What's new-cular, pussycat?
Robert Lieblich
<http://slate.msn.com/?id=2071155&device=>
Be sure to follow the link ("here") at the end of the article.
It's all very level-headed, and I have nothing to add.
--
Bob Lieblich
Hi, Tootsie
Maria Conlon
Robert Lieblich wrote
>Slate magazine has a tidy article today (Wednesday) on "nucular":
>
><http://slate.msn.com/?id=2071155&device=>
>
>Be sure to follow the link ("here") at the end of the article.
>
>It's all very level-headed, and I have nothing to add.
One thing: I was a bit taken aback by this:
'Changing "nu-clee-ar" into "nu-cu-lar" is an example of what linguists
call metathesis, which is the switching of two adjacent sounds. (Think
of it this way: "nook le yer" becomes "nook ye ler.") This switching is
common in English pronunciation; you might pronounce "iron" as "eye
yern" rather than "eye ron."'
Is the article saying that "eye yern" is the result of metathesis? I
guess it could be, but (in the USA), at least, "eye yern" or "eye ern"
is by far the most used pronunciation. I have never heard anyone say
"eye ron," except in jest. Are we supposed to think that "eye yern" is
comparable to "nu-cu-lar"? I see a big difference.
What am I missing?
>Bob Lieblich
>Hi, Tootsie
Hi, yourself, Counselor. ;-)
Maria (Tootsie) Conlon
Raymond S. Wise
news:amb4lo$48uco$1...@ID-113669.news.dfncis.de...
The article is indeed saying that "eye yern" is the result of metathesis. It
is not, however, saying that metathesis is bad. Other words which have been
metathesized include "bird," which was originally "brid" and which changed
its spelling, and "comfortable," which has standard pronunciations (in
Merriam-Webster dictionaries and also in other dictionaries) in which the
"r" sound is pronounced after the "t." In the case of the word "ask/aks" we
know that the word metathesized, we just don't know whether "ask" came
before "aks" or "aks" came before "ask."
In the Web page to which the Slate article links, in which appears
Merriam-Webster's standard response for people who complain about them
including the "nucular" pronunciation, Merriam-Webster says:
From
http://slate.msn.com/?id=2071155&sidebar=2071156
"We do not list the pronunciation of 'nuclear' as \'nü-ky&-l&r\ as an
'acceptable' alternative."
This makes no sense whatsoever. I have on several occasions read the entry
note on the matter in both the Collegiate and in Webster's Third, and it is
clear that the editors consider pronunciations which appear in an entry to
be equal variants unless marked with a regional label. "Equal variants"
means precisely an equally acceptable alternative.
--
Raymond S. Wise
Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
E-mail: mplsray @ yahoo . com
Evan Kirshenbaum
> In the Web page to which the Slate article links, in which appears
> Merriam-Webster's standard response for people who complain about
> them including the "nucular" pronunciation, Merriam-Webster says:
>
> From http://slate.msn.com/?id=2071155&sidebar=2071156
>
> "We do not list the pronunciation of 'nuclear' as \'nü-ky&-l&r\ as an
> 'acceptable' alternative."
>
> This makes no sense whatsoever. I have on several occasions read the
> entry note on the matter in both the Collegiate and in Webster's
> Third, and it is clear that the editors consider pronunciations
> which appear in an entry to be equal variants unless marked with a
> regional label. "Equal variants" means precisely an equally
> acceptable alternative.
No, it means a roughly equally *common* alternative. To make sense of
the quote, you have to give a bit of context:
We do not list the pronunciation of "nuclear" as \'nü-ky&-l&r\ as
an "acceptable" alternative. We merely list it as an alternative.
It is clearly preceded by the obelus mark \÷\. This mark
indicates "a pronunciation variant that occurs in educated speech
but that is considered by some to be questionable or
unacceptable."
So they're saying that it exists and is common, but that some people
find unacceptable. This is no different from listing "one that is
particularly impressive or contemptible" as a sense of "mother".
They're not saying that it's an acceptable to use the word that way,
just that it is a way the word is used. (They label it "sometimes
vulgar".)
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |The Elizabethans had so many words
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |for the female genitals that it is
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |quite hard to speak a sentence of
|modern English without inadvertently
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |mentioning at least three of them.
(650)857-7572 | Terry Pratchett
Ben Zimmer
Most other examples of metathesis in English involve switching an r:
cart < cræt
curd < crud
dirt < drit
fright < fyrhto
nostril < nosthyrl
third < thridde
thirteen < thrittene
thirty < thritty
Winthrop < Winthorp
> In the case of the word "ask/aks" we
> know that the word metathesized, we just don't know whether "ask" came
> before "aks" or "aks" came before "ask."
Another case of the /sk/~/ks/ metathesis is "Manx", from Old Norse
"Mansk". Also, "task" derives from Vulgar Latin "tasca", a metathetic
form of "taxa".
> In the Web page to which the Slate article links, in which appears
> Merriam-Webster's standard response for people who complain about them
> including the "nucular" pronunciation, Merriam-Webster says:
>
> From
> http://slate.msn.com/?id=2071155&sidebar=2071156
>
> "We do not list the pronunciation of 'nuclear' as \'nü-ky&-l&r\ as an
> 'acceptable' alternative."
>
> This makes no sense whatsoever. I have on several occasions read the entry
> note on the matter in both the Collegiate and in Webster's Third, and it is
> clear that the editors consider pronunciations which appear in an entry to
> be equal variants unless marked with a regional label. "Equal variants"
> means precisely an equally acceptable alternative.
But the note says the /'nu ky@ l@r/ pronunciation is preceded by an
obelus (not sure which editions would have that). From the
pronunciation guide:
-----------
http://www.m-w.com/pronguid.htm
\ ÷ \
The obelus, or division sign, is placed before a pronunciation
variant that occurs in educated speech but that is considered by
some to be questionable or unacceptable. This symbol is used
sparingly and primarily for variants that have been objected to
over a period of time in print by commentators on usage, in
schools by teachers, or in correspondence that has come to the
Merriam-Webster editorial department. In most cases the
objection is based on orthographic or etymological arguments.
For instance, the second variant of cupola \'kyü-p&-l&,
÷-"lO\, though used frequently in speech, is objected to
because a is very rarely pronounced \O\ in English. The
pronunciations \'fe-by&-"wer-E\ and \'fe-b&-"wer-E\
(indicated simultaneously by the use of parentheses) are
similarly marked at the entry for February
\÷'fe-b(y)&-"wer-E, 'fe-br&-\, even though they are the most
frequently heard pronunciations, because some people insist
that both r's should be pronounced. The obelus applies only to
that portion of the transcription which it immediately precedes
and not to any other variants following.
-----------
So in other words, the obelus is the MW editors' way of saying, "Stop
writing us with your pronunciation pet peeves already!"
Raymond S. Wise
news:3D895C86...@midway.uchicago.edu...
>
> "Raymond S. Wise" wrote:
> >
[...]
That is precisely the same conclusion that I had about the reason
Merriam-Webster's editors came to use the obelus (and I've expressed as much
in previous posts, either to this newsgroup, to alt.english.usage , or to
both).
Edward
I do so agree. Who in tarnation says "eye-ron" anyway?
Personally, I was baffled by this:
"There is simply no scholarly basis for preferring one pronunciation
over another. To not list all pronunciation variants would be
irresponsible and a failure of our mission to provide a serious,
scholarly, record of the current American English language."
Firstly, scholarly or not, common sense shows us that to pronounce
"nuclear" as "nucular" is simply ignorant. To think otherwise is
piffle. Maybe if Bush et al. were pronouncing it "nuclar" then such
relativistic laissez-faire as this might be admissible.
The final sentence beginning "To not list all pronunciation variants
..." is nauseatingly ugly and an affront to their soi-disant "serious,
scholarly record".
Edward
Mike Barnes
>The article is indeed saying that "eye yern" is the result of metathesis. It
>is not, however, saying that metathesis is bad. Other words which have been
>metathesized include "bird," which was originally "brid" and which changed
>its spelling, and "comfortable," which has standard pronunciations (in
>Merriam-Webster dictionaries and also in other dictionaries) in which the
>"r" sound is pronounced after the "t." In the case of the word "ask/aks" we
>know that the word metathesized, we just don't know whether "ask" came
>before "aks" or "aks" came before "ask."
Is "restaurant" another example? What I usually hear sounds more like
"restaraunt".
--
Mike Barnes
Raymond S. Wise
news:25080b60.0209...@posting.google.com...
Common sense shows no such thing. It is no more "ignorant" to pronounce
"nuclear" as "nucular" than to pronounce "comfortable" with the "r" sound
following the "t," "arctic" with the "c" left silent, or "colonel" with the
first "l" pronounced like an "r."
English spelling is notoriously non-phonetic. "Nucular" for "nuclear" is
just one more example of that reality.
Jonathan Jordan
I usually pronounce "restaurant" as /'rE...@rA.nt/, which is pretty
weird, but I don't think it has anything to do with metathesis. I
presume the /A./ comes from an Anglophone approximation to the French
nasal vowel /A~/, rather than from the syllable spelt <au>. As for
the <st> becoming /StS/ "shch", that's another issue, but I presume it
has something to do with the /r/ (I would call "strange" /StSrendZ/.)
Jonathan
Stephen Toogood
<bgzi...@midway.uchicago.edu> writes
>
>"Raymond S. Wise" wrote:
>>
>> "Maria Conlon" <mcon...@sprynet.com> wrote in message
>> news:amb4lo$48uco$1...@ID-113669.news.dfncis.de...
>> >
>> > Is the article saying that "eye yern" is the result of metathesis? I
>> > guess it could be, but (in the USA), at least, "eye yern" or "eye ern"
>> > is by far the most used pronunciation. I have never heard anyone say
>> > "eye ron," except in jest. Are we supposed to think that "eye yern" is
>> > comparable to "nu-cu-lar"? I see a big difference.
>> >
>> > What am I missing?
>>
>> The article is indeed saying that "eye yern" is the result of metathesis. It
>> is not, however, saying that metathesis is bad. Other words which have been
>> metathesized include "bird," which was originally "brid" and which changed
>> its spelling, and "comfortable," which has standard pronunciations (in
>> Merriam-Webster dictionaries and also in other dictionaries) in which the
>> "r" sound is pronounced after the "t."
>
>Most other examples of metathesis in English involve switching an r:
>
>cart < crćt
>curd < crud
>dirt < drit
>fright < fyrhto
>nostril < nosthyrl
>third < thridde
>thirteen < thrittene
>thirty < thritty
>Winthrop < Winthorp
>
Funny how all these examples contain the letter R. Non-rhotic speakers
would make no distinction between 'iron' conceived as 'i-ron' and 'eye-
yern'; indeed the latter would be closer to my pronunciation.
