Cainntear wrote:(I figured I'd better bring across here rather than reply in Marais's thread.)Chung wrote:On the tangent of prescriptivism versus descriptivism, I consider myself to be a descriptivist who's weakly prescriptivist. While I do not subscribe to Cainntear's and others' insinuation on letting "common" (however that is defined) usage strongly trump prescriptivist or perceived elitist usage, the best that I can do is use the language in a way that makes sense to me and in some cases this draws on my exposure to other languages.
That is the exact opposite of descriptivism, and how English got into this mess in the first place -- you can't use reason to decide what's right and wrong, and particularly not other languages. We tried to apply rules of Latin (don't split your infinitive languages) and predicate logic (double negative is a positive).
They're different things here. I'm a descriptivist in that I observe and hesitate to correct some variants used by other native speakers but that doesn't mean that I'm forbidden from holding an opinion of variants, and these opinions often guide me in using the forms that I use. Moreover when asked about something's validity in English, I freely show a dominant descriptivism leavened by a little prescriptivism. (e.g. "Chung, is 'capsicum' the correct term for this thing? - Yes, although around here I and others use 'bell pepper', 'sweet pepper' or just 'pepper'. 'Capsicum' is used often in Australia but using it here might draw more blank stares than not, so use those forms with 'pepper' to make your life easier with us).
Cainntear wrote:Chung wrote:I find that letting frequency of usage be the main determinant in an element's "correctness" reminds me a bit of the Simpsons' episode with a poster of smokers bearing the caption "50 million smokers can't be wrong!".
!! When was the last time anyone died of conjugular cancer?
You're starting to remind me a bit of the Serb, Vuk Karadžić, who was guided by Johann Christoph Adelung's declaration Schreibe, wie Du sprichst! ("Write as you speak!"). When standardizing Serbian, Karadžić took this declaration seriously but what really came out is that other Serbs (and to a good degree Bosnians, Croats and Montenegrins) ended up with standards that reflect strongly how he and his neighbours spoke no matter how divergent their manner was from that of those other Southern Slavs. You don't speak for my usage and that of some of my peers while I don't speak for your usage and that of those you've known.
Cainntear wrote:Chung wrote:High frequency of anything doesn't make it immune from criticism (or scorn), and in a way descriptivists acknowledge this by observing/noting that so-and-so forms exist while also noting that each form may elicit different reactions. It'd be wise for the learner or user to be aware of the connotations.
I completely agree. But that doesn't mean it's OK to scorn others. Just as giving advice to help avoid being a victim of racist attack doesn't justify racism.
Well I suppose that opinions, judgments or connotations are to be ignored too. You as a teacher should know very well that metalinguistic awareness exists. Morality aside, we're all judged not just on the content of our output but its presentation and manner. I wouldn't be surprised if you took for me for a stiff-ass elitist as much as I'd take you for a brash linguistic populist who likes thumbing his nose at perceived elitists.
Cainntear wrote:Chung wrote:- using "different than" rather than "different from" - "than" indicates comparisons of greater/lesser degree (which has a vague quantitative edge) rather than mere qualitative difference.
Your explanation doesn't stack up. Explain the "than" in "rather than" (eg. rather than go to the shops, I stayed in and ordered online.)
C'mon, give yourself a chance. You know damned well that "rather" and "different" don't encompass the same parts of speech. "Rather" descends from a comparative adjective while "different" doesn't, so the use of "than" with "rather" turns out not to be out of place (see here). I can add to your twisting and posit "instead of..." and then ask if "of" is worthy of being compared to "than". Just for fun, we also have "different to". Want to muck things up more?
On the other hand, I know damned well that something translateable as "than" can follow a word translateable as "different" (e.g. Slovak Mačka je väčšia než pes. "The cat is bigger than the dog" but Mačka je iná než pes "The cat is different than the dog." (i.e. not "different from"). However that's fine for Slovak.
Cainntear wrote:Chung wrote:- using "ain't" to replace "aren't" and "isn't" (e.g. "he ain't coming" for "he isn't coming") when etymologically it's a contraction of "(I) am not".
