From: roger@crux.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig)
Subject: Re: quite unique
Originator: news@nimaster
Reply-To: roger@astro.princeton.edu (Roger Lustig)
Organization: Princeton University
Distribution: alt
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 16:37:33 GMT

In article <28246@castle.ed.ac.uk> cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes:
>In article <1992Nov16.182859.25273@Princeton.EDU> roger@astro.princeton.edu (Roger Lustig) writes:

>>I say that a word means what LOTS OF PEOPLE say it means -- namely those
>>who use it.  I say that there is no other standard for determining meaning
>>of words.  

>>And I would love to hear of any other standard, any other way aside
>>from actual usage, of determining what a word means.

>There is more in question than this.

>A person is free to form their own judgement, to approve or disapprove
>of some new trend in usage, or even to suggest a new coinage (such as
>"hir"). If their arguments & publicity work, then in time they may
>influence enough language users for their view to become first an
>accepted usage, and ultimately perhaps even the proper usage.

Of course, the vast majority of coinages and usage changes occur without
any publicity at all.  Others attract only negative publicity, and
still become standard.  (An example: "donate."  In the 1850's, people
campaigned hard against this horrible barbarism.)

A smaller point: is there really a progression from "an accepted usage"
to "*the* proper usage" [emph. mine]?  Often, there are several equally
"proper" usages.
 
>It is also the duty of every language user to consider which side to
>take on any developing usage -- to condone or condemn. If enough

Why?  Surely use/don't use is the only choice the vast majority will
ever make; and this choice has driven every language change in human
history.  Most people can't be bothered to look at the thousands of 
new coinages and meanings that pop up each week, not that the 
newspapers print lists of them or anything.

>language users care enough about the language this should result in
>improvements. 

How?  What kind of improvements?

>If too many language users are simply sheep who
>thoughtlessly propagate every fresh mistake and confusion, then the

Can you show me that there exists one such person on the planet?

(Note that the above sentence implies that most people are actually
sheep when it comes to language, because most of them don't think
about issues of neologism and redefinition.  Why am *I* the only
one who gets accused of being rude, when things like this are 
basically insults that cover about 99% of the world's population?)

>language will degenerate.

Ah, here we go.  Funny, but this argument has been made in every century
that there's *been* an English language, and especially the last four.
Swift was absolutely sure that English was going to the dogs, and that 
in two centuries one would need a translator to read the passage he was 
writing. Of course, all the changes he railed against became accepted, plus  
millions more -- yet we can read his prose without trouble or dictionaries.

Everybody has a Golden Age.  For Swift it was The Elizabethan-Jacobean
time; the Commonwealth was the start of the death of language.  Johnson 
felt the same way, and planned to write a Dictionary to "fix" the
language to the usage of that time.  (Writing it cured him of this
folly, btw.)  Lord Orrery, biographer of Swift, felt that Swift was the
pinnacle of the language, and that one ought to use him as a standard.  

And on and on; most people feel that English has been declining since
their schooldays.

Yet it doesn't seem to do so.  English is a wonderfully vital language
that has never yet been damaged by all kinds of neologism, redefinition,
etc.  In fact, for a Golden Age of making up words, try Shakespeare's time.
Borrowings from the Italian, plus all kinds of foreign-based coinages
and inventions, plus thousands of new meanings, crowded into the language --
and the result was the lavish vocabulary that Shakespeare and Jonson
and so on used as never before -- a *real* golden age of literature
and the use of language.  Fortunately, purism wasn't popular at the time;'
people didn't complain as much about these new words, and didn't spend
their days taking moral stands on which word to use.  Would we be better off
if they had?

>I am disappointed to see so much discussion in this group polarised
>between naive prescriptivists who think they know how it ought to be,
>and sheep who suppose that any usage employed by some people somewhere
>is by that fact alone justified as a usage which cannot be criticised.

Excuse me, but do you know anyone who fits the latter category?  If you
wish to insult me with that line, you are wide of the mark.  I have 
made no such argument anywhere.  

Roger

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