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tsuwm Offline OP
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oy!

Quote:

While descriptivists and other such laissez-faire linguists are content to allow the misconception to fall into the vernacular, it cannot be denied that logic and philosophy stand to lose an important conceptual label should the meaning of BTQ become diluted to the point that we must constantly distinguish between the traditional usage and the erroneous "modern" usage. This is why we fight.




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I was thinking abou this in my lazy fairy kind of way the other day, when I heard a tv journalist from somewhere else use it in the "wrong" way. It reinforced my belief that Humpty Dumpty had it right all those years ago - words mean whatever enough people say they mean. Maybe Dodgson's relaxed, descriptivist attitude to language was a reaction to his work as a mathematician, but whatever the reason, he certainly supplied me with a nice motto.

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you might gotta like this though:

Bob's Quick Guide to the Apostrophe, You Idiots


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Quote:

you might gotta like this though:

Bob's Quick Guide to the Apostrophe, You Idiots




Great cartoon. The misuse of apostrophe's was one of the last things to get my prescriptivist hackles' up, but eventually I decided theres just not enough time to waste getting hung up on stuff like that. Im much happier for have made the break, Id say.

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surfing from there brought me to this:

http://refdesk.com/

is that on your list, Max?


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Quote:

surfing from there brought me to this:

http://refdesk.com/

is that on your list, Max?




yup.

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okey dokey.


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Quote:

While descriptivists and other such laissez-faire linguists are content to allow the misconception to fall into the vernacular, it cannot be denied that logic and philosophy stand to lose an important conceptual label should the meaning of BTQ become diluted to the point that we must constantly distinguish between the traditional usage and the erroneous "modern" usage. This is why we fight.




Looks like a classic example of petitio principii to me.

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And with just a soupçon of ad hominem thrown in. The real problem with the term begging the question is that it is a poor translation at best.


Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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