Re: Another stupid singular "their"

Stephen Calder <calder9@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
dontbother wrote:
Stephen Calder <calder9@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
dontbother wrote:

I hope that this is not an indication of your genuine level of
ability to discriminate between differences that are significantly
larger than a bread box.

You nad I might be able to do that, but clearly Mrs Bush cannot, and
what sounds natural to her may very well sound natural to a majority
of ordinary people.

I consider myself to be an ordinary person. But even I can
distinguish a tomato from a turnip at a hundred yards.

You're not ordinary in this sense. You have training in language use.

I've been informed that we all have training in language use, only that
most of us have been trained most prominently at our mother's knee, and
that that's good enough for even those who might now even be trained and
credentialed linguists, whose job it is only to describe language and not
to pass judgment on what might be better or worse usages.

Training in the use of language -- as opposed to the description of how
most speakers, untrained though they be, actually use the language --
even seems to be a liability in this NG when deciding when something is
acceptable or not. Learning that one way, not learned at my mother's
knee, might be stylistically preferable to the way my mother's knees
taught me to speak English, seems to indicate that one is one of those
gawdawful prescriptivists who think that clearer, more precise, or more
euphonious modes of expression are based on lies about usage created by
other prescriptivists who were merely intolerant of other ways of
speaking and writing. Only the untrained user seems king here, or the
trained describer who has elevated the untrained user to the usage
throne.

There is a distinct difference between saying "This is how most native
speakers say it; therefore, it is acceptable to most native speakers", a
jolly good statement of empirical fact that cannot be denied, and
"Although this is how most native speakers say it, it is not clear,
unambiguous, precise, euphonious, or otherwise pleasing to the eye and
ear and, therefore, should be avoided if you want to sound good when you
speak and write".

I want to add that I read that book review you recommended yesterday and
thought it was terrific. I have to say, though, that Pullum has created a
straw man with his misunderstanding of what those of us who use the
phrase "Anything goes" mean by it. We all know that there are an infinite
number of constructions that even the most uneducated native speaker of
English will find ungrammatical and will never use unless inebriated or
otherwise intoxicated. Those points of ungrammaticality are not the ones
we mean. I will refrain from elaborating beyond saying that one can buy a
suit at Sears or Sulka's (a 5th Avenue haberdashery that may no longer be
there), or one can buy a Roebucks or an Armani (I wouldn't have either
one, I'm afraid. I don't wear suits anymore, but if I did, I'd prefer the
Armani only because it looks better, but I'd rather borrow than buy it).

--
Franke: EFL teacher and medical editor
Unmunged email: /at/hush.ai
Native speaker of American English, posting from Taiwan
It's all in the way you say it, innit?
.

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