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or, another take in the great descript/prescript debate.
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#5. not bad. 
formerly known as etaoin...
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Thanks tsuwm, an interesting view. He suggests that the Compact Oxford is “an evil dictionary” – I would have said from the example he quotes that it is actually just compact (and therefore lacking space to explore full background). Compare it to the full OED2 entry, of which the financial definition is only #6 of 8 line entries: 6. Great or undue expansion or enlargement; increase beyond proper limits; esp. of prices, the issue of paper money, etc. spec. An undue increase in the quantity of money in relation to the goods available for purchase; (in lay use) an inordinate rise in prices.That seems to me a masterly exposition of what a value-neutral high quality dictionary does: it expounds how the language is being used in real life, including notes about specific connotations being applied in certain domains of speakers. The blogger’s suggestion that language has only a denotative meaning is (imho) clearly nonsense. Language acquires meaning and resonance through the associative domains in which it gets used. As for this little conspiracy theory ~ “One of the reasons why Greek and Roman history and the Greek and Latin languages are being removed from high school and college curriculums is that fewer students will stumble upon such truths.” ~ puhLEEEESE, call the men in white coats now.  But at least, yes, #5 and 18 are not-so-worthless footnotes!
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"As for this little conspiracy theory ~ “One of the reasons why Greek and Roman history and the Greek and Latin languages are being removed from high school and college curriculums is that fewer students will stumble upon such truths.” ~ puhLEEEESE, call the men in white coats now." Yeah, who wants to believe that educationists actually try to manipulate public eudcation? Try out Walter Karp's excellent essay " Textbook America " at The Underground Grammarian site. Good stuff. Here's a quote: "Something had to be done quickly or democracy might one day break out. Educational leaders quickly worked out a solution. Let the secondary schools teach the children of workers what was fit only for workers. As Woodrow Wilson, president of Princeton, sternly advised the Federation of High School Teachers: 'We want one class of persons to have a liberal education and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.' Since there was no way to stop 'the masses' from entering high school, the only way to meet the crisis, in short, was to prevent them from learning anything liberating when they got there."
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> Yeah, who wants to believe that educationists actually try to manipulate public eudcation?
Mark, I doubt not the intentions - plural and contradictory - but I do doubt the ability to deliver. Conspiracy or cock up, I take the latter view every time.
Thanks for the article - looks very interesting from the first sections - I've saved it to read properly tomorrow.
edit: and a warm welcome to the board - I hope you find other things to interest you here.
Last edited by maverick; 01/11/2006 5:35 PM.
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stranger
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Well, there's always room for cocked-up conspiracies. Political history is the history of conspiracies. They don't have to be of the black helicopter kind. The conspiracists are oh so sincere.
Glad I found this place. I'll take a look around.
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Quote:
Conspiracy or cock up, I take the latter view every time.
Raze away, Occ you old ham.
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Pooh-Bah
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There is a difference, though, between conspiracy and policy. While on the other hand, is there a difference between conspiracy and policy?  Ditto on welcome
Last edited by inselpeter; 01/11/2006 8:27 PM.
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Quote:
Well, there's always room for cocked-up conspiracies. Political history is the history of conspiracies. They don't have to be of the black helicopter kind. The conspiracists are oh so sincere.
Glad I found this place. I'll take a look around.
it should be noted that Mark is the blogmaster at witnet and the author of the linked article.
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> Mark is the blogmaster at witnet and the author of the linked article
yep, so I had assumed. You guys with websites and blogs play tag around the web with every mention or link, na?!
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Well, I've had more time to look at the linked article. Interesting subject, though I have to say I found the arguments poorly reasoned and ridiculously loaded with tendentious assertions. I have limited detailed knowledge of the history of American education through the course of the 20th century, but what I do know of this, and similar models in other countries, makes many of the assertions of this article seem ludicrous. These a priori findings are often declared without regard to factual evidence – sometimes even despite internal contradictions in the material under discussion – and even where there is some evidence adduced, little attempt is made to quantify and qualify the value of the source. Some sentences are so packed with assumptions that even without digging into the detail of conflicting points of view a critical reader can see the poverty of analysis on display.
