What really concerns me is that what we are seeing now is the institutionalization of usages which creep in out of ignorance and illiterate usage; viz., the indiscriminate confusion of lie/lay, infer/imply, and too many others to list. The result is a decrease in precision and clarity in the language.
Yes, this is my objection too. Although I decry rule-based prescriptivism, I am all for good language against bad language. The loss of useful terms is to be deprecated and if possible opposed. Beg the question is useful in its right sense, and the misuse of it has no value of its own, so I'm vigorous in opposing its misuse.
But case-based, not rule-based. The lie/lay distinction doesn't seem so important, because most verbs don't need separate transitive forms. Misuse can sound quite illiterate, but I would be reluctant to impose my class attitudes if it became really widespread.
Semicolons are the bolts in the tracery of my prose; I feel I haven't been working if I don't have a few to give elegance to the thing.
