By the same token I've found yours and others' comments here illuminating and a good counterpoint, so thanks for the discussion - and thanks Joe Fox!

fwiw, if my arguments have interested or engaged anyone at all you may be amused to know that I have never studied formal English structure (only coming to that through linguistics later in life), have never studied formal debate, nor have ever studied formal logic (again, at least until comparatively recent years). Any skills with language that I do now possess, I have picked up largely by that strange process of osmosis that is so derided in this article.