Pat’s Polemics

I shamefacedly admit that I and others in the family thought our grandson was being unrealistic for wanting to be a U.S. Marine. He joined (Continue Reading)

No, not The State, as in The Deep State, but the state of Arizona, determined to preserve the life of the unborn but adopting the (Continue Reading)

Going on a year now, our 17 year old grandson has been living with us. He is autistic. I am sure you all have noticed (Continue Reading)

From The French Language Today by Adrian Battye and Marie-Anne Hintze an interesting passage re the setting of prescriptive grammar in the 17th cnt French (Continue Reading)

It’s been a busy day, so here’s just one item, a quote from Authority in Language by Milroy & Milroy, p. 7: “In the UK, (Continue Reading)

Here’s a typical comment regarding language: “Thanks for your thoughtful reply. As a former English teacher, I found great delight in your grammar correction game. (Continue Reading)

I noticed today in church that the hymn Amazing Grace has the words “less days” where the Mavens would demand “fewer days”. Should we correct (Continue Reading)

A poster to a language log said a client of his emphatically objected to the phrase “get there first”, declaring it completely ungrammatical. A blog (Continue Reading)

Exploring language universals should be part of any introductory linguistics course and, as more and more people are taking such a course to fulfill requirements, (Continue Reading)

As I finished this book, two more quotes from it struck me as worthy to include in my blog. One is a quote of what (Continue Reading)

Purist was a label I left out of my category title: Shamans, Mavens, Scolds and Guardians, b/c many purists happily take up the task of (Continue Reading)

It is often written that the Anglo-Saxon, English-speaking world has a monopoly on prescriptivism. Obviously other language communities have their own ideas as to what (Continue Reading)

On p. 73, discussing infinitives, the example is given: I saw the leaves stir. Accompanying it is explanation: stir is an infinitive without the ‘to’. (Continue Reading)

When a Maven objects to a plural like “jackknifes” b/c “the dictionary says the plural of jackknife is jackknives”, even though it is not actually (Continue Reading)

All Mavens: alert! The plural of jackknife, a move made in diving and workouts, is jackknifes, but you Mavens must set us straight and remind (Continue Reading)

This, from The Story of Ain’t, p. 170, sums up the attitude of the Prescriptivists: “But this was several years before history’s most notorious dictionary (Continue Reading)

I just heard, “How does one govern and do their job”. The use of “their” as pronoun for “one” clearly jabs the prescriptivists in the (Continue Reading)

I was listening to an interview of an author who spoke Oxbridge English, oh so posh, in elevated discourse and so on. Suddenly I heard, (Continue Reading)

The list of faults of English speakers contains a number of items that crop up in other languages. The peculiar thing is, these same features (Continue Reading)

Reading in Authority In Language, I noticed that pages 80 to 90 had so many excellent points, I needed to select the juiciest passages and (Continue Reading)

Another feature of teaching SE in the schools I have failed to convey properly is language maintenance. In this way, a young person will speak (Continue Reading)