Love covers many sins. 1 Pet.4:8. God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, not holding their sins against them; 2 Cor.5:19
Posts: 255 | From: Southampton | Registered: Jan 2013
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BroJames
Shipmate
# 9636
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
I never understood the difference (and I taught English to O' level!).
I shall no longer feel any guilt about it.
It's hardly rocket science. If we meet and you smell bad, you're nauseous and I'm nauseated.
I still don't see the point.
In British English, I would have said that if we meet and you smell bad you are nauseating and I am nauseated by you, which leaves me feeling nauseous. (Although I see that nauseous can also be applied to something causing nausea, such as the nauseous stench of my grammatical self-satisfaction and smugness.)
Posts: 3374 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2005
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Shubenacadie
Shipmate
# 5796
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Anyway, the erosion of the original sense of "literally" is not new, as is often thought. Is the 18th Century old enough? http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_good_word/2005/11/the_word_we_love_to_hate.html
If people have been doing it for a long time, that's interesting, but it doesn't make it seem less silly to me, and I note that the author of that article agrees that it sometimes seems silly. (Of course if it was part of my own idiolect it would presumably seem OK to me, but I'd be at risk of sounding silly to others).
quote:
I'd agree that knowing the rules of standard English is a useful skill, but we should, I think, steer clear of confusing "non-standard" with "wrong", and not be amongst those who treat a person less favourably should their English not comply with our personal standards, or consider them "uneducated". [/QB]
I would tend to agree in many situations, but it could be argued that non-standard usage in a context where you'd expect standard English is 'wrong in the circumstances'. And just the other week I pointed out to my parents that a grammatical mistake in an e-mail purporting to come from their internet service provider might be an indication of its being spam -- which, judging by the URL that appeared when I hovered over the hyperlink, it was. I hope that's not snobbish. (Of course wrong/non-standard grammar doesn't prove that an e-mail is spam any more than perfect grammar proves the opposite, but my impression is that there is a correlation).
Posts: 58 | From: UK | Registered: Apr 2004
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
I never understood the difference (and I taught English to O' level!).
I shall no longer feel any guilt about it.
It's hardly rocket science. If we meet and you smell bad, you're nauseous and I'm nauseated.
I still don't see the point.
Of having different words for different things? How do you propose to communicate without them?
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Ohher
Shipmate
# 18607
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by RdrEmCofE:
I was not specifically citing 'Black English' as being in any way different than any other 'variant' of or departure from standard English.
Here, I think, is where we come t the crux of the matter: the "standard."
I'll paraphrase something I read in print (don't recall where) some years back. A group of linguists studied usage among several discourse communities speaking various brands of English. One community spoke what was then referred to as "Ebonics." (Don't blame me; it was, briefly, an accepted term) Another community was a group of professors in a Department of English at some university.
These were groups which would likely have been mutually intelligible.
Their findings, after recording, coding, and analyzing the "rules" governing each group's linguistic output: the "Ebonics" users were far more consistent in applying the rules of Ebonics usage to their discourse than the English professors were in applying the rules of their "standard" English to their discourse.
As English spreads across the globe, native speakers of English are just going to have get used to non-native speakers putting various "spins" on the language. Speakers of Language A will forever leave present-tense "to be" verbs out of their English sentences, because there's no such verb form in their first language; Language B speakers will mix up definite and indefinite articles, because their first language lacks articles completely; Language C speakers will be inserting the wrong-gender pronouns, and Language D speakers will do weird things to English's strict word-order, and so on.
The plain fact is that "standard" English (whatever that is) just won't cut much mustard in most places; what really counts is using the English which melds with that used by the discourse community you belong to. That English, whatever form it takes, will be its own standard, not a "departure" from anything at all.
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From the Land of the Native American Brave and the Home of the Buy-One-Get-One-Free
Posts: 374 | From: New Hampshire, USA | Registered: Jun 2016
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by RdrEmCofE:
I was not specifically citing 'Black English' as being in any way different than any other 'variant' of or departure from standard English.
Shouldn't have assumed. Apologies.
quote:
And if you had read my profile you would realize how inappropriate the term 'Lad' is when addressing me. .
It had naught to do with age. Addressing with a diminutive someone who is old enough to know better than they are acting is a habit I picked up from my father. So it was a cheeky, mild rebuke that was misdirected.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ohher:
As English spreads across the globe, native speakers of English are just going to have get used to non-native speakers putting various "spins" on the language.
Well, yes, but just like the example of schoolchildren, when non-native English speakers import features of their native language into English, we tend to call it "getting it wrong" and correct them. When I'm editing a paper written by one of my Russian colleagues, I get off to a reasonable start by inserting an article everywhere one wasn't, and removing all the articles that were there.