Having said that, I certainly understand that education has always been a battle-ground of conflicting views of how we want to mould future generations within our societies. I just can’t accept as credible the proposition that all American education is governed by “an oligarchy” and that this junta is enthralled by a Machiavellian desire to appease the narrow interests of a few major capitalists, in contrast to some unspecified golden age of pedagogy that celebrated a living breathing democratic republic.
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(Back after traveling a few days)
Mav, do you not find the Woodrow Wilson quote telling? There rarely is a workable conspiracy involving large numbers of people. That's not really what's at issue here. I'm sure Wilson and his cohorts thought they were doing the best they could.
I think there has been a strong shift away from "the basics" to a load to toachy-feely tripe in the last several decades. I remember in high school (1972) getting put into "Honors" History and "Honors English" and learning little history, except for the Bantu tribe in South Africa, and no grammar. In English we were encouraged to be "creative" and as a consequence virtually all of the A students were taking speed and mescaline for something to occupy their attention. It was in a university class in Spanish that I finally realized I didn't know what a preposition was. It took years of finding the right university professors to help me read and write clearly. Looking back (and having taught Latin and Journalsim to 6th, 7th, and 8th graders; Freshman English to university students as a gradute student; Business English at Business College; legal writing to paralegals, and executive writing skills to California law enforcement at Command College at Cal Poly Pomona), there is a very clear pattern of mostly "unconscious" evil in our public education, with some conscious help from ideologues who operate in the education department and various Trusts and Foundations.
As always, evil is often not seen by the good, who have difficulty believing in it without have had a direct experience with it.
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> a very clear pattern of mostly "unconscious" evil in our public education, with some conscious help from ideologues
ah, that I could entirely believe, Mark. Yep, that would be consistent with a lot of similar patterns I've seen elsewhere.
I guess if people of good intention, from whatever individual standopint, come together to battle out the details of what may work best, we'll never be *too far out from the central ground of common sense. In hindsight, I can understand that your blog entry was probably an elided reference to a whole bunch of stuff that you take for granted that other people recognise as the truth. Probably much of it is - as I said, I'm no specialist in US educational history. I just get apprehensive when too much is taken as an assumption on shared values, having learned the hard way!
Hey, you have an interesting voice - I hope you choose to stick around here at least from time to time; be good to hear more from you.
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Quote:
and no grammar. In English we were encouraged to be "creative" and as a consequence virtually all of the A students were taking speed and mescaline for something to occupy their attention. It was in a university class in Spanish that I finally realized I didn't know what a preposition was.
Just out of curiosity:
I ran into an old friend in the mall yesterday.
List all the prepositions in that sentence.
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veteran
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Quote:
I guess if people of good intention... come together to battle out the details of what may work best [then] we'll never be "too far out from the central ground of common sense".
In hindsight, I can understand that your blog entry was probably an elided reference to a whole bunch of stuff that you take for granted... I just get apprehensive when too much is taken as an assumption on shared values, having learned the hard way!
Universals, Maverick.
We humans share fundamental traits that trancend localized cultural functions. For example, your yearn to equate in worth the pecularities of variant human cultural experiments belies an understanding of objective reality.
As pack animals we have developed many different social patterns to contest our removal from the dance of human life.
Some function. Some don't.
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Quote:
Just out of curiosity:
I ran into an old friend in the mall yesterday.
List all the prepositions in that sentence.
in
TEd
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Just out of curiosity: I ran into an old friend in the mall yesterday. List all the prepositions in that sentence. Quote:
in
Whew!
Ya wait long enough, others will show you the way.
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Quote:
in
Whew!
Ya wait long enough, others will show you the way.
OK, since it appears that you've peeked at TEd's paper, explain why "into" isn't a preposition. Please, no answers from anyone other than MA.
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Please, no answers from anyone other than MA.
Oh good 'cos I don't have the answer being another of that generation that only learned practical grammer by osmosis and never learned to parse. Found out in night school Spanish class how useful a skill it would have been.
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> how useful a skill it would have been
yeah, I *never won at parse the parcel, it was so unfair...
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Pooh-Bah
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The Spanish teacher said we would learn the gerund. When I asked what gerund was in English, - she told me that it was English. 
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I had never seen a clothing design like that before, so I went to the library and looked up her dress.
The looked up tells you everything you need to know about ran into an old friend.
