but wouldn't he be the poster child darling of descriptivists? He personifies that make-it-up-as-you-go free-wheeling linguismThis was too much for a
soi-disant descriptivist, such as
moi, to let go by without an observation. The prescriptivists wouldn't know a real grammatical rule if it walked up and bit them on their
tukhes. A descriptivist determines what the rules governing language are by describing how people use said language. Prescriptivists make up rules, which more often than not they themselves don't follow (
link,
link, and
link), or borrow them from some other grammar hooligans. The latter use faulty logic, ignore history, and just get the facts plain wrong.