In the case of 'bird', we are talking about a fairly subtle
pronunciation change that happened before spelling was standardised. If
I try to recreate the sound of 'bird' from what little I know of say
16th century speech, I find little to distinguish the sound of 'bird'
from 'brid'. There are so many instances of the same Germanic word
taking different forms from language to language on no more basis than
regional pronunciation - 'bread, Brot, bröd, etc.' is the obvious
example. Could it be that this is in essence a problem only for rhotic
speakers?
I must admit that I have never come across any of the variants listed
above. Does this account somehow for the fact that I have never heard
'nucular' from a speaker of UK English?
--
Stephen Toogood
Robert Lieblich
[ ... ]
> > Is "restaurant" another example? What I usually hear sounds more like
> > "restaraunt".
>
> I usually pronounce "restaurant" as /'rE...@rA.nt/, which is pretty
> weird, but I don't think it has anything to do with metathesis. I
> presume the /A./ comes from an Anglophone approximation to the French
> nasal vowel /A~/, rather than from the syllable spelt <au>. As for
> the <st> becoming /StS/ "shch", that's another issue, but I presume it
> has something to do with the /r/ (I would call "strange" /StSrendZ/.)
Proper names often get metathesized. Brett Favre of the Green Bay
Packers is "farve." Phil Bengtson, who coached the Packers long ago
(he succeeded Vince Lombardi, poor guy), was "bengston." Jim
Hanifan, another football coach, was invariably "hanafin." That's
three off the top of my head. I'm sure there are many more.
--
Bob Lieblich
It is football season, after all).
Robert Lieblich
[ ... ]
> Firstly, scholarly or not, common sense shows us that to pronounce
> "nuclear" as "nucular" is simply ignorant.
But why would anyone adopt such an ignorant pronunciation in the
first place? The orthography clearly does not call for it. Are you
suggesting that this is just an issue of lazy readers? How, then,
do you differentiate lazy readers from lazy speakers -- the source
of most metathesis?
> To think otherwise is piffle.
Have you read the AUE FAQ? Try
<http://www.alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxguidel.html>, paragraph
3. Attempts at thought control in AUE are futile.
> Maybe if Bush et al. were pronouncing it "nuclar" then such
> relativistic laissez-faire as this might be admissible.
I do admire your self-confidence. I hope it proves justified.
> The final sentence beginning "To not list all pronunciation variants
> ..." is nauseatingly ugly and an affront to their soi-disant "serious,
> scholarly record".
Here is the full sentence: "To not list all pronunciation variants
would be irresponsible and a failure of our mission to provide a
serious, scholarly, record of the current American English
language." It's pretty clunky, all right. I don't like "failure of
our mission" at all, and pairing the noun "failure" with the
adjective "irresponsible" is hardly characteristic of a felicitous
style. I wouldn't have put a comma after "scholarly." On the other
hand, I kinda admire that opening "To not list."
Yeah, that last sentence needs editing. "Nauseatingly ugly" is a
bit much, however. The Official AUE Standards of Ugliness are far
more exacting than that.
--
Bob Lieblich
Boldly going where no poster has gone before
John Smith
>
> Funny how all these examples contain the letter R. Non-rhotic speakers
> would make no distinction between 'iron' conceived as 'i-ron' and 'eye-
Yes they would (unless they have a speech defect). Non-rhotic speech
still articulates the "r" before a vowel. The British do not say
"Eye-ish" instead of "Irish".
\\P. Schultz
Matti Lamprhey
> Jonathan Jordan wrote:
> >
> > I usually pronounce "restaurant" as /'rE...@rA.nt/, which is pretty
> > weird, but I don't think it has anything to do with metathesis. I
> > presume the /A./ comes from an Anglophone approximation to the French
> > nasal vowel /A~/, rather than from the syllable spelt <au>. As for
> > the <st> becoming /StS/ "shch", that's another issue, but I presume it
> > has something to do with the /r/ (I would call "strange" /StSrendZ/.)
>
> Proper names often get metathesized. Brett Favre of the Green Bay
> Packers is "farve." Phil Bengtson, who coached the Packers long ago
> (he succeeded Vince Lombardi, poor guy), was "bengston." Jim
> Hanifan, another football coach, was invariably "hanafin." That's
> three off the top of my head. I'm sure there are many more.
And sometimes it's done by People Who Should Know Better. Britain's
favourite cook (as opposed to chef) is Delia Smith, who often includes
"basalmic vinegar" in her dishes.
I hate it when people metasethize like that.
Matti
GrapeApe
Are you aware of some U.S. people do this? I know some people that say "Eye-ish
potatoes". I think they say Warshington and Mizzourah too. The "Eye-ish" bit
particularly gets to me, as they are otherwise rhotic speakers- it seems
totally unnatural.
Pat Durkin
"GrapeApe" <grap...@aol.comjunk> wrote in message
news:20020919223134...@mb-bd.aol.com...
> >> Funny how all these examples contain the letter R. Non-rhotic
speakers
> >> would make no distinction between 'iron' conceived as 'i-ron' and
'eye-
> >> yern'; indeed the latter would be closer to my pronunciation. <...>
> >
> >Yes they would (unless they have a speech defect). Non-rhotic speech
> >still articulates the "r" before a vowel. The British do not say
> >"Eye-ish" instead of "Irish".
>
> Are you aware of some U.S. people do this? I know some people that say
"Eye-ish
> potatoes".
I have never heard this pronunciation of "Irish". Can you name a
location where one would hear it?
> "I think they say Warshington and Mizzourah too.
How about Louahville? ( I have heard the intrusive "r" in warsh", of
course, in Wisconsin and some other places. It is not prevalent in
Wisconsin, and I don't say it, myself. It is just not rare. Many
people nowadays will say Mizzourah, with the understanding that that is
how the natives say it. I will say it sometimes and then at other times
will not. It is kind of a playing around, shrug of the shoulders thing
to me.
> The "Eye-ish" bit
> particularly gets to me, as they are otherwise rhotic speakers- it
seems
> totally unnatural.
I would agree, I think, if I should hear it.
Pat Durkin
"Matti Lamprhey" <matti-...@totally-official.com> wrote in message
news:ame1ac$53hrn$1...@ID-103223.news.dfncis.de...
We have a cook who purports to know Amish style cookery, "from Quilt
country". I shudder when she says "basalmic", but then I suppose I am
being a (shudder) snob.
>
> I hate it when people metasethize like that.
Nice to get a chance to use a new word, isn't it?
>
> Matti
>
>
Tony Cooper
. Many
> people nowadays will say Mizzourah, with the understanding that that
is
> how the natives say it. I will say it sometimes and then at other
times
> will not. It is kind of a playing around, shrug of the shoulders
thing
> to me.
I spent six months in Missouri as a guest of Uncle Sam. I met many
native Missourians and never did figure out if it's "Mis-oo-ri" or
"Mizzourah". Both pronunciations are heard frequently.
I prefer the latter, but only in referring to a place that I have no
interest in returning to.
On a weekend pass, a buddy and I hitchhiked to some town that was
supposed to be interesting. It wasn't. When we decided to leave, we
stood on opposite sides of the roads with our thumbs out intending to go
the direction of the first car that stopped for either of us. It really
didn't make any difference to us. That about sums up Missouri.
--
Tony Cooper aka: Tony_Co...@Yahoo.com
Provider of Jots & Tittles
Tony Cooper
> > And sometimes it's done by People Who Should Know Better. Britain's
> > favourite cook (as opposed to chef) is Delia Smith, who often
includes
> > "basalmic vinegar" in her dishes.
I thought Nigella Lawson was the cook that raises all the temperatures
in the UK.
david56
>>>> Jonathan Jordan (or maybe someone else) wrote:
>>>
>>> And sometimes it's done by People Who Should Know Better.
>>> Britain's favourite cook (as opposed to chef) is Delia Smith, who
>>> often includes "basalmic vinegar" in her dishes.
>
> I thought Nigella Lawson was the cook that raises all the
> temperatures in the UK.
I believe that's true although I've not seen her programme. But Nigella
probably has 25 years youth on Delia - the description was "favourite
cook" not "favourite letch". Delia is sometimes referred to as "Saint
Delia".
Nigella is the daughter of Nigel Lawson who was Chancellor of the
Exchequer (= Chief Finance Minister). He is a world renowned economist
and has written many erudite books, but his best seller is probably The
Nigel Lawson Diet Book.
--
David
I say what it occurs to me to say.
=====
The address is valid today, but I will change it to keep ahead of the
spammers.
Matti Lamprhey
> > > > Jonathan Jordan (or maybe someone else) wrote:
>
> > > And sometimes it's done by People Who Should Know Better. Britain's
> > > favourite cook (as opposed to chef) is Delia Smith, who often
> > > includes "basalmic vinegar" in her dishes.
>
> I thought Nigella Lawson was the cook that raises all the temperatures
> in the UK.
Yes, Nigel went from cooking the country's books to writing cookbooks. I
still haven't worked out whether we're looking at a real transgender op., or
just ambitious cross-dressing. A lot of it is camera-trickery, of course.
Matti
Charles Riggs
<Robert....@Verizon.net> wrote:
>Edward wrote:
>
>[ ... ]
>
>> Firstly, scholarly or not, common sense shows us that to pronounce
>> "nuclear" as "nucular" is simply ignorant.
Ignorant pronunciation. That's a good one.
>Yeah, that last sentence needs editing. "Nauseatingly ugly" is a
>bit much, however. The Official AUE Standards of Ugliness are far
>more exacting than that.
How so? I rather like "Nauseatingly ugly" and might even give it the
Reader's Digest's Toward More Picturesque Speech award, were I editor.
Charles
Robert Lieblich
Oh, the term is fine, Charles. I agree with you there. But
applying it to a moderately dopey sentence like the one under
discussion is like calling a jaywalker a nauseatingly evil sinner
doomed to hell forever. Rhetorical overkill.
In short, the argument was over the applicability of the phrase in a
particular context.
--
Bob Lieblich
Toujours context
Stephen Toogood
<tony_co...@yahoo.com> writes
>> > > Jonathan Jordan (or maybe someone else) wrote:
>
>> > And sometimes it's done by People Who Should Know Better. Britain's
>> > favourite cook (as opposed to chef) is Delia Smith, who often
>includes
>> > "basalmic vinegar" in her dishes.
>
>I thought Nigella Lawson was the cook that raises all the temperatures
>in the UK.
>
I turned her off last night. It looks as though her producers have
decided she's going to be a sex symbol, and have instructed her to flirt
with the camera at every conceivable opportunity, and to be generally
coquettish. This she does with a disturbingly practised air.
But what got me last night was the contrast between her and Rick Stein,
who had occupied the previous thirty minutes on another channel. Stein,
who is a professional chef, is touring the country looking at
traditional foods and our native ways with them. At the end of his
programme he was chatting enthusiastically to a Lancashire black pudding
maker with no side at all, then I turn over and we get Nigella with all
this marinating in lime juice and fish sauce, and food for yuppies.
I'm off to braise some beef, having had one in front of you all.
--
Stephen Toogood
Pat Durkin
"Tony Cooper" <tony_co...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:amea80$4u2cr$1...@ID-113505.news.dfncis.de...
> "Pat Durkin" <p...@hotmail.com> wrote in message >
>
> . Many
> > people nowadays will say Mizzourah, with the understanding that that
> is
> > how the natives say it. I will say it sometimes and then at other
> times
> > will not. It is kind of a playing around, shrug of the shoulders
> thing
> > to me.
>
> I spent six months in Missouri as a guest of Uncle Sam.
Mike Schwitzgebel
"Tony Cooper" <tony_co...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:amea80$4u2cr$1...@ID-113505.news.dfncis.de...
> I met many
> native Missourians and never did figure out if it's "Mis-oo-ri" or
> "Mizzourah". Both pronunciations are heard frequently.
According to my wife, a native Missourian, the pronunciation varies by
location. Those living in the western part of the state favor the "ah"
ending; those in the east favor the "ee" ending.
Sorry, I haven't quite figured out the ASCII IPA notation yet.
Mike
Mike Lyle
I dame rome porgress tahn atht: asys me "runclura". Juts noe rome
escamlep o atht erality.
Then posh folks will be able to talk about serious issues without the
smelly proles understandin. Tolerance is one thing; greenhousing
social divisions is quite another.
Mike.
Mike Lyle
[...]
> > > 'Changing "nu-clee-ar" into "nu-cu-lar" is an example of what linguists
> > > call metathesis, which is the switching of two adjacent sounds. [...]
P.S. Raymond, for heaven's sake, it's an example of what *everybody*
calls "metathesis". That's because it's metathesis.
"Now this is what we doctors call the 'cheek'".
Mike.
Raymond S. Wise
news:3fa4d950.02092...@posting.google.com...
The sentence in question was written not by me but by Kate Taylor in her
article "Why Does Bush Go 'Nucular'?" in *Slate* magazine, at
http://slate.msn.com/?id=2071155&device
Note that she does not consider "nucular" an acceptable pronunciation. I do.
Raymond S. Wise
Note that I said that "English spelling is notoriously non-phonetic." I did
not say that I wish English spelling to be more phonetic, nor that I am an
advocate of pronunciation change, either to more non-phonetic pronunciations
or more spelling pronunciations.
They're going to happen anyway, of course, whatever you or I feel about the
matter.
John Holmes
"Robert Lieblich" <Robert....@Verizon.net> wrote in message
news:3D8A5643...@Verizon.net...
>
> Proper names often get metathesized. Brett Favre of the Green Bay
> Packers is "farve." Phil Bengtson, who coached the Packers long ago
> (he succeeded Vince Lombardi, poor guy), was "bengston." Jim
> Hanifan, another football coach, was invariably "hanafin." That's
> three off the top of my head. I'm sure there are many more.
There are two similar (Irish?) surnames, Raftery and Rafferty. I presume
one is originally derived from the other or vice versa. Anybody know?
--
Regards
John
Mike Lyle
> "Mike Lyle" <mike_l...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:3fa4d950.02092...@posting.google.com...
> > "Raymond S. Wise" <illinoi...@mninter.net> wrote in message
> news:<uojd6pd...@corp.supernews.com>...
> >
> > [...]
> > > > > 'Changing "nu-clee-ar" into "nu-cu-lar" is an example of what
> linguists
> > > > > call metathesis, which is the switching of two adjacent sounds.
> [...]
> >
> > P.S. Raymond, for heaven's sake, it's an example of what *everybody*
> > calls "metathesis". That's because it's metathesis.
> >
> > "Now this is what we doctors call the 'cheek'".
> >
>
>
> The sentence in question was written not by me but by Kate Taylor in her
> article "Why Does Bush Go 'Nucular'?" in *Slate* magazine, at
>
irritationm next time you see her.
Mike.
Aaron J. Dinkin
> Another case of the /sk/~/ks/ metathesis is "Manx", from Old Norse
> "Mansk".
This "-sk" suffix looks a lot like the Norse version of English "-ish"; is
it? (English /S/ was originally /sk/.) If so, that makes "Manx" another
entry on the list of words with a hidden "-ish", along with "French",
"Welsh", "Scotch", and "Dutch".
-Aaron J. Dinkin
Dr. Whom
Aaron J. Dinkin
[regarding metathesis:]
> Is "restaurant" another example? What I usually hear sounds more like
> "restaraunt".
I used to think so, but now I think my perception was funneled through one
or two levels of "short o" confusion. I would expect the French "-ant" to
appear in English as either "ah" or "short o"; indeed, for most US
speakers these are the same. I heard it from such speakers as "short o",
and, since for me "short o" and "aw" are the same, I associated this vowel
with the spelling <au> of the previous syllable.
Are you a CIC speaker ("cot" is "caught")?
Aaron J. Dinkin
> And sometimes it's done by People Who Should Know Better. Britain's
> favourite cook (as opposed to chef) is Delia Smith, who often includes
> "basalmic vinegar" in her dishes.
How's this pronounced? Ba-/s&l/-mic? Ba-/sOl/-mic?
My father pronounces "balsamic [vinegar]" bal-/sE/-mic, rhyming with
"polemic".
Matti Lamprhey
> Matti Lamprhey <matti-...@totally-official.com> wrote:
>
> > And sometimes it's done by People Who Should Know Better. Britain's
> > favourite cook (as opposed to chef) is Delia Smith, who often includes
> > "basalmic vinegar" in her dishes.
>
> How's this pronounced? Ba-/s&l/-mic? Ba-/sOl/-mic?
A bit like "That's *all*, folks". Mutatis mutandis, natch.
> My father pronounces "balsamic [vinegar]" bal-/sE/-mic, rhyming with
> "polemic".
I do hope he does it in order to annoy people.
Matti
Edward
> On Thu, 19 Sep 2002 19:06:03 -0400, Robert Lieblich
> <Robert....@Verizon.net> wrote:
>
> >Edward wrote:
> >
> >[ ... ]
> >
> >> Firstly, scholarly or not, common sense shows us that to pronounce
> >> "nuclear" as "nucular" is simply ignorant.
>
> Ignorant pronunciation. That's a good one.
There is in the UK a similar metathesis, the pronunciation of
"burglary" as "burglery". This is mostly perpetrated by the
perpetrators (of burglary)themselves, and is a pretty good marker for
someone, if not uneducated, then either ill-educated or incompletely
educated. I would aver that the same holds true for "nucular". If
God had meant us to pronounce it "nucular", then that is how it would
be spelt.
Actually, I reckon this whole business would not have occurred had,
for instance, Rumsfeld or practically anyone else uttered these three
syllables. It was the utterer himself, widely regarded here and
elsewhere as pig ignorant, who caused this eruption of
pronuncifebrility.
> >Yeah, that last sentence needs editing. "Nauseatingly ugly" is a
> >bit much, however. The Official AUE Standards of Ugliness are far
> >more exacting than that.
>
> How so? I rather like "Nauseatingly ugly" and might even give it the
> Reader's Digest's Toward More Picturesque Speech award, were I editor.
>
How very kind of you.
Edward
dcw
Edward <teddy...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>There is in the UK a similar metathesis, the pronunciation of
>"burglary" as "burglery".
What's metathetical about that? They both sound pretty much the
same anyway.
By the way, when I was very young I pronounced "circular" as
"circlear", the opposite metathesis to "nucular".
David
Aaron J. Dinkin
> In article <25080b60.0209...@posting.google.com>,
> Edward <teddy...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>There is in the UK a similar metathesis, the pronunciation of
>>"burglary" as "burglery".
>
> What's metathetical about that? They both sound pretty much the
> same anyway.
I think Edward intended the spelling "burglery" to indicate the
pronunciation burg-/@l/-ry, rather than the standard burg-/l@/-ry.
Ben Zimmer
"Aaron J. Dinkin" wrote:
>
> On Wed, 18 Sep 2002 22:11:34 -0700, Ben Zimmer <bgzi...@midway.uchicago.edu> wrote:
>
> > Another case of the /sk/~/ks/ metathesis is "Manx", from Old Norse
> > "Mansk".
Sorry, that should read "Manskr" (which survived in Middle English as
"Manisk(e)").
> This "-sk" suffix looks a lot like the Norse version of English "-ish"; is
> it? (English /S/ was originally /sk/.) If so, that makes "Manx" another
> entry on the list of words with a hidden "-ish", along with "French",
> "Welsh", "Scotch", and "Dutch".
Yes, "-ish" (< OE "-isc") is cognate with Old Norse "-(i)skr". Forms
similar to "Manskr" in Old Norse are "Danskr" (Danish), "Finnskr"
(Finnish), "Írskr" (Irish), "Saxneskr" (Saxon), "Valskr" (Gaulish,
French), etc.
dcw
That would make sense -- like "burgle" + "-ry". I didn't think
of that possibility, because I don't think I've ever heard that
pronunciation.
David
Donna Richoux
> In article <oNHj9.45770$gA4.7729@sccrnsc02>,
> Aaron J. Dinkin <a...@post.harvard.edu> wrote:
> >On Mon, 23 Sep 02 14:42:18 GMT, dcw <D.C....@ukc.ac.uk> wrote:
> >
> >> In article <25080b60.0209...@posting.google.com>,
> >> Edward <teddy...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>>There is in the UK a similar metathesis, the pronunciation of
> >>>"burglary" as "burglery".
> >>
> >> What's metathetical about that? They both sound pretty much the
> >> same anyway.
> >
> >I think Edward intended the spelling "burglery" to indicate the
> >pronunciation burg-/@l/-ry, rather than the standard burg-/l@/-ry.
>
> That would make sense -- like "burgle" + "-ry". I didn't think
> of that possibility, because I don't think I've ever heard that
> pronunciation.
Still and all, we are left with the question "what's metathetical about
that?" The difference between bur-gla-ry and bur-gl-ry is just a
question of *leaving out* a sound, not switching two sounds.
I am reminded of the pronunciations "jewelry" and "julery." People think
the second has mistakenly switched sounds, but I think they are both
pronunciations of the same historical root "jewellery."
Jewelry -- drops the last e of "jewellery".
Julery -- drops the second e to make "jewl", and finishes "ery".
--
Best -- Donna Richoux
Donna Richoux
> "Tony Cooper" <tony_co...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:amea80$4u2cr$1...@ID-113505.news.dfncis.de...
>
> > I met many
> > native Missourians and never did figure out if it's "Mis-oo-ri" or
> > "Mizzourah". Both pronunciations are heard frequently.
>
> According to my wife, a native Missourian, the pronunciation varies by
> location. Those living in the western part of the state favor the "ah"
> ending; those in the east favor the "ee" ending.
That's odd. When I lived there, everything pointed to it being that the
north of the State said Mi-ZUR-ree and the south part of the state said
Mi-ZUR-ruh.
Maybe the important difference was between the northwest and southeast
corners.
> Sorry, I haven't quite figured out the ASCII IPA notation yet.
Probably something like |mI'z@r i| and |mI'z@r @| but as I recall,
there's two ways to indicate the "ur as in turn" vowel. This one makes
more sense for my (rhotic) accent, I think.
What I don't know is whether Tony's version was meant to indicate that
the first two syllables differed as well as the last.
--
Best -- Donna Richoux
An American living in the Netherlands
Mike Lyle
peddlerize (no, certainly not pedlarize)?
Having touched on one pet peeve, why don't people who say "burgular"
seem to say "fiddaler" and "tumbaler"? But actually I suppose they do.
These consonant clusters are tricky buggerizers.
Many Br people say "Humty-Dumty" (actually, I suspect I do, too);
while some German people, I seem vaguely to remember, say "ampt"
instead of "amt". If my memory is right, why is one version "lazy"
speech in one country and the other in another?
Mike.
Jonathan Jordan
"Donna Richoux" <tr...@euronet.nl> wrote in message
news:1fj1j49.1b3wxk214gsgcfN%tr...@euronet.nl...
> dcw <D.C....@ukc.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> > In article <oNHj9.45770$gA4.7729@sccrnsc02>,
> > Aaron J. Dinkin <a...@post.harvard.edu> wrote:
> > >On Mon, 23 Sep 02 14:42:18 GMT, dcw <D.C....@ukc.ac.uk> wrote:
> > >
> > >> In article <25080b60.0209...@posting.google.com>,
> > >> Edward <teddy...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > >>
> > >>>There is in the UK a similar metathesis, the pronunciation of
> > >>>"burglary" as "burglery".
> > >>
> > >> What's metathetical about that? They both sound pretty much
the
> > >> same anyway.
> > >
> > >I think Edward intended the spelling "burglery" to indicate the
> > >pronunciation burg-/@l/-ry, rather than the standard
burg-/l@/-ry.
> >
> > That would make sense -- like "burgle" + "-ry". I didn't think
> > of that possibility, because I don't think I've ever heard that
> > pronunciation.
>
> Still and all, we are left with the question "what's metathetical
about
> that?" The difference between bur-gla-ry and bur-gl-ry is just a
> question of *leaving out* a sound, not switching two sounds.
>
Burglary /'bVrgl@rI/
"burgle-ry" /'bVrg@lrI/.
The /l/ and /@/ seem to have swapped places to me. I know the /@l/ in
"burgle" is likely to be realised as a syllabic [l], but I still feel
it to be /@l/.
Jonathan
Edward
reserve. He serves, as you might imagine, with little distinction.
At his graduation, his commanding officer says something like
"Simpson, as you have experience in a nuclear power plant, you can
serve on a submarine", to which Homer replies:
"It's pronounced 'nucular, nucular"
I think that says it all, don't you? Bush and Homer intellectually
well matched.
Edward
Robert Lieblich <Robert....@Verizon.net> wrote in message news:<3D890935...@Verizon.net>...
Raymond S. Wise
> In "The Simpsons" last night, Homer loses his job and joins the naval
> reserve. He serves, as you might imagine, with little distinction.
> At his graduation, his commanding officer says something like
> "Simpson, as you have experience in a nuclear power plant, you can
> serve on a submarine", to which Homer replies:
> "It's pronounced 'nucular, nucular"
>
> I think that says it all, don't you? Bush and Homer intellectually
> well matched.
>
> Edward
>
Homer's problem is that he is unaware of the concept of "equal variants."
I recently saw Bush make reference to "an enemy that could care less about
regulations." I have no problem with either "nucular" or with "could care
less"--in fact I use the latter.
Jonathan Jordan
>
>
> Homer's problem is that he is unaware of the concept of "equal
variants."
>
> I recently saw Bush make reference to "an enemy that could care less
about
> regulations." I have no problem with either "nucular" or with "could
care
> less"--in fact I use the latter.
>
(and I'm not the only one) do have a problem with George W Bush, and I
suspect this prejudices people against pronunciations associated with
him.
I think it is usually the case that prejudice against particular
pronunciations (and probably other usages as well) derives from
prejudice against the groups which use them, rather than any other
reason. I don't know enough about the distribution of pronunciations
of "nuclear" in the US to know how this applies to that, but it's
almost always /'njuklir/ or similar in Britain.
Jonathan
tomca...@yanospamhoo.com
> That's odd. When I lived there, everything pointed to it being that the
> north of the State said Mi-ZUR-ree and the south part of the state said
> Mi-ZUR-ruh.
I was listening to a "Car Talk" CD, and one of the callers said it was
pronounced "Misery". Another caller said he was from L.A. (Lower Alabama).
Richard Fontana
On Fri, 27 Sep 2002, Jonathan Jordan wrote:
> I think it is usually the case that prejudice against particular
> pronunciations (and probably other usages as well) derives from
> prejudice against the groups which use them, rather than any other
> reason. I don't know enough about the distribution of pronunciations
> of "nuclear" in the US to know how this applies to that, but it's
> almost always /'njuklir/ or similar in Britain.
J.C. Wells has on his web site something about an increase in usage of the
"nucular" pronunciation in Britain among younger speakers, IIRC.
Mike Lyle
> Donna Richoux <tr...@euronet.nl> wrote:
>
> > That's odd. When I lived there, everything pointed to it being that the
> > north of the State said Mi-ZUR-ree and the south part of the state said
> > Mi-ZUR-ruh.
>
> I was listening to a "Car Talk" CD, and one of the callers said it was
So why don't we Compromise?
Mike.
Mike Lyle
>
> I recently saw Bush make reference to "an enemy that could care less about
> regulations." I have no problem with either "nucular" or with "could care
> less"--in fact I use the latter.
Which is a trahison des clercs. Every time you use it you're telling
your listeners that it doesn't matter what they say as long as they
themselves know what they mean; even, grotesquely, that when one feels
like it the presence of "not" has the same significance as its
absence.
What you perhaps don't tell them is that you have a highly
sophisticated grasp of nuance, and know when you're playing about with
the common code. If one of your less well-trained listeners then goes
on to make himself look stupid in an important situation, maybe even
miss out on a much-needed job, it won't affect you. And I don't for a
moment believe you care that little about what happens to other
people.
Mike.
Anno Siegel
> Many Br people say "Humty-Dumty" (actually, I suspect I do, too);
> while some German people, I seem vaguely to remember, say "ampt"
> instead of "amt". If my memory is right, why is one version "lazy"
> speech in one country and the other in another?
The dialectal pronunciation of "Amt" as "Ampt" exists in German, but it
can be characterized as lazy only in the sense of being slow to follow
change. "Ampt", or more frequently "Ambt" is the older form, and
predecessors have had the bilabial through ages. The laziness is with
modern German, which has dropped the "b" rather recently.
Anno
Pat Durkin
"Richard Fontana" <rfon...@mail.wesleyan.edu> wrote in message
news:Pine.GSO.3.95.102092...@facstaff.wesleyan.edu...
I swear I heard Tony Blair say "nucular", just the other day.
Last week on NPR there was an interview with (Alec?) Standish, of Jane's
Intelligence Review. In about 3 answers to the questions put to him he
used "nucular" at least 4 times. The interviewer then switched to a
speaker from Jane's World Armies, and neither variant was used.
Jonathan Jordan
"Richard Fontana" <rfon...@mail.wesleyan.edu> wrote in message
news:Pine.GSO.3.95.102092...@facstaff.wesleyan.edu...
>
http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/lpd98/sld005.htm
The figure for "nucular" is only 14% for those born after 1973, and I
don't recall hearing it myself (and I was born after 1973), but it
does appear to be spreading to Britain. It is undoubtably stigmatised
though (see the title of the slide!) and I would think that its
association with Bush is not going to change this.
Jonathan
M.J.Powell
<p...@hotmail.com> writes
>
>"Richard Fontana" <rfon...@mail.wesleyan.edu> wrote in message
>news:Pine.GSO.3.95.102092...@facstaff.wesleyan.edu...
>>
>> On Fri, 27 Sep 2002, Jonathan Jordan wrote:
>>
>> > I think it is usually the case that prejudice against particular
>> > pronunciations (and probably other usages as well) derives from
>> > prejudice against the groups which use them, rather than any other
>> > reason. I don't know enough about the distribution of
>pronunciations
>> > of "nuclear" in the US to know how this applies to that, but it's
>> > almost always /'njuklir/ or similar in Britain.
>>
>> J.C. Wells has on his web site something about an increase in usage of
>the
>> "nucular" pronunciation in Britain among younger speakers, IIRC.
>
>I swear I heard Tony Blair say "nucular", just the other day.
I did too! I couldn't believe it!
Mike
--
M.J.Powell
Pat Durkin
"M.J.Powell" <mi...@pickmere.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:BTpieBAP...@pickmere.demon.co.uk...
Vindicated, by gum. I do think he's caught it, don't you?
And he said it in the House of Commons, he did. Yes, he did.
Richard Fontana
On Mon, 30 Sep 2002, Jonathan Jordan wrote:
> "Richard Fontana" <rfon...@mail.wesleyan.edu> wrote in message
> news:Pine.GSO.3.95.102092...@facstaff.wesleyan.edu...
> > J.C. Wells has on his web site something about an increase in usage
> of the
> > "nucular" pronunciation in Britain among younger speakers, IIRC.
> >
> You're right:
> http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/lpd98/sld005.htm
>
> The figure for "nucular" is only 14% for those born after 1973, and I
> don't recall hearing it myself (and I was born after 1973), but it
> does appear to be spreading to Britain. It is undoubtably stigmatised
> though (see the title of the slide!) and I would think that its
> association with Bush is not going to change this.
I never thought about this before, but it occurs to me that in my
experience the "nucular" pronunciation in the US seems to be an older
generation phenomenon -- it strikes me that I wouldn't expect to hear the
pronunciation used by people in my age group or younger (that is, AmE
speakers born at the end of the Sixties or later). Just about anyone I
can think of who says "nucular" is a Baby Boomer or older. But that might
have more to do with differences between the sort of people I've heard
speak in the one class and the people I've heard speak in the other.
I've also thought that perhaps "nucular" is rare among speakers of East
Coast accents -- for example, I don't think I've ever heard a New York
city speaker of whatever age or accent say "nucular", and the "nucular"
pronunciation seems to me to be very much an inland, maybe vaguely
midlandish sort of thing, like "warsh". Traditions of East Coast urban
non-rhoticism may have something to do with this, or maybe not.
I just recalled a day in my tenth grade social studies class in high
school where my teacher, a Baby Boomer who had been raised in California,
was defending the "nucular" pronunciation as a natural pronunciation of
"nuclear" by many Americans. I think his argument was something like that
it was the result of realizing the /i/ of "nuclear" with an [E] (he didn't
put it that way, of course), and he may have even been saying that those
of us who hear it as "nucular" were maybe mishearing an actual [nuklER].
Not very convincing, but the interesting thing is that he was sensitive
about it. I think the students in the class must have expressed the
opinion that the "nucular" pronunciation was outrageous. Incidentally,
this teacher's accent was very similar to that of Jack Kemp, another
Californian-raised person I believe.
M.J.Powell
<p...@hotmail.com> writes
>
>"M.J.Powell" <mi...@pickmere.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
>news:BTpieBAP...@pickmere.demon.co.uk...
>> In article <upd1fs4...@corp.supernews.com>, Pat Durkin
>> <p...@hotmail.com> writes
>> >
>> >"Richard Fontana" <rfon...@mail.wesleyan.edu> wrote in message
>>
>>news:Pine.GSO.3.95.102092...@facstaff.wesleyan.edu...
>> >>
>> >> On Fri, 27 Sep 2002, Jonathan Jordan wrote:
>> >>
>> >> > I think it is usually the case that prejudice against particular
>> >> > pronunciations (and probably other usages as well) derives from
>> >> > prejudice against the groups which use them, rather than any
>other
>> >> > reason. I don't know enough about the distribution of
>> >pronunciations
>> >> > of "nuclear" in the US to know how this applies to that, but it's
>> >> > almost always /'njuklir/ or similar in Britain.
>> >>
>> >> J.C. Wells has on his web site something about an increase in usage
>of
>> >the
>> >> "nucular" pronunciation in Britain among younger speakers, IIRC.
>> >
>> >I swear I heard Tony Blair say "nucular", just the other day.
>>
>> I did too! I couldn't believe it!
>>
>
>Vindicated, by gum. I do think he's caught it, don't you?
>And he said it in the House of Commons, he did. Yes, he did.
I wonder what Hansard will print.
Mike
--
M.J.Powell
Mike Lyle
Mike.
Raymond S. Wise
The term "trahison des clercs" comes from a book by Julien Benda. The
following is from a bookseller's page:
From
http://www.polybiblio.com/mrtbksla/10480.html
[quote]
Benda, Julien. La Trahison des Clercs. [Series: Les Cahiers Verts,
publiée sous la direction de Daniel Halévy, [No.] 6. Paris: Bernard
Grasset, 1927
[...]
First edition., A vigorous defender of reason and the intellect
against Romanticism and the cult of emotion, Benda argued that the
intellect should be devoted to universal spiritual values and
idealistic, humanitarian causes. He denounced those intellectuals or
"clercs" who used their intellect for material, racial, or political
ends., "One of the major events in political thought between the two
wars" (Printing and the Mind of Man 419).
[end quote]
The expression as defined by a modern reference work, *The Oxford
English Reference Dictionary," (C) 1996 by Oxford University Press:
From
http://www.xrefer.com/entry/429996
[quote]
trahison des clercs n.
the betrayal of standards, scholarship, etc., by intellectuals. [F,
title of a book by Julien Benda(1927)]
[end quote]
Neither of those would seem to apply to me. On the contrary, to
abandon "could care less" because prescriptivists do not like it would
be to abandon standards and scholarship, since prescriptivist
standards are objectively false and their scholarship is objectively
defective.
You say that "If one of your less well-trained listeners then goes on
to make himself look stupid in an important situation, maybe even miss
out on a much-needed job, it won't affect you. And I don't for a
moment believe you care that little about what happens to other
people." I have been against prejudice all my life, and prescriptivism
is a particulary repellent form of prejudice precisely because it is
anti-scholarship, indeed, anti-science--it is, as I have pointed out
previously, very much akin to pseudoscience. I believe in fighting
such prejudice, not bowing down to it. However, I also believe in
being careful in which fights to pick, and would advise--and have
advised--others to be careful also.
Employers believe all sorts of crazy things. To what extent you should
go along with them is a judgment call.
Javi
> mike_l...@yahoo.co.uk (Mike Lyle) wrote in message
> news:<3fa4d950.02092...@posting.google.com>...
>> "Raymond S. Wise" <illinoi...@mninter.net> wrote in message
>> news:<up87h07...@corp.supernews.com>... [...]
>>>
>>> I recently saw Bush make reference to "an enemy that could care
>>> less about regulations." I have no problem with either "nucular" or
>>> with "could care less"--in fact I use the latter.
>>
>> Which is a trahison des clercs. Every time you use it you're telling
>> your listeners that it doesn't matter what they say as long as they
>> themselves know what they mean; even, grotesquely, that when one
>> feels like it the presence of "not" has the same significance as its
>> absence.
Was Descartes who wrote something like "when a lady says 'no', she means
'perhaps'; when she says 'perhaps', she means 'yes', and if she says 'yes',
then she is not a lady; when a diplomat says 'yes', he means 'perhaps'; when
he says 'perhaps', he means 'no', and if he says 'no', then he is not a
diplomat"?
I remember having read it in one of my books on pragmatics, or in a webpage
dealing with pragmatics, but I'm not sure.
- snip -
--
Best regards
Javi
"There are no grades of vanity, there are only grades of ability in
concealing it."
- Mark Twain -
Mike Lyle
[...]
> > Which is a trahison des clercs. [...]
[Valuable and much-appreciated stuff I didn't know -- thanks --
snipped.]
>
> trahison des clercs n.
>
> the betrayal of standards, scholarship, etc., by intellectuals. [F,
> title of a book by Julien Benda(1927)]
>
> [end quote]
>
>
> Neither of those would seem to apply to me. On the contrary, to
> abandon "could care less" because prescriptivists do not like it would
> be to abandon standards and scholarship, since prescriptivist
> standards are objectively false and their scholarship is objectively
> defective.
I often remark that I know of no living or recently dead
prescriptivists -- or, if they exist, none with any significant
adverse influence on our lives and thought. This is a good moment to
let me have some examples to the contrary.
There are, though, plenty of people who don't like unintentionally
ambiguous English style; some of these are, I grant, better-informed
than others.
> You say that "If one of your less well-trained listeners then goes on
> to make himself look stupid in an important situation, maybe even miss
> out on a much-needed job, it won't affect you. And I don't for a
> moment believe you care that little about what happens to other
> people." I have been against prejudice all my life, and prescriptivism
> is a particulary repellent form of prejudice precisely because it is
> anti-scholarship, indeed, anti-science--it is, as I have pointed out
> previously, very much akin to pseudoscience. I believe in fighting
> such prejudice, not bowing down to it. However, I also believe in
> being careful in which fights to pick, and would advise--and have
> advised--others to be careful also.
So why imply that some of your allies are in the camp of the enemy?
> Employers believe all sorts of crazy things. To what extent you should
> go along with them is a judgment call.
Of course: let's help people make the most effective judgements. Not
give the unwary the impression that no judgement needs to be made.
Mike.
Raymond S. Wise
news:3fa4d950.02100...@posting.google.com...
> mpl...@my-deja.com (Raymond S. Wise) wrote in message
news:<47dd044c.02100...@posting.google.com>...
> > mike_l...@yahoo.co.uk (Mike Lyle) wrote in message
news:<3fa4d950.02092...@posting.google.com>...
>
> [...]
> > > Which is a trahison des clercs. [...]
>
> [Valuable and much-appreciated stuff I didn't know -- thanks --
> snipped.]
> >
> > trahison des clercs n.
> >
> > the betrayal of standards, scholarship, etc., by intellectuals. [F,
> > title of a book by Julien Benda(1927)]
> >
> > [end quote]
> >
> >
> > Neither of those would seem to apply to me. On the contrary, to
> > abandon "could care less" because prescriptivists do not like it would
> > be to abandon standards and scholarship, since prescriptivist
> > standards are objectively false and their scholarship is objectively
> > defective.
>
> I often remark that I know of no living or recently dead
> prescriptivists -- or, if they exist, none with any significant
> adverse influence on our lives and thought. This is a good moment to
> let me have some examples to the contrary.
>
You are one, as are some other people who regularly post to this newsgroup.
You know this, you just don't like being called a prescriptivist. Attempting
to use etymology to solve a usage dispute, a procedure you favor, is a
canonical example of prescriptivism.
> There are, though, plenty of people who don't like unintentionally
> ambiguous English style; some of these are, I grant, better-informed
> than others.
>
I take it that this is a reference to "could care less." There is not the
slightest ambiguity in that idiom *when used among speakers of American
English.* It puzzles speakers of British English and other dialects outside
America, but they should be able to work out its meaning from the context
(as in the case of recent comment by President Bush which I quoted)--and
indeed, Steve Hayes, from South Africa, has reported having done just that.
> > You say that "If one of your less well-trained listeners then goes on
> > to make himself look stupid in an important situation, maybe even miss
> > out on a much-needed job, it won't affect you. And I don't for a
> > moment believe you care that little about what happens to other
> > people." I have been against prejudice all my life, and prescriptivism
> > is a particulary repellent form of prejudice precisely because it is
> > anti-scholarship, indeed, anti-science--it is, as I have pointed out
> > previously, very much akin to pseudoscience. I believe in fighting
> > such prejudice, not bowing down to it. However, I also believe in
> > being careful in which fights to pick, and would advise--and have
> > advised--others to be careful also.
>
> So why imply that some of your allies are in the camp of the enemy?
>
Please explain what you intend that sentence to mean.
> > Employers believe all sorts of crazy things. To what extent you should
> > go along with them is a judgment call.
>
> Of course: let's help people make the most effective judgements. Not
> give the unwary the impression that no judgement needs to be made.
>
> Mike.
This is a bit mysterious too. That an individual must make choices about
what usages to adopt or abandon is obvious to me. Someone who is unaware of
such a thing is not going to be either helped or hindered in the slightest
by any usage which I myself use, and it would not occur to me to inform them
about this fact of linguistic reality unless the subject were somehow to
come up in conversation.
Mike Lyle
> > I often remark that I know of no living or recently dead
> > prescriptivists -- or, if they exist, none with any significant
> > adverse influence on our lives and thought. This is a good moment to
> > let me have some examples to the contrary.
> >
>
>
> You are one, as are some other people who regularly post to this newsgroup.
> You know this, you just don't like being called a prescriptivist. Attempting
> to use etymology to solve a usage dispute, a procedure you favor, is a
> canonical example of prescriptivism.
Oh well, all right then. I see it's a matter of definition, and you do
the defining. You refer to a canon: I didn't know that such a canon
even existed, and I'd like to know who specified it. I don't believe
in canons: I think these matters vary from time to time and from place
to place, but if you want to be authoritarian all I can do is argue
till there's a midnight knock on the door. In another context, I'd
call that McCarthyism or Stalinism. By using the word you inevitably
imply that I disagree with the principles of, e.g., the OED that if a
word or structure is used in a particular way it should be explained
according to that particular way. That would be wrong. Perhaps you
haven't chosen to notice what I say. You seem to be denying my right
to comment.
