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XP: Wrong becoming Right
- Thread starter Peter Creasey
- Start date
originally posted by Peter Creasey:
XP: Wrong becoming Right
language change is our lifeblood. If the English language was fixed and static, bound by unbreakable rules and preserved in linguistic aspic, we’d be out of a job. We could just create one definitive dictionary, and that would be it. No revision, no new words, and no more work for lexicographers.
But, luckily for us, English isn’t like that. It’s a living thing. Meanings expand and mutate, loanwords are constantly adopted, so-called rules are stretched and twisted. All of which makes the role of a lexicographer far more exciting than that of a starchy pedagogue who does nothing but lay down strict unbending rules.
When does "wrong" become "right"?
. . . . . Pete
As I do at times like this, I think of DFW (not the airport): Tense Present
Mark Lipton
Jonathan Loesberg
Jonathan Loesberg
Note, first of all, that this is a claim about words and meanings, not about matters of usage.
The claim is, as a matter of simple fact, historically true. It also doesn't have any serious consequences for arguments here over meanings. It's also true that if you use a word to mean something it doesn't yet mean, no one will understand you. And some meanings that develop may be as matters of historical fact, what the words mean now, but they will still be unfortunate developments for other reasons. Take, for instance, the usual shibboleth here: it may be true that it is coming to be the case that with regard to grapes in wine, varietal has the same meaning as variety has with regard to all other life forms, including grapes when wine geeks aren't talking about them. Developing a special word for wine geekery for a biological category, though, and particularly doing so without regard to its taxonomic illogic, seems to me both unnecessary and coming from a toxic blend of ignorance (about terms in biological taxonomy) and elitism (wanting a special vocabulary when none is necessary). My students frequently write doggy-dog world when they mean dog-eat-dog world. History may make doggy-dog as acceptable as under way now is for under weigh. But in each case a metaphor is lost to the language because of the historical development, with no real gain occurring.
Much the same argument would probably apply with regard to grammar and usage. It's probably true that the subjunctive is falling out of the English language (witness the first sentence in the quotation). Grammatical complexity commonly falls out of languages over time. But the languages do become poorer for it. In this case, not only will sentences not distinguish between hypothetical and contrapositive statements, on the one hand, and declarative ones, on the other, but writers may start not to be aware of the distinction.
The claim is, as a matter of simple fact, historically true. It also doesn't have any serious consequences for arguments here over meanings. It's also true that if you use a word to mean something it doesn't yet mean, no one will understand you. And some meanings that develop may be as matters of historical fact, what the words mean now, but they will still be unfortunate developments for other reasons. Take, for instance, the usual shibboleth here: it may be true that it is coming to be the case that with regard to grapes in wine, varietal has the same meaning as variety has with regard to all other life forms, including grapes when wine geeks aren't talking about them. Developing a special word for wine geekery for a biological category, though, and particularly doing so without regard to its taxonomic illogic, seems to me both unnecessary and coming from a toxic blend of ignorance (about terms in biological taxonomy) and elitism (wanting a special vocabulary when none is necessary). My students frequently write doggy-dog world when they mean dog-eat-dog world. History may make doggy-dog as acceptable as under way now is for under weigh. But in each case a metaphor is lost to the language because of the historical development, with no real gain occurring.
Much the same argument would probably apply with regard to grammar and usage. It's probably true that the subjunctive is falling out of the English language (witness the first sentence in the quotation). Grammatical complexity commonly falls out of languages over time. But the languages do become poorer for it. In this case, not only will sentences not distinguish between hypothetical and contrapositive statements, on the one hand, and declarative ones, on the other, but writers may start not to be aware of the distinction.
That's the best modern summary, but it's amusing to look back a bit.originally posted by MLipton:
As I do at times like this, I think of DFW (not the airport): Tense Present
And of course, there is Rex Stout's Gambit. ""Mr. Wolfe is in the middle of a fit. It's complicated. There's a fireplace in the front room, but it's never lit because he hates open fires. He says they stultify mental processes. But it's lit now because he's using it. He's seated in front of it, on a chair too small for him, tearing sheets out of a book and burning them. The book is the new edition, the third edition, of Webster's New International Dictionary, Unabridged, published by the G. & C. Merriam Company of Springfield, Massachusetts. He considers it subversive because it threatens the integrity of the English language...."
When Mr. Wolfe is finished, Archie says to him, "...You knew you were going to burn it when you bought it. Otherwise you would have ordered leather." [the cover was buckram]"
David Erickson
David Erickson
Sharon Bowman
Sharon Bowman
John McPhee is a god.
Jeff Grossman
Jeff Grossman
Webster's Third has very nice synonym blocks, though perhaps not so florid as those in editions past.
Terry Angleton
Terry Angleton
Check out James Turner's recent tome, a rewarding investment:
"Philology: The Forgotten Origins of Modern Humanities"
"Philology: The Forgotten Origins of Modern Humanities"