From: gmw1@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Gabe M Wiener)
Subject: Re: "Grammar"
Reply-To: gmw1@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Gabe M Wiener)
Organization: Columbia University
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1992 05:22:04 GMT

In article <1992Aug23.001620.6708@Princeton.EDU> roger@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig) writes:
>
>"The important issue" is not how we determine the usage of this word or
>that.  (Besides, the important issue at the checkout is how much stuff
>you have...)

BZZZT!  Wrong.  The important issue at the checkout is how *many*
*items* (not how *much* items, etither) you have, not how much stuff.
You can have 12 cans of tuna and they'll push you into the regular
line.  You can have 5 huge cartons of diapers, a Perdue butterball
turkey, and one of those huge aluminum turkey trays, and you'll get on
just fine.  If the limit were based on something linear, such as
volume ("1000 cubic inches or less") or weight ("10 pounds or less"),
then we'd be talking about stuff.  But here we're discussing *items*.

>10 items, no more, no less. 

Fewer.

>I didn't say "fewer than 25."  I said "25 or less."  And the evidence is
>out there in the usage surveys and everywhere else: people just don't
>say that.

Fine.  If you want to make it "25 words or less <writing>," be my guest.
That doesn't change the checkout situation.  I wouldn't cry if someone
used fewer in this case either.

>I've *always* argued for correctness and standardness.  I've just
>accompanied those arguments with an insistence on reasonable definitions
>of those things.  Specifically, I have asked for situation-dependent,
>dialect-dependent definitions of correctness, and usage-based defnitions
>of "Standard."

Or, if enough people use it, it must be good?  I don't buy it.  Mass appeal
of an error doesn't make it right.

>You named three sources, and since retracted one.  I've actually *cited*
>a few, and will post several more when I get a chance.

As if that's going to accomplish anything...

>>I still don't see the benefit of *not* speaking or writing well as much
>>as possible.
>
>Good point, but you've left out the same step as you always do:
>demonstrating that S&W's strictures are in some Platonic or functional
>way "better."  Until you can do that, don't say "as well as possible"
>and think that it's an automatic justification of any one usage guide,
>or all of them, or even of a single point in one.  
>
>Give me some *reasons.*  

You know, it's kind of funny.  You've been repeating the claim that since
a) people have been doing X for a long time, b) the rules prohibiting X
were invented well after the fact, c) X is part of the language and there's
no denying it, it is therefore pointless and inappropriate to try to drum
X out of the language.  Assuming arguendo that we accept that, we have a
few problems, namely that we no longer have any distinction between what
is good, correct prose and what is sloppy.  I don't buy it.

I'm reminded of some article I read in an anthropology text some years ago.
Basically, the writer was ranking on the political correctness movement,
and I was inclined to agree with his argument.  It went something like this.

  - The PC movement has, among its tenets, a belief that those cultural
    beliefs that are central parts of a foreign culture, even though they
    are not ours, are at their core, good.  It is wildly inappropriate
    and 'ethnocentric' for us to try to drive those things out of a
    culture and make them more like us.

  - For thousands of years, Japanese samurai warriors would test the
    sharpness of their blade by cutting off the head of a passerby.

  - Although it could be said that, "Well, that's their culture, and
    they've been doing it that way for thousands of years, and who are
    we to change it?"

Well, the fact is that we *do* characterize certain behaviors as good and
bad.  Educated people know that it isn't exactly kosher to chop the heads 
off passersby, just as educated people make judgments about what is and is
not proper English.  The argument of "It's been done by the best for a long
time, and it's part of the culture, so it's ludicrous to eliminate" doesn't
exactly cut it.

>>>Good luck getting a job as an editor with that attitude.
>
>>I've gotten quite a number of them, though it isn't my main field.
>
>Tehy asked you about "less" in your interview?

Nope.  But many of them have commented on how many *fewer* mistakes they
find in the edited copy, and how so much *less* of it has to go back to the
authors for rewrite...

>>And some have a hard time believing that ad copywriters would put
>>"1/3 less calories" on a packaging.
>
>Only because schoolteachers nagged *them* about it.  Nobody had to teach
>me in school that "me am here" is wrong.  

But many people had to be taught that "me and my friends..." is wrong.
That's why we teach grammar...so students can learn what the standard
forms are. 

>When I look back on all the crap I learned in high school...

Hope you're enjoying the retrospective

>Oh, no.  *Quite* different.  The separation of subject from verb matters
>quite a bit, linguistically speaking.

Linguistically speaking, perhaps.  Grammatically speaking, however, the
error is one of a) improper word order, and b) wrong pronoun case.


--
Gabe Wiener - Columbia Univ.     "This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings 
gmw1@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu       to be seriously considered as a means of 
N2GPZ in ham radio circles        communication. The device is inherently of
72355,1226 on CI$                 no value to us." -Western Union memo, 1877
From: fish@hpscit.sc.hp.com (John Fisher)
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1992 20:19:32 GMT
Subject: Re: Thought without language?
Organization: Hewlett-Packard, Santa Clara, CA