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Who designed the Viet Nam War Memorial?

  01/01/2023       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

When Maya Lin was announced as the winning designer of the projected Viet Nam War Memorial, I am sure I read or heard that she (Continue Reading)

Mistakes Made
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A couple of notes on language

  10/17/2015       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Thinking of how “represent” is used without an object in current slang (always a question when a word is used by African-Americans: is it Af-Am (Continue Reading)

Mistakes Made

Can you spot the frozen expression?

  10/10/2015       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

The expressions “go to sleep” and “go to work” are frozen expressions from a time when “go to” was used as an ingressive aspect marker. (Continue Reading)

Mistakes Made

The subjunctive – moribund, robust, or flat dead?

  09/25/2015       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

On flteach many years ago a teacher related how a colleague Sp teacher travelled to Mexico and marveled how well educated even the hotel maids (Continue Reading)

Mistakes Made

How moribund is the subjunctive?

  05/08/2015       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

I heard a person of middling education use the subjunctive on the radio this morning: “… it’s important that Congress have…..” and he was not (Continue Reading)

Mistakes Made

How understandable is a dialect?

  12/15/2014       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

I was just reading on the culture of complaint in David Crystal’s Stories of English and then read in my Norwegian grammar a little on (Continue Reading)

Mistakes Made

His dance was a prance which put me in a trance

  12/14/2014       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Listening to Karen Armstrong read, her cultivated Oxbridge accent is soothing. She uses ‘et’ for the past tense of ‘eat’ and pronounces ‘prance’ and ‘trance’ (Continue Reading)

Mistakes Made

Poke salad Annie & folk etymology

  09/25/2014       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

The 1969 song, covered by many artists, gives rise to some misunderstandings, especially if you are not from the South. My wife, from East Texas, (Continue Reading)

Mistakes Made

The tickets – do you have em? I don’t have them, but I do have money

  04/05/2014       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Lots of people think the em of “I hid them” > “I hid ‘em” is a contraction, which it is not even though the em (Continue Reading)

Mistakes Made

It hasn’t been being cleaned

  03/29/2014       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Look at this construction: It hasn’t been being cleaned. Isn’t that a pretty normal construction to hear? It is a progressive past passive, third person (Continue Reading)

Mistakes Made

Judgment Day – The Job Interview

  01/27/2014       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

The Job Interview instantiates the dicta of the teacher and in this way performs the role that Judgment Day plays among the faithful. It’s when (Continue Reading)

Mistakes Made

Response to post re Ambrose Bierce

  10/09/2013       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

While Ambrose Bierce has a place in American letters, he does not have one in the scientific study of English or any other language. Again, (Continue Reading)

Mistakes Made

Response to the May I ~ Can I nonsense

  09/08/2013       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Debra wrote: I realize that “may I?” (asking permission) has been replaced in common student speech with “can I?”: Can I sharpen my pencil? Can (Continue Reading)

Mistakes Made

Questions for grammar mavens

  08/19/2013       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Those of you who suppose yourselves to insist on “grammatically correct English” might want to wrap your heads around this. Notice that the periphrastic future (Continue Reading)

Mistakes Made

lazy etymologies

  08/08/2013       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

An example of how people think about language would be explaining archaic usages that have survived in formulaic verses, prayers, etc. as something other than (Continue Reading)

Mistakes Made

(No Title)

  04/26/2013       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

A quote from an 1854 report by British supercargoes [similar to a load master on a military aircraft] using/abusing “whom”: “….their implements stolen and themselves (Continue Reading)

Mistakes Made

(No Title)

  10/21/2012       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Recently I cracked my wife up by reading to her out of John McWhorter’s Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue where McWhorter describes in deadpan linguistic jargