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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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>>(e.g. a bill) amass, create<<
Is "run up" meaning amass used in any context but debt ('ran up a huge collection'?)? Is it *ever used to mean create where "create" cannot be replaced by "amass" ('God amassed the heavens and the Earth' (though I like that))? The question, I think, is what we will or won't still anticipate when we run into the particle. In your first sentence, once you've said 'bill' there just isn't much place to go but up; in the second -- if it were accepted as a sentence -- we would be left wondering whether the verb was transitive or intransitive, that is, whether the sentence is complete: did they run into an old friend, or did they run an old friend into an alley and take his wallet?
Relatedly, I always wonder if there isn't an unrecognized class of verbs in English that is similar to the seperable prefix verbs in German.
Not that I would qualify as a prescriptivist, even if I wanted to be one.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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My problem with the prescriptivists is not that they "believe that linguistic and grammatical rules are good", but that they sort existing linguistic rules into two categories: the "real" rules which everybody ought to follow and the "non-" rules that are "subpar". If this activity were not bad enough, they also "use" grammar (in some non-linguistic sense of the word), logic, and history to attempt to bolster their peculiar bagging of "good" (or perhaps I should say "only") rules. For example, not splitting infinitives or using which/that in certain kinds of relative clauses. So, it is not so much the rules that one uses, but the ones that one excludes that rile the descriptivists.
When somebody tells me I am "wrong" because of how (and not what) I said, I take them as fighting words, and begin the (verbal) beating it up machine.
Mary beat Johnny up.
Mary beat up Johnny.
"Subpar"! Snort, snicker, guffaw.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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>>When somebody tells me I am "wrong" because of how (and not what) I said, I take them as fighting words, and begin the (verbal) beating it up machine.<<
Still, certain rules may lend clarity to writing.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Still, certain rules may lend clarity to writing.
No, I don't think so. Writing clearly lends clarity to writing. A sentence may be grammatically well formed, in both the descriptive and prescriptivist sense, but unclear.
[Fixed typo.]
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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>Writing clearly lends clarity to writing.
That's a tautology.
>A sentence may be grammatically well formed, in both the descriptive and presriptivist sense, but unclear.
Without actually seeing an example of this, I tend to disagree; even in cases where the sentence is extremely long and complex, following the rules of grammar tend to make the sentence more clear than unclear.
TEd
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journeyman
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journeyman
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Insel, in answer to your question about the use of "run up" to mean anything other than "amass": People who sew will say that they "ran up" some curtains or plan to "run up" a dress (or whatever). Although I'm no seamstress myself, and the useage is probably dated. Jackie or of Troy may be more help with this particular phrase.
What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy? -Ursula K. Le Guin, author (1929- )
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Two of my favorite tautologies:
"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." [S. Freud]
"A rose is a rose is a rose." [G. Stein]
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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even in cases where the sentence is extremely long and complex, following the rules of grammar tend to make the sentence more clear than unclear.
I couldn't fail to disagree with you less.
I don't like to have to kill nobody without they ain't no chance of no gold in it for me.
One descriptivist complaint about prescriptivists is, as the Dragon says, that they think that descriptivists believe there are no rules. Descriptivists recognize that there are rules but the ones that the prescriptivists recognize don't come anywhere near describing the language that people use. Prescriptivist rules are fine if you are writing a style manual for some publication but if they can't describe the simple phrasal verb examples I used above or the one that zmjezhd mentioned they don't describe the language.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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Or are they, partially, partial descirptions?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Without actually seeing an example of this, I tend to disagree; even in cases where the sentence is extremely long and complex, following the rules of grammar tend to make the sentence more clear than unclear.
Here's an example for you:
"I am not one of 'the usual gang of idjits' in the sense that I failed to submit a proposed definition for the term yexing."
Without the context I would take this to imply that "the usual gang of idjits" failed to submit a proposed definition for the term. Nothing could be further from the truth.
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