I can handle being called an anything-you-like -ist: what I don't
tolerate is the tendency to use X-ist as a discreet way of saying "bad
person". You must have noticed that on AUE you are the only one who
uses or implies "pre-" or
"de-" "scriptivist" and who actually replies (in interesting and
challenging detail, if I may say so) when challenged: the others just
ring the doorbell and run for it.
It seems to me that some teacher has got his centuries mixed up, and
thinks that there is a clear and present danger that language
scholarship may be infected by people who don't know the difference
between "is" and "ought", and the more idiotic of his students have
followed it without thinking. Well, I can confidently report that for
the rest of us the eighteenth century has finally drawn to a close.
>
>
> > There are, though, plenty of people who don't like unintentionally
> > ambiguous English style; some of these are, I grant, better-informed
> > than others.
> >
>
>
> I take it that this is a reference to "could care less." There is not the
> slightest ambiguity in that idiom *when used among speakers of American
> English.* It puzzles speakers of British English and other dialects outside
> America, but they should be able to work out its meaning from the context
> (as in the case of recent comment by President Bush which I quoted)--and
> indeed, Steve Hayes, from South Africa, has reported having done just that.
OK, "ought". But it's still a silly usage. Where I come from, "not"
means "not". If we underprivileged minorities choose to deride, I
imagine descriptive grammarians will note the fact. I'm sure you're
not saying we're "wrong".
>
>
> > > You say that "If one of your less well-trained listeners then goes on
> > > to make himself look stupid in an important situation, maybe even miss
> > > out on a much-needed job, it won't affect you. And I don't for a
> > > moment believe you care that little about what happens to other
> > > people." I have been against prejudice all my life, and prescriptivism
> > > is a particulary repellent form of prejudice precisely because it is
> > > anti-scholarship, indeed, anti-science--it is, as I have pointed out
> > > previously, very much akin to pseudoscience. I believe in fighting
> > > such prejudice, not bowing down to it. However, I also believe in
> > > being careful in which fights to pick, and would advise--and have
> > > advised--others to be careful also.
> >
> > So why imply that some of your allies are in the camp of the enemy?
> >
>
>
> Please explain what you intend that sentence to mean.
I want everybody to have a fair crack of the whip, regardless of
accidents of birth. I want the people in the ghetto to be able to make
their own realistic decisions about whether to stay there or go
somewhere else. When I say I want them to have the linguistic means,
you explicitly say I'm "anti-scientific". I don't believe you want to
preserve the present situation, so I have to conclude that you're
misguided -- even perhaps dangerously so.
I used to know somebody on a committee which decided which
pre-independence Nigerians should get British government grants to go
for overseas training; he said he always approved applications for
medical training, but spoke against engineering applicants because
"they haven't got the aptitude". Somebody else told me Africans
couldn't safely play rugby because their stomach muscles were too
weak.
So don't give me any comfortable white middle-class nonsense about
educated standard English -- and its debates -- being too erudite for
the general public. It's perfectly simple, and thousands of people out
there are ready to give guidance.
>
> > > Employers believe all sorts of crazy things. To what extent you should
> > > go along with them is a judgment call.
> >
> > Of course: let's help people make the most effective judgements. Not
> > give the unwary the impression that no judgement needs to be made.
> >
> > Mike.
>
>
> This is a bit mysterious too. That an individual must make choices about
> what usages to adopt or abandon is obvious to me. Someone who is unaware of
> such a thing is not going to be either helped or hindered in the slightest
> by any usage which I myself use, and it would not occur to me to inform them
> about this fact of linguistic reality unless the subject were somehow to
> come up in conversation.
That seems like trahison des clercs again. Which side are you on? From
my political perspective, there's a battle going on here (even though
some of the participants don't realise). What you say could make a
life-changing difference.
Mike.
Raymond S. Wise
It's a matter of definition, but I'm not the one doing the defining. The
definitions I use are those which are used by scholars who study the history
and present reality of usage disputes. *Others* have tried to redefine the
words, having prescriptivists mean "someone, anyone, who writes rules about
language" (which appears to be an example of the etymological fallacy) and
trying to make descriptive usage writers into some kind of prescriptivist,
but this does not reflect actual usage and is thus illegitimate. Others
attempt to limit "descriptivists" to a particular subset of linguists, a
branch which started in the 20th century. That is a legitimate use of the
word, but a specialized one, and it is inappropriate when applied to usage
disputes, since in the usage-dispute sense, there were descriptivists before
the 20th century, including the founders of the OED in the 19th century and
Joseph Priestley in the 18th century.
The use of "canonical" is an exaggeration for effect: It was my way of
saying that there are certain things which invariably mark a person as being
a prescriptivist. The regulars who post to this newsgroup could no doubt
rattle off a list of such things.
> >
> >
> > > There are, though, plenty of people who don't like unintentionally
> > > ambiguous English style; some of these are, I grant, better-informed
> > > than others.
> > >
> >
> >
> > I take it that this is a reference to "could care less." There is not
the
> > slightest ambiguity in that idiom *when used among speakers of American
> > English.* It puzzles speakers of British English and other dialects
outside
> > America, but they should be able to work out its meaning from the
context
> > (as in the case of recent comment by President Bush which I quoted)--and
> > indeed, Steve Hayes, from South Africa, has reported having done just
that.
>
> OK, "ought". But it's still a silly usage. Where I come from, "not"
> means "not". If we underprivileged minorities choose to deride, I
> imagine descriptive grammarians will note the fact. I'm sure you're
> not saying we're "wrong".
The idiom "could care less" is used in the same fashion as "could not care
less," but that says nothing about what the word "not" means. To analyze an
idiom word for word is of course a pointless activity (except when
discussing questions of etymology rather than usage).
I once read an article by a prescriptivist who complained that a complete
description of a usage would include prescriptivist rules about that usage.
I agreed with him completely. It's just a matter of the level of detail one
is at liberty to include in the project in question. Merriam-Webster's
Collegiate and the American Heritage Dictionary, when discussing usage
questions, do in fact go into some detail about prescriptivist theories
concerning a given usage, and both companies have usage books which go into
even greater detail. Note that a truly complete description of a word,
including prescriptivist opinion, would also necessarily show where the
prescriptivists' logic or scholarship was faulty (and some of that is indeed
shown in the usage books mentioned).
I guess you haven't been around this group long enough to realize that I am
a very strong advocate of teaching all children the standard dialect of the
country in which they live. I am also a strong advocate of code-switching
(also called "bidialectism" and "diglossia"). Research has shown that
children are more successful in learning the standard dialect when their
native dialect is respected rather than disparaged.
"Anti-scientific" was used because where prescriptivists differ from
descriptivists, their scholarship is faulty. They either make false
statements about a usage--saying, for example, that "orientate" is a
back-formation from "orientation"--or they insist that the usage they
promote represents the only standard English version of that usage when
research shows that in fact it does not, or their logic is faulty, as when
they attempt to apply the logic of arithmetic to the double negative.
> > > > Employers believe all sorts of crazy things. To what extent you
should
> > > > go along with them is a judgment call.
> > >
> > > Of course: let's help people make the most effective judgements. Not
> > > give the unwary the impression that no judgement needs to be made.
> > >
> > > Mike.
> >
> >
> > This is a bit mysterious too. That an individual must make choices about
> > what usages to adopt or abandon is obvious to me. Someone who is unaware
of
> > such a thing is not going to be either helped or hindered in the
slightest
> > by any usage which I myself use, and it would not occur to me to inform
them
> > about this fact of linguistic reality unless the subject were somehow to
> > come up in conversation.
>
> That seems like trahison des clercs again. Which side are you on? From
> my political perspective, there's a battle going on here (even though
> some of the participants don't realise). What you say could make a
> life-changing difference.
>
> Mike.
I still find this puzzling. When I speak, I speak informal Standard English.
I have had little or no occasion to speak formal Standard English. I
occasionally use slang, of course, but I if I were teaching an English class
I certainly wouldn't use it in the informal Standard English I would use in
such a class. When I have a question about whether a given use is standard
of not, I check a dictionary. All current major dictionaries are
descriptivist, thus they show the actual standard, not some fantasy standard
of prescriptivists. For what it's worth, Merriam-Webster's Collegiate shows
"could care less" as standard usage.
I expect you and I agree that all students should be taught to speak and
write the standard dialect of the country in which they live. But we
disagree about much else, and I doubt that you accept the standard dialect
as presented in current dictionaries.
Don Phillipson
> Oh well, all right then. I see it's a matter of definition, and you do
> the defining. You refer to a canon: I didn't know that such a canon
> even existed, and I'd like to know who specified it. I don't believe
> in canons: I think these matters vary from time to time and from place
> . . .
> So don't give me any comfortable white middle-class nonsense about
> educated standard English -- and its debates -- being too erudite for
> the general public. It's perfectly simple, and thousands of people out
> there are ready to give guidance.
This seems contradictory.
Should we accept advice about language from
everyone, or only those who cite canonical
usage, or only those who repudiate canons?
How can we tell the difference?
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs (Ottawa, Canada)
dphil...@trytel.com.com.com.less2
Mike Lyle
Yes, of course it seems contradictory: that's in the nature of the
subject.
To your questions: one can never be quite sure, but you're well-enough
trained to do your own navigation. Some people aren't, so those
responsible for education or public print have to do a lot of the
juggling for them, or point out what the issues are.
Mike.
Mike Lyle
> "Mike Lyle" []
> > "Raymond S. Wise" []> [...][...]
> Attempting
> > > to use etymology to solve a usage dispute, a procedure you favor,
It's a procedure I'm ready to invoke where I think it's relevant and
helpful. That doesn't make it a procedure I "favor", even if I use it
more often than you would.
> > > is a canonical example of prescriptivism.
> >
> > Oh well, all right then. I see it's a matter of definition, and you do
> > the defining. You refer to a canon: I didn't know that such a canon
> > even existed, and I'd like to know who specified it. [...]
>
> It's a matter of definition, but I'm not the one doing the defining. The
> definitions I use are those which are used by scholars who [...]
I think I meant "collective you".
> *Others* have tried to redefine the
> words, having prescriptivists mean "someone, anyone, who writes rules about
> language" (which appears to be an example of the etymological fallacy)
[...]
> but this does not reflect actual usage and is thus illegitimate. [...]
But that is precisely the loose way in which it seems to be used by
many posters to this newsgroup; often with a strong implication of
some sort of inferiority to the speaker.
>
> The use of "canonical" is an exaggeration for effect: It was my way of
> saying that there are certain things which invariably mark a person as being
> a prescriptivist.
I knew that: I was merely being mildly mischievous, though I did have
a point to make. But I don't think it's true. Or if true, it would be
quite hard to assemble the evidence from even a large number of quick
answers to questions in a Usenet group.
> The regulars who post to this newsgroup could no doubt
> rattle off a list of such things.
(And few of them can manage a reply if challenged.)
> > > > There are, though, plenty of people who don't like unintentionally
> > > > ambiguous English style;[]
> > >
> > > I take it that this is a reference to "could care less." There is not
> > > the slightest ambiguity in that idiom *when used among speakers of
> > > American English.*[...]
