|
|
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803 |
I flinch when I hear things like Give it to Tom and I or between you and I and probably more than I do things like Me and him went bowling last night, if only because it seems to be the better educated that commit the former transgressions. But we've been dumping this case structure thing for the last eight hundred years or so. We've only got a few of these things left and there's no point in trying desperately to hold on to them.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 2,891
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 2,891 |
Can someone do me a favor and use begging the question in a sentence. I really have no idea how you would use this phrase as I have never heard it before.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803 |
belMarduk asks someone to use begging the question in a sentence.
OK, let's try: You say he's a liar so we can't believe him when he says anything because it must be a lie. That's begging the question.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542 |
the phrase actually comes from another sense of the word beg; that is to take for granted without warrant -- here are a couple of citations: This was to assert or beg the thing in Question. Many say it is begging the point in dispute. The vulgar equivalent for petitio principii is begging the question. 
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 393
enthusiast
|
|
enthusiast
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 393 |
My at-work dictionary has a use note: "Traditionally few and fewer are used only before a plural noun few books; fewer people and less is used before a mass noun (less sugar)."
Not so traditionally. Let's see what God has to say about it. I haven't got this to hand to quote, and it's a bit long, but Fowler s.v. less notes that the word was formerly used very widely to mean 'smaller', 'minor', and so on (the greater light and the less, St James the Less), and the modern tendency is to use a more specific word: 'fewer', 'smaller', or whatever.
He does not mention the existence of a fetish "rule" that you have to use 'fewer'. Normally he vigorously attacks these fetish "rules". This suggests to me it's very recent, post-1930, or was very unimportant before then. All Fowler mildly says is that the use of 'fewer' rather than 'less' is the modern (c. 1930) tendency. Clearly, since then the tendency has foundered, since almost everyone says 'less' these days, and they have all through my life. I never heard of the fetish "rule" in school, though one or two of my teachers might have tried to force their pet fetishes on us. (One insisted that "human" wasn't a noun.)
There is a big difference between a real rule, learnt in infancy, such as plurality agreement or past tense formation, and a fictitious "rule" the existence of which surprises fluent adult speakers. Throwing out the fetishes doesn't change any of the real grammar of English.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146 |
NicholasW asserts: There is a big difference between a real rule, learnt in infancy, such as plurality agreement or past tense formation, and a fictitious "rule" the existence of which surprises fluent adult speakers. Throwing out the fetishes doesn't change any of the real grammar of English.Not so fast with the "fetish" tag, please. My usage of less and fewer was learned from infancy. No teacher I had during my early schooling would have known enough to try imposing such a formation on an unsuspecting pupil population. My parents probably had their fetishes and ju-jus, but I don't think the usage of less and fewer would have crossed their minds as being one of them! 
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289
veteran
|
|
veteran
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289 |
basic core rules
I've been giving some thought to the very polite argument going on here (not at all polite in other venues) over language changes. It is certainly the case that grammatical features like case are mostly gone and I agree that it doesn't matter a whole lot, since modern English is a distributive language (one depending on word order and placement), not the inflected language that Old English was and Middle English partly was. A sentence like, "Me come too" sounds like something a two-year-old would say; but even if, over the course of another 100 years or so, this should become standard usage, it's meaning is clear even if it's expression is inelegant. So I'm not upset so much by changes as long as a given usage is clear and unambiguous.
What really concerns me is that what we are seeing now is the institutionalization of usages which creep in out of ignorance and illiterate usage; viz., the indiscriminate confusion of lie/lay, infer/imply, and too many others to list. The result is a decrease in precision and clarity in the language. The reason English has more words than any other language is that most of them (not all, of course) have precise meanings which are different from all other words. If we keep on allowing the ignorant and lazy to stop recognizing the differences between certain words and make synomyms indiscriminately, by the start of the next millenium, if humans are still around and speaking English, they'll have to do it with the assistance of their hands, like the Italians, because one word may have 50+ different meanings because all the words with a single or limited number of precise meanings have disappeared.
While I'm on this hobbyhorse, let me also deprecate the vanishing use of the semicolon. We now have sentences with members of a series and subseries all strung out with commas because semicolons are now politically incorrect, thanks to the incessant whining, over the last 30 years, of the ignoramuses (ignorami and/or ignoramae?) who can't or won't take the trouble to learn how to use the semicolon.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803 |
NicholasW says: There is a big difference between a real rule, learnt in infancy,... and a fictitious "rule"...
CapK responds: My usage of less and fewer was learned from infancy
I think that the usages that we find objectionable are the ones that violate the rules we learned at our mother's knees. For example, my father used the word irregardless frequently with, I think, humorous intent. In a similar vein the only time I ever heard may used instead of can in the manner drummed into our tiny little heads by our grammar school teachers (e.g., Can I stay up and watch TV? May you stay up and watch TV and the answer is No!) was in the children's game which we knew as Mother May I
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 3,409
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 3,409 |
Faldage suggested that: I think that the usages that we find objectionable are the ones that violate the rules we learned at our mother's knees. For example, my father used the word irregardless frequently with, I think, humorous intent. In a similar vein the only time I ever heard may used instead of can in the manner drummed into our tiny little heads by our grammar school teachers Setting aside the shocking way in which you jump to conclusions regarding the sex of the primary parent, I find myself agreeing with this entirely. Probably because I did learn the "can I/may I rule" at my (grand)mother's knee, or at least at her dinner table. So, as one proud to have been raised by a devoted single father, I do proclaim that you may be excused for your lax attitude toward the misuse of "can." 
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,027
old hand
|
|
old hand
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,027 |
.. because one word may have 50+ different meanings because all the words with a single or limited number of precise meanings have disappeared.On closer inspection, I wonder if it is possible to count the number of meanings of an isolated word! A word only acquires its full and unique meaning in context. Even a single complete sentence is a somewhat lossy vehicle for conveying a given message. Words that are used most frequently (like hold, stand, right..)tend to have the widest range of meanings! And if we limit ourselves to words with fewer meanings, those will also have less meaning or, if any, then to fewer people . By the way I wonder where you acquired the conviction that "English has more words than any other language"? In my opinion, what makes English an "advanced" languange is its ability to express a wide range of meanings by combining a relatively small number of words.
|
|
|
|
Forums16
Topics13,913
Posts229,652
Members9,187
| |
Most Online3,341
Dec 9th, 2011
|
|
|
1 members (A C Bowden),
293
guests, and
3
robots. |
|
Key:
Admin,
Global Mod,
Mod
|
|
|
|