I tend to think you only have the potential to develop a new variant of English if you take a community of speakers of language A, and have them speak English amongst themselves in reasonable isolation from the wider English-speaking community.
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Shubenacadie:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Anyway, the erosion of the original sense of "literally" is not new, as is often thought. Is the 18th Century old enough? http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_good_word/2005/11/the_word_we_love_to_hate.html
If people have been doing it for a long time, that's interesting, but it doesn't make it seem less silly to me, and I note that the author of that article agrees that it sometimes seems silly. (Of course if it was part of my own idiolect it would presumably seem OK to me, but I'd be at risk of sounding silly to others).
quote:
I'd agree that knowing the rules of standard English is a useful skill, but we should, I think, steer clear of confusing "non-standard" with "wrong", and not be amongst those who treat a person less favourably should their English not comply with our personal standards, or consider them "uneducated".
I would tend to agree in many situations, but it could be argued that non-standard usage in a context where you'd expect standard English is 'wrong in the circumstances'. And just the other week I pointed out to my parents that a grammatical mistake in an e-mail purporting to come from their internet service provider might be an indication of its being spam -- which, judging by the URL that appeared when I hovered over the hyperlink, it was. I hope that's not snobbish. (Of course wrong/non-standard grammar doesn't prove that an e-mail is spam any more than perfect grammar proves the opposite, but my impression is that there is a correlation). [/QB]
And of course it depends whether the grammar in use would be correct in some dialects, or whether it's simply an error. There are such things, even to descriptivists.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
quote:
Originally posted by Ohher:
As English spreads across the globe, native speakers of English are just going to have get used to non-native speakers putting various "spins" on the language.
Well, yes, but just like the example of schoolchildren, when non-native English speakers import features of their native language into English, we tend to call it "getting it wrong" and correct them. When I'm editing a paper written by one of my Russian colleagues, I get off to a reasonable start by inserting an article everywhere one wasn't, and removing all the articles that were there.
I tend to think you only have the potential to develop a new variant of English if you take a community of speakers of language A, and have them speak English amongst themselves in reasonable isolation from the wider English-speaking community.
What happens is that even when English becomes a native language in forn parts, the "spins" become part of the local dialect.
There is a hypothesis, gaining traction, that this is how Middle English arose. There is a vast gulf between the highly inflected synthetic Old English and the largely uninflected analytic Middle English (which resembles Modern English far more closely than it does its immediate ancestor). The problem is not that English lost its inflections (so have Norwegian and Swedish and, in the main, German) but the speed with which this appears to have happened. The hypothesis is that the written, literary Old English of Beowulf and Alfred the Great was the language brought over the North Sea by the Anglo-Saxons, but on the ground, as it was adopted by the native British (previously Latin or Celtic speaking), their imperfect grasp of the language, especially its inflections (both Vulgar Latin and British Celtic of this period were losing inflection) could have resulted in a weakening of the noun and adjective case system, so the language of common discourse became far more analytical, whilst the scholarly written language of the Anglo-Saxon overlords remained more conservative. When the Norman Invasion happened the Old English literary tradition was pretty much killed, and the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy and monastics replaced by Norman ones. When English writing re-emerged, it was in a form of the vernacular.
Point therefore being that the speech habits of second language speakers can have an influence on a language as a whole.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Higgs Bosun
Shipmate
# 16582
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Shubenacadie:
A few years ago I remember it being reported on the radio that the OED (or some such) had said (as descriptivists) that the non-literal use of use 'literally' as an intensifier was now acceptable (a change for the worse in my view -- what are you supposed to say when you really do mean 'literally'?).
The problem is that a frequent use of 'literally' is not as intensifier but as a synonym for 'figuratively'. For instance, a teenager complaining about having to climb a hill:
quote:
I literally died!
Posts: 313 | From: Near the Tidal Thames | Registered: Aug 2011
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leo
Shipmate
# 1458
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
I never understood the difference (and I taught English to O' level!).
I shall no longer feel any guilt about it.
It's hardly rocket science. If we meet and you smell bad, you're nauseous and I'm nauseated.
I still don't see the point.
Of having different words for different things? How do you propose to communicate without them?
I guess I felt that your comment didn't communicate well.
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My Jewish-positive lectionary blog is at http://recognisingjewishrootsinthelectionary.wordpress.com/
My reviews at http://layreadersbookreviews.wordpress.com
Posts: 23198 | From: Bristol | Registered: Oct 2001
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Higgs Bosun:
quote:
Originally posted by Shubenacadie:
A few years ago I remember it being reported on the radio that the OED (or some such) had said (as descriptivists) that the non-literal use of use 'literally' as an intensifier was now acceptable (a change for the worse in my view -- what are you supposed to say when you really do mean 'literally'?).
