From: roger@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig)
Subject: Re: Less versus Fewer: Victory at NPR!
Originator: news@nimaster
Organization: Princeton University
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1992 02:13:40 GMT

In article <1992Aug20.103217.3647@desire.wright.edu> thayes@desire.wright.edu writes:
>Oh dear.

>TH>Roger's bombast of late indicates that the only authority he would see fit to
>TH>revere would be himself.

>Roger> Look, is this a smileyless joke or something?  I'm the only one here
>Roger> *citing* authorities, and I've mentioned a stack of them.  Evans and
>Roger> Evans, the OED, Jespersen, McKnight, Lounsbury; there, I've cited them
>Roger> again.  

>Nope.  Roger, you are wrong.  You are *NOT* the only one citing authorities;
>many on this net have cited plenty of "authorities" before you came along. 

Well, I came in right at the beginning of the less/fewer thread, and I
haven't seen anyone else cite anything wrt that one.  I'll go back and
check, but I don't think I've missed a posting.

>Which is a curious gambit for you anyway, since on many occasions you seem to
>have argued for a relativist interpretation of language use.  

Never once.

>By relativist I
>mean that some pronunciation ("aks," "aksteric") is okey-dokey because it is
>used at all and understood at all. 

I have never made that argument.  I have not argued that anything is
okey-dokey; I have attempted to point out the contexts in which it is or
is not accepted or standard or whatever.  

As far as language goes, I am not a relativist at all, and besides,
tarring the attitude you impute to me with a modern shibboleth such as
"relativist" is not much of an argument either way.  

I am very much in favor of standards -- that is, of knowing what they
are.  Of knowing how people speak and write in this situation and that,
how the language changes and how it does not, and how things go from
being considered "barbarisms" to complete acceptance over time.  This is
not relativism; call it research, and you'll be a lot closer.

>(I am not a linguist, so I cannot comment on
>any recent trends in linguistic journals on "relativism.")

There are none, as far as I know.  Studying the language for what it is,
instead of operating on the assumption that a certain way of speaking
(usually a warped idea of one or two generations back, i.e., a "golden
age" close to the writer's childhood) is some eternal standard, goes
back to Dr. Johnson, who discovered that 17th century writers, his
original standard, were useless as a rigid yardstick for his dictionary.
He described his language with remarkable skill and sensitivity; since
then, linguists and lexicographers have formalized his efforts and
learned how languages get that way, and why some usages become more
popular than others, and why a "standard" dialect arises for writing,
and how all these things change.

>Several postings have argued that there are standards -- and not just
>prejudices, but *guidelines for use* -- that are important and necessary 
>for accurate communication.  

And I have argued -- with evidence -- that many of these guidelines are
of little use.  Accurate communication may be aided by some standards,
but the ones mentioned here are not those.  The standards that are
important are simply the characteristics of a given dialect--the one
that one expects one's listener to know.

>The "less" v. "fewer" debate is one such argument.  

Well? What is not communicated if one says "8 items or less"?  What do I
miss by not reading "fewer"?  Why have those signs had their effect
literally billions of times? (The ones that say "fewer" get ignored at
about the same rate, I suspect...)  Just what accuracy has been
compromised?

And how come "8 or less" happens to be a common English usage of
centuries' standing? How did English-speakers survive before the
19th-century grammarians "discovered" the distinction?

>Your appeals to authority have been of the sort where only the
>authorities you agree with are right, and other people's references are wrong
>prima facie, and that's that.  More on this later.

Really? Which authorities are those?  I haven't argued against any
authorities on this point because I haven't seen any.  

On the other hand, I'd also like to see their reasoning, and their
arguments *against* the evidence I have presented.  

All these things are missing from the argument so far.

Your turn.  Cite your sources, give their reasoning.  I've offered
arguments from the history of the words, and from their current, actual
usage.  Nobody has yet challenged me on a single point of this.

Roger