TEd
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gerund
Not to be confused, though often, with the gerundive.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Pooh-Bah
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Quote:
I had never seen a clothing design like that before, so I went to the library and looked up her dress.
[/certified pun]
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"OK, since it appears that you've peeked at TEd's paper, explain why "into" isn't a preposition. Please, no answers from anyone other than MA."
And I'm being tested on this because...?
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> because...? He's Fong. 'nuff said.
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Actually, it's part of the induction ritual, Mark.
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Quote:
"OK, since it appears that you've peeked at TEd's paper, explain why "into" isn't a preposition. Please, no answers from anyone other than MA."
And I'm being tested on this because...?
Because you claim to understand grammar and, in particular, prepositions. Actually, I think your arguments are nice.
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> arguments are nice pssst, Mark, don't follow *that hare, whatever you do! 
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I don't claim to understand grammar. I'm still learning. My point had more to do with the grammar I DIDN'T get in high school honors classes rather than the grammar I got in college.
I'm not much interested in grammar gotchas. *yawn*
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Quote:
I'm not much interested in grammar gotchas. *yawn*
Yet you can use and probably even construct a sentence like I ran into an old friend in the mall yesterday. You also know that
I ran into an old friend in the mall yesterday.
is correct but
*I ran an old friend into in the mall yesterday.
isn't.
You also know that
I ran up a big bill in the mall yesterday.
and
I ran a big bill up in the mall yesterday.
are both correct and even if you had learned grammar in school you wouldn't have learned why or even that those particular forms existed.
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Yes, it's a pity they don't really teach grammar in grammar school. Never have. They teach some usage rules that usually contradict the grammar one learned, unconsciously, while growing up speaking the language.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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I think I was taught a little grammar in grammar school, but that my mind was not prepared for it. I never acquired an understanding or appreciation for English grammar until I took Latin.
The problem with the grammar we learn unconsciously is that some of it is good usage, but not all of it is. Goodness is partly a matter of convention, but it's also a matter of utility.
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I've long felt that the whole preposition-at-the-end-of-a-sentence thing was caused by the long time ignoring of the phrasal verb. The particle of a phrasal verb looks like a preposition and can come at the end of a sentence quite nicely. Then, when kids that had learned the phrasal verb naturally in the first few years of their lives were told by grammarians that prepositions should not end sentences and that the particles were really prepositions, rather than coming up with things like "up with which I shall not put," started putting real prepositions at the ends of sentences.
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Hey, big guy, what say we get together when you get out of jail. Oh. Never mind. That's a prOposition at the end of a sentence.
TEd
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the grammar one learned, unconsciously, while growing up speaking the language. There's a Funniest Home Videos clip where Mom is behind the camera, filming her chocolate-smeared toddler, and she says things like, "You didn't eat no candy, did you?", and "Are you sure you didn't eat no candy?" (To every question, of course, the kid says no.) And I think, "Lady, aren't you embarrassed to be heard on national television talking like that?" This is a pretty old clip; the kid's probably in grammar school right now, talking the same way as his mom.
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"You didn't eat no candy, did you?"
Well, she's probably not embarassed by the way she speaks, because that's the way she speaks.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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> Mom is behind the camera, filming her chocolate-smeared toddler ...thus proving herself a true American Mom by referring to chocolate as candy without being embarassed ('cause that's the way she speaks)  1. Crystallized sugar, made by repeated boiling and slow evaporation, more fully called sugar candy; also any confection made of, or incrusted with this. (In U.S. used more widely than in Great Britain, including toffee, and the like.)OED2
Last edited by maverick; 01/27/2006 1:43 PM.
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After I took my first few semesters of German, I came to assume that prepositions at the end of sentences was something borrowed from that root. But that isn't the kind of thing I'm talking about. I think Jackie's closer to what I was talking about. There are people in my family who talk just like that woman - and it's fine when you're talking to your own family or other people who understand you.
The problem is that language like this is often either imprecise or incorrect. It's fine for some uses and utterly inadequate for others. Imprecision may not matter in every case. But precision needs to be sufficient for the circumstance.
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Crystallized sugarCOED: 1 N. Amer. sweets. 2 chiefly Brit. sugar crystallized by repeated boiling and slow evaporation.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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