A) etymology is not meaning, B) That's not my understanding of the etymology -- as I understand it, it appears in the records as both a contraction of am not and are not pretty much simultaneously.
Etymology can explain a word or morpheme's meaning, past and present. See here, here and here for the etymology. It's not clear to me looking at all of these links that "ain't" for "am not" and "aren't" came simultaneously as you posted. The phonological effect beginning with the change of m in am is clearer compared to "aren't" being a contraction of "are not" which shows no change to the consonant.
Cainntear wrote:Chung wrote:- curious disparaging of "ain't" as so non-standard/uneducated that it's been long viewed as proper to use "aren't I?" instead. I've never had a problem saying "ain't I?" when contracting "am I not?" since "aren't I?" seems like a hyper-correction. Writing is a different story though since outside casual writing, I try like hell to avoid contractions with apostrophes as phrases such as "I ain't" and "we aren't" look less attractive to me than "I am not" or "we are not" respectively)
And this brings us back to "ain't" going out of fashion in the first place, because it was due to a rejection of contractions as barbaric by arch-prescriptivists. Prescriptivists who wanted a "pure" English, and they even reintroduced conjugations for person and number, the fools. I mean, English had spent a millenium trying to rid itself of them, and by the restoration era in England, they'd all but gone. And then someone decided it was "wrong".
Indeed. I'm using "I ain't" ("ain't I?"), "you/we/they aren't" ("aren't you/we/they?") and "(s)he/it isn't" ("isn't (s)he/it?"), and don't see the fuss.
Cainntear wrote:Chung wrote:- using "If I/(s)he was..." instead of "If I/(s)he were..."
The subjunctive is dead. Deal with it.
In your dialect and that of many whom you know, it's dead. In mine and that of others, it's not despite the widespread merging of its forms with indicative ones. See here and here. I'm not the only one who'd question your self-assuredness. Am I to believe that sentences such as "I insist that you be careful.", "If she were here, then there'd be no problem." or "I hid myself behind the shelf, lest he find me." are ungrammatical or not part of the living language?
Cainntear wrote:Chung wrote:- letting "that" or even "which" replace "who" as a relative pronoun ("I'd like to thank my friends, that/which..."). I stick to "who" ("whom" when oblique) for blatant personal antecedants, and "that" or "which" for non-personal ones. When the antecedant is something that's fuzzier to me, my usage oscillates ("That's the team who/that won the championship last year" - I don't feel as bad with this sentence as saying "That's the player that scored the winning goal". For the latter I use "That's the player who scored the winning goal" no questions asked).
Ah... I was just waiting for that one. Have.a look back in the original thread -- there's one there.
But the thing is, "which" is for inanimate, "who" is for animate, but "that" is either. It was always thus. There is no hard distinction about when to use than vs which/who, but the pattern that modern grammar books present (and is taught as standard in English lessons to non-natives) is that "that" is used in restrictive relative clauses, and "who"/"which" is used for non-restrictive relative clauses.
The examples you used were all restrictive relative clauses, so "that" is the accepted (and taught) norm.
(Non-restrictive relative clauses are things like "My parents, who met at university, are from different countries.")
Using "that" to cover personal antecedents is indeed accepted and encountered regularly in output by natives and non-natives alike, but perhaps to your dismay/scorn/shock I was never taught this, and yes I'm a native speaker of English (relative clauses weren't taught to me like this but under certain circumstances I do perceive a difference between "which" and "that" as in "I finished off the soup, which she had left unfinished" versus "I finished off the soup that she had left unfinished". The distinction taught explicitly to me instead depends on the "humaness" of the antecedent rather than restrictiveness, and is reinforced by the association of "who" to humans and sometimes to animals.
Cainntear wrote:Chung wrote:"each and every" (even in legalese this seems out of place. let alone marketing fluff),
Well, if you go by the rules of other language, redundant repetition as intensifier is pretty normal....
It's more elegant than saying "absolutely every", I'd say.
Indeed it is a common technique for intensification, yet it's there for effect. "Absolutely every" is about as (in)elegant as "each and every" to me. Doing this can set off metalinguistic awareness in the thinking person.