> >
> > But it's still a silly usage. Where I come from, "not"
> > means "not". [...]
>
> The idiom "could care less" is used in the same fashion as "could not care
> less," but that says nothing about what the word "not" means. To analyze an
> idiom word for word is of course a pointless activity (except when
> discussing questions of etymology rather than usage).
But may be relevant when deciding whether or not to apply peer
pressure against a piece of usage: sometimes necessary when an agreed
code is unilaterally modified.
I wonder what you say when you actually *mean* "I could care less".
[...]
> > > > >I believe in fighting such [socio-linguistic--ML's word]prejudice, not > > > > >bowing down to it. [...]
> > > > So why imply that some of your allies are in the camp of the enemy?
> > > Please explain what you intend that sentence to mean.
> >
> > [...] I want the people in the ghetto to be able to make
> > their own realistic decisions about whether to stay there or go
> > somewhere else. When I say I want them to have the linguistic means,
> > you explicitly say I'm "anti-scientific". I don't believe you want to
> > preserve the present situation, [...]
> > So don't give me any comfortable white middle-class nonsense about
> > educated standard English -- and its debates -- being too erudite for
> > the general public. [...]
>
> I guess you haven't been around this group long enough to realize that I am
> a very strong advocate of teaching all children the standard dialect of the
> country in which they live. I am also a strong advocate of code-switching
> (also called "bidialectism" and "diglossia"). Research has shown that
> children are more successful in learning the standard dialect when their
> native dialect is respected rather than disparaged.
I thought that was now the orthodoxy (even if not widely-enough
practised); but I'm glad you agree with it.
>
> "Anti-scientific" was used because where prescriptivists differ from
> descriptivists, their scholarship is faulty.
I think my problem with that is that I still don't believe in the
existence of prescriptivists: you still appear to me to use the word
for people who make certain kinds of errors, rather than for people
who have some coherent and identifiable system of thought, while at
the same time implying strongly that such an "ideology" does exist and
does have adherents, that existence being proved by the existence of
the errors. This would be an intellectual perpetual motion machine.
>
> > > > > Employers believe all sorts of crazy things. To what extent you
> > > > > should go along with them is a judgment call.
> > > >
> > > > Of course: let's help people make the most effective judgements. Not
> > > > give the unwary the impression that no judgement needs to be made.
> > >
> > > This is a bit mysterious too. That an individual must make choices about
> > > what usages to adopt or abandon is obvious to me. Someone who is unaware
> > > of such a thing is not going to be either helped or hindered in the
> > > slightest by any usage which I myself use, and it would not occur to me
> > > to inform them about this fact of linguistic reality unless the subject
> > > were somehow to come up in conversation.
> > [...]there's a battle going on here (even though
> > some of the participants don't realise). What you say could make a
> > life-changing difference.
>
> I still find this puzzling. When I speak, I speak informal Standard English.
> I have had little or no occasion to speak formal Standard English. I
> occasionally use slang, of course, but I if I were teaching an English class
> I certainly wouldn't use it in the informal Standard English I would use in
> such a class.
(As it happens, I would!) But an important point arises here.
You constantly, as others have remarked, give the impression that for
everybody else "anything goes", and that if anybody doesn't like a
new, or non-standard, piece of usage, well, that's tough, and they're
a prescriptivist anyhow, and therefore anti-scientific and in error,
and that proves they're a prescriptivist, which proves they're
anti-scientific and in error. The same severity is not to be applied
to those who don't like an old, or "educated" standard alternative.
The above is not one of my attempts to leaven the lump with a reductio
ad absurdum: it's a description of the way your remarks actually do
sometimes appear. That's why I unfairly come to conclusions you in all
sincerity find puzzling.
> [...]All current major dictionaries are
> descriptivist, thus they show the actual standard, not some fantasy standard
> of prescriptivists.
It's this ideological-seeming "-ist" problem again. Dictionaries are
"-ive", and would otherwise be useless. If there was ever a battle, it
was won generations ago.
>
> I expect you and I agree that all students should be taught to speak and
> write the standard dialect of the country in which they live.
No doubt at all.
> But we
> disagree about much else, and I doubt that you accept the standard dialect
> as presented in current dictionaries.
I'm pretty sure I use it as a matter of course: it's what I get paid
for; I'm a bit slangy, I'll admit, but not obscurely so. I don't
really know what you mean, but if it's got anything to do with
"disinterested", I think there may be a trans-Atlantic difference in
weighting on that subject.
Mike.
Raymond S. Wise
news:ao72rd$8pf$1...@scotsman.ed.ac.uk...
> mike_l...@yahoo.co.uk (Mike Lyle) writes:
>
> >"Raymond S. Wise" <illinoi...@mninter.net> wrote in message
news:<uq9e1r1...@corp.supernews.com>...
> >> "Mike Lyle" []
> >> > "Raymond S. Wise" []
>
> >> > > to use etymology to solve a usage dispute, a procedure you favor,
>
> >It's a procedure I'm ready to invoke where I think it's relevant and
> >helpful. That doesn't make it a procedure I "favor", even if I use it
> >more often than you would.
>
> used, given the acceptance of certain prescriptivist assumptions such
> as that given a choice meanings derived from etymology should be
> preferred, then in that case etymoloby is relevant.
>
> If the dispute is about how a word *is* used, and therefore ought to
> be used by someone learning how to conform to existing usage, such as a
> foreginer learning English, then etymology is not (directly) relevant.
>
Agreed.
>
> >> > > is a canonical example of prescriptivism.
> >> >
> >> > Oh well, all right then. I see it's a matter of definition, and you
do
> >> > the defining. You refer to a canon: I didn't know that such a canon
> >> > even existed, and I'd like to know who specified it. [...]
> >>
> >> It's a matter of definition, but I'm not the one doing the defining.
The
> >> definitions I use are those which are used by scholars who [...]
>
> Prescriptivists don't have to agree about what they prescribe, they
> simply have to have opinions about proper usage which are derived from
> other criteria than usage, such as clarity, lack of ambiguity,
> maintaining useful distinctions of meaning, etc..
>
Agreed. Note, however, that they may in fact be objectively wrong about
matters of clarity, lack of ambiguity, and maintaining useful distinctions
in meaning. I mean by that that the assumptions, if put into practice, may
in fact *not* do what the prescriptivists believe they will do. I am all in
favor of reforming language--I myself have proposed some small reforms to
English and I am, by the way, an Esperantist, and Esperanto has as its basic
idea a very large reform indeed--but whatever reforms I might propose would
have to tested in the crucible of usage. If a so-called prescriptivist were
to be similarly modest, I would find it pointless to call him a
prescriptivist: he would be an open reformer, as opposed to a
crypto-reformer, which many prescriptivists are.
> >> > > > There are, though, plenty of people who don't like
unintentionally
> >> > > > ambiguous English style;[]
>
> >> > > I take it that this is a reference to "could care less." There is
not
> >> > > the slightest ambiguity in that idiom *when used among speakers of
> >> > > American English.*[...]
>
> >> > But it's still a silly usage. Where I come from, "not"
> >> > means "not". [...]
>
> >> The idiom "could care less" is used in the same fashion as "could not
care
> >> less," but that says nothing about what the word "not" means. To
analyze an
> >> idiom word for word is of course a pointless activity (except when
> >> discussing questions of etymology rather than usage).
>
> Some prescriptivists take the view that idioms whose meaning
> contradicts their literal grammatical meaning should be avoided,
> regardless of vulgar usage.
>
An argument which could not be more absurd when viewed in the light of
actual usage. Imagine trying to get rid of all such things in English, and,
while you're at it, the "illogical" etymological oddities as well, such as
the "dial" of a phone and the "dashboard" of a car. The Merriam-Webster and
American Heritage books of usage give plenty of examples of where
prescriptivists are inconsistent in such matters, using a "logical" argument
against one standard usage while not using the same argument against another
standard usage (because they like that latter usage, of course).
> >> "Anti-scientific" was used because where prescriptivists differ from
> >> descriptivists, their scholarship is faulty.
>
> Although common, this is a silly misunderstanding. Linguistics is the
> scientific study of language as it is used, and among other things
> tries to discover how people manage to produce and understand the
> lanaguage as it used. This involves among other things constructing
> grammars which correspond to usage. A common mistake of new students
> of linguistics is to fail to draw the distinction between a
> prescriptivist grammar, such as they may have been taught by a
> schoolteacher trying to teach them how to speak "proper" formal
> English, and a grammar based on actual usage. These students have to
> be taught that in the purely descriptive grammars of linguistics there
> is no place for prescritpivism, and to try to import prescriptivist
> rules (such as the "proper" usage of "shall" as opposed to how it
> actually is used) is simply unscientific.
>
> A common mistake of not quite so new students of linguistics is to
> overgeneralise this correction of their earlier mistake into the
> belief that because prescriptivism is, from the point of view of the
> scientific study of language usage, unscientific, and many early
> prescriprivists justified their prescriptions of the basis of faulty
> scholarship (such as overly Latinate grammars), therefore all
> prescriptivism is under all circumstances an old-fashioned
> unscientific mistake akin to superstition. They conclude as a
> corollary of this that anyone who tries to say that a common usage is
> wrong for some prescriptivist reason is making an old-fashioned
> unscientific mistake, because usage can never be wrong by
> definition. To do that, however, is to misunderstand the nature of
> prescriptivism, and unwittingly to elevate scientific descriptivism
> into a tacit prescriptivism.
>
I am well aware of this argument, and have heard it expressed even by
linguists. It is, however, wrong.
I have studied the matter for almost 35 years, both before and after I had
three years majoring in linguistics. I've read extensively on the subject.
It is simply not true that descriptive linguistics has nothing to do with
usage questions. On the contrary, labeling a usage as "slang,"
"nonstandard," "informal," "regional," "standard," "offensive," and so forth
is descriptivism. When a linguist studies a foreign language and finds that
a certain usage is used exclusively by women and children, and labels the
usage as such, he is being descriptive. When he studies English and finds
that a certain usage is used exclusively in, say, Minnesota, he is being
descriptive. When he finds that a certain usage is used exclusively in black
street slang, he is being descriptive.
The boundries between the categories are vague, which explains why two
descriptivist dictionaries may come to a different conclusion about a given
word. But that does not mean the categories themselves are not meaningful.
As Martin Gardner has said, just because there are shades of gray does not
mean we cannot tell the difference between black and white. Some words are
unquestionably standard, some unquestionably nonstandard, some
unquestionably British, some unquestionably slang. The result is that there
*is* a standard determined by usage, which can and is reported in, for
example, major dictionaries.
> >I think my problem with that is that I still don't believe in the
> >existence of prescriptivists:
>
> I'm a prescriptivist when I think it's relevant.