The problem is that a frequent use of 'literally' is not as intensifier but as a synonym for 'figuratively'. For instance, a teenager complaining about having to climb a hill:
quote:
I literally died!
This isn't a problem; amazingly we still understand people when they do this.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Higgs Bosun
Shipmate
# 16582
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
quote:
Originally posted by Higgs Bosun:
quote:
Originally posted by Shubenacadie:
A few years ago I remember it being reported on the radio that the OED (or some such) had said (as descriptivists) that the non-literal use of use 'literally' as an intensifier was now acceptable (a change for the worse in my view -- what are you supposed to say when you really do mean 'literally'?).
The problem is that a frequent use of 'literally' is not as intensifier but as a synonym for 'figuratively'. For instance, a teenager complaining about having to climb a hill:
quote:
I literally died!
This isn't a problem; amazingly we still understand people when they do this.
Part of what I was attempting to say is that 'literally' here does not appear to be an intensifier.
It is obvious that "I literally died" does not mean that the person who said that had died. However, what about:
- I'm literally dying
- Climbing the hill, he literally died
- I went to a comedy club and one of the comedians literally died on stage.
The last illustrates a case where 'died' could be taken figuratively, and so 'literally' eliminates the figurative meaning.
Posts: 313 | From: Near the Tidal Thames | Registered: Aug 2011
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Higgs Bosun:
It is obvious that "I literally died" does not mean that the person who said that had died. However, what about:
When my friend who was in cardiac arrest for 2-3 minutes, and was resuscitated by a colleague who knew how to use an AED, tells his story, he says "I literally died" to mean exactly that.
So perhaps it's not always obvious
(With respect to your last comment, I was watching the live TV broadcast when Tommy Cooper died on stage. Like many people, I thought it was part of his act.)
[ 17. January 2018, 14:40: Message edited by: Leorning Cniht ]
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Higgs Bosun:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
quote:
Originally posted by Higgs Bosun:
quote:
Originally posted by Shubenacadie:
A few years ago I remember it being reported on the radio that the OED (or some such) had said (as descriptivists) that the non-literal use of use 'literally' as an intensifier was now acceptable (a change for the worse in my view -- what are you supposed to say when you really do mean 'literally'?).
The problem is that a frequent use of 'literally' is not as intensifier but as a synonym for 'figuratively'. For instance, a teenager complaining about having to climb a hill:
quote:
I literally died!
This isn't a problem; amazingly we still understand people when they do this.
Part of what I was attempting to say is that 'literally' here does not appear to be an intensifier.
It is obvious that "I literally died" does not mean that the person who said that had died. However, what about:
- I'm literally dying
- Climbing the hill, he literally died
- I went to a comedy club and one of the comedians literally died on stage.
The last illustrates a case where 'died' could be taken figuratively, and so 'literally' eliminates the figurative meaning.
Yeah, there's some posh name for words which can mean almost opposites of themselves. Thing is, 99% of the time the usage of "literally" is unambiguous. Literally is indeed used figuratively as well as a mere intensifier. In a way, all intensifier uses are in fact figurative as they are not, erm, literal.
There really is no point in standing Canute-like against the tide which is usage. People will find ways of avoiding ambiguity when they need to. The literal meaning of literally can also be expressed by "actually". You may not like it, but I reckon that most UK English speakers would say "The comedian actually died on the stage!" if they thought "literally" ambiguous. It's what I'd say.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
People will find ways of avoiding ambiguity when they need to.
With a modicum of education, they needn't have to do this as often. IIRC, you are one of the techs-savy Shippies. When the technically illiterate speak to you about their computers, have you never experienced frustration in their lack of proper use of terminology? The first time someone asked me for recommendation on replacing their CPU, I spent time researching one that would work in their system to then realise that they meant computer.
quote:
You may not like it, but I reckon that most UK English speakers would say "The comedian actually died on the stage!" if they thought "literally" ambiguous. It's what I'd say.
Actually can be as ambigous as literally. In usage, the two are fairly interchangeable.
quote:
There really is no point in standing Canute-like against the tide which is usage.
Language will change. A standard slows that down to something manageable.
And why should we gracefully let go wonderful words that are beautifully communicative if one understands how to use them. Like irony. There literally isn't a replacement word.
Now, through ignorance, it means just about anything, therefore almost nothing. It is no more descriptive or fuctional than innit.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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