>
> >> [...]All current major dictionaries are
> >> descriptivist, thus they show the actual standard, not some fantasy
standard
> >> of prescriptivists.
>
> Prescriptivism is a question of personal taste, just as is a
> preference for the style of one painter over another. A well educated
> prescriptivist may well convert many to his or her preference by
> writing a book about them, just as a well educated art critic may
> persuade people to ridicule one painter and praise another. Quite
> unscientific of course, but that is not a criticism of it.
>
If that were actually true, I would have no argument with prescriptivists.
It is not true, however. Prescriptivists believe not just that their ideas
are better, not just that the English language "ought to be" a certain
way--the AUE FAQ is woefully wrong on this point--but that either the
language is already as they imagine it to be, or it would objectively be
better if their proposed reforms were adopted.
If a person were to come along and identify himself as a prescriptivist, but
say that his beliefs about usage were merely a matter of taste, I would
inform him that according to the history of the battle between
prescriptivists and descriptivists, he is in fact *not* a prescriptivist.
Some have argued that descriptivism is simply a form of prescriptivism. You
appear to have done something similar yourself above, with the reference to
"tacit prescriptivism," although you wish that scientific descriptivism
*not* be seen as such. But I see no point in confusing the terminology: If
one were to call prescriptivism "unscientific prescriptivism" or
"prescriptivist prescriptivism" and descriptivism "scientific
prescriptivism" or "descriptive prescriptivism," (I made up only two of the
preceding terms, guess which ones) we would be no better for the change in
terminology. Better to stick with the terminology we have, which has served
us well for half a century.
> >> I expect you and I agree that all students should be taught to speak
and
> >> write the standard dialect of the country in which they live.
>
> >No doubt at all.
>
> I would argue that teaching students a language without also teaching
> them about some of the main questions argued over by some of the main
> dissenting prescriptivist schools is failing to to do the job
> properly.
I think you are probably right. But the teacher should make sure to point
out where the prescriptivist arguments are erroneous, such as in Robert
Lowth's argument against the double negative (the logic of which Otto
Jespersen, among others, showed to be flatly incorrect). Anthony Burgess,
the novelist, taught English both to non-native speakers and to native
speakers of the language, and taught them a bit of linguistics as part of
his class. I agree with that, and also think the children should be taught
how to use modern dictionaries and what the various usage notes mean.
>
> >> But we
> >> disagree about much else, and I doubt that you accept the standard
dialect
> >> as presented in current dictionaries.
>
> A standard is per se prescriptivist and usage frequently diverges from
> it. For example, there exist html coding standards which few web pages
> adhere to, but which must be adhered to if you want all browsers to be
> able to access your web pages. People who want to build a browser
> which works with the maximum variety of non-standard html usages will
> want to consult both a standard html reference manual, and a
> descriptivist dictionary of the actual usage of various non-standard
> web page editors and translators. And just as with natural language
> usage, there are certain html usages which are logically inconsistent
> with others, and other html usages which forbid certain desirable
> developments, etc., so that designing a standard simply based on
> ironing out the logical defects in a compendium of actual usage is not
> a good way of designing a standard.
>
> The same considerations apply to prescriptivist grammars of English.
>
A standard is *not* per se prescriptivist. On the contrary, the only
standard of English which is in any way real rather than a fantasy, which is
in any way close to the actual grammar (with usage notes!) which exists in
the heads of native speakers of English, is the standard determined by
descriptive linguistics.
Prescriptivism is to descriptivism as pseudoscience is to science, as I have
said before. If it were simply a matter of opinion, then prescriptivism
would be to descriptivism as a religion is to science, but not only is that
not true, I doubt that it would be of much comfort to prescriptivists.
Raymond S. Wise
> "Raymond S. Wise" <illinoi...@mninter.net> wrote in message
news:<uq9e1r1...@corp.supernews.com>...
[...]
> >
> > I still find this puzzling. When I speak, I speak informal Standard
English.
> > I have had little or no occasion to speak formal Standard English. I
> > occasionally use slang, of course, but I if I were teaching an English
class
> > I certainly wouldn't use it in the informal Standard English I would use
in
> > such a class.
>
> (As it happens, I would!) But an important point arises here.
>
> You constantly, as others have remarked, give the impression that for
> everybody else "anything goes", and that if anybody doesn't like a
> new, or non-standard, piece of usage, well, that's tough, and they're
> a prescriptivist anyhow, and therefore anti-scientific and in error,
> and that proves they're a prescriptivist, which proves they're
> anti-scientific and in error. The same severity is not to be applied
> to those who don't like an old, or "educated" standard alternative.
>
I dispute the "as others have remarked" assertion. I do not believe you will
find even one long-standing member of this newsgroup who believes that I
think that "anything goes," or the variation of "anything goes" which you
describe above. Among other things, they are aware that I have been
searching literally for years for evidence of the existence as such a
creature as an "anything goes descriptivist."[1]
I expect that you have misinterpreted some of my arguments against
prescriptivist "reasoning." For example, I have characterized the argument
which Robert Lowth put forth against the double negative as a defective one.
Well, his argument was indeed defective, and many, many scholars have
pointed that out, including the linguist Otto Jespersen (who wrote
extensively about the negative). I think you must have taken my attacks
against such spurious arguments as somehow indicating that the double
negative is or should be a standard usage. On the contrary, I do not doubt
for a second that the double negative is a nonstandard usage in English, nor
do I advocate that it be adopted into standard usage. But prescriptivists
continue to argue against it using arguments as feeble as Lowth's (or
feebler), and I think their errors should be pointed out. (And such errors
are particularly regrettable--and insulting--when applied to those
nonstandard dialects which use the double negative, such as African American
Vernacular English.)
If a usage is listed in all current American dictionaries as being
"nonstandard," you won't find me insisting that it is in fact standard. Nor
will you find me insisting that a standard usage is nonstandard. There is
but one possible exception, where I expressed the opinion that the
expression "It is I" in everyday conversation is wrong, incorrect, or some
similar label. I would not characterize it as such now, rather I see it as a
question of the use of a term from the formal register in an inappropriate
register. That is about as far as I have gone in questioning the standard
status of a standard usage. You won't find other examples if you do a search
in the Google Groups Archive at http://groups.google.com/ , because I have
made no such arguments.
I *have* on occasion promoted reforms in usage, but I clearly labeled them
as such, and did not claim that the standard usage in question was
nonstandard, and I was appropriately tentative about whether we would be
better off if the reform in question were adopted. I am not opposed to
reform. I am opposed to spurious arguments and to baseless assertions that a
given standard usage is somehow not standard.
> The above is not one of my attempts to leaven the lump with a reductio
> ad absurdum: it's a description of the way your remarks actually do
> sometimes appear. That's why I unfairly come to conclusions you in all
> sincerity find puzzling.
>
> > [...]All current major dictionaries are
> > descriptivist, thus they show the actual standard, not some fantasy
standard
> > of prescriptivists.
>
> It's this ideological-seeming "-ist" problem again. Dictionaries are
> "-ive", and would otherwise be useless. If there was ever a battle, it
> was won generations ago.
> >
As I have pointed out before, where prescriptivists and descriptivists
agree, there is no usage dispute. To the extent that they represented actual
usage, dictionaries prior to the publication of the first edition of the OED
were descriptive--dictionaries of thieves cant and slang from that period
are quite correctly described as descriptive. To the extent that
dictionaries prior to the OED did not represent actual usage, they were
prescriptive. (I don't mean things such as misprints or other unintentional
errors, but failing to be represent actual usage due to an ideological
belief.)
> > I expect you and I agree that all students should be taught to speak and
> > write the standard dialect of the country in which they live.
>
> No doubt at all.
>
> > But we
> > disagree about much else, and I doubt that you accept the standard
dialect
> > as presented in current dictionaries.
>
> I'm pretty sure I use it as a matter of course: it's what I get paid
> for; I'm a bit slangy, I'll admit, but not obscurely so. I don't
> really know what you mean, but if it's got anything to do with
> "disinterested", I think there may be a trans-Atlantic difference in
> weighting on that subject.
>
The Standard English represented in all current general dictionaries[2] is a
true standard, representing actual usage. It is not the same standard
(standards, actually) held by prescriptivists.
Note:
[1] I have one lead, but it's an obscure one and I haven't yet gotten
around to checking it out.
[2] I say "all current general dictionaries" because such dictionaries are
created on descriptivistic principles. The only prescriptivist dictionaries
being published today would be those prepared by one individual, not likely
to be a full dictionary at all, and those which are reprints of
prescriptivist dictionaries of the past, such as Noah Webster's 1828
dictionary. (And even Webster was not a complete prescriptivist. He was an
admirer of Joseph Priestley's grammar, which was the first descriptivist
grammar of English, and among other things Webster objected to the reasoning
behind the Lowthian ban of the double negative, pointing out its use in
modern French and ancient Greek.)
Ben Zimmer
Sheidlower has a piece in today's New York Times called "Confronting
'NOO-kyuh-luhr' Proliferation":
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/13/weekinreview/13SHEI.html
(free registration required)
It covers much the same ground as the Slate article that sparked this
thread, including a helpful explanation of metathesis and analogy.
Nothing for me to add, except to nitpick over an unfortunate typo:
---------
Merriam-Webster's form letter about "nuclear" spends only two
sentences discussing the word itself: most of the letter is an
explanation of why spelling is not a valid basis for determining
pronunciation. It offers the example of the words electric,
electricity and electrical, in which the one letter "c" represents
three different sounds.
---------
This should actually read "electrical", "electricity" and
"electrician", as found in Slate's reproduction of the form letter:
<http://slate.msn.com/?id=2071155&sidebar=2071156>.
Robert Lieblich
>
> Sometime AUE contributor and OED North American editor Jesse
> Sheidlower has a piece in today's New York Times called "Confronting
> 'NOO-kyuh-luhr' Proliferation":
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/13/weekinreview/13SHEI.html
> (free registration required)
>
> It covers much the same ground as the Slate article that sparked this
> thread,
And it confirms, or at least repeats, my earlier reports to this
group that Jimmmy Carter said "NOO-key-yer."
--
Bob Lieblich
Who occasionally gets one right
GrapeApe
>sentences discussing the word itself: most of the letter is an
>explanation of why spelling is not a valid basis for determining
>pronunciation. It offers the example of the words electric,
>electricity and electrical, in which the one letter "c" represents
>three different sounds.
But the words have the two letter 'c's.
And if they are speaking of the same c, the second one, I don't see any
difference between 'electric' and 'electrical'. What is the third sound?
Ben Zimmer
As I pointed out, this is a typo-- the three words should be
"electrical", "electricity" and "electrician". See:
http://slate.msn.com/?id=2071155&sidebar=2071156
Robert Bannister
If you read the whole post, you would have realised it should have been
'electrician', and it was apparently m-w's mistake.
--
Rob Bannister
GrapeApe
>'electrician', and it was apparently m-w's mistake.
That was the bit I saw after I hit the 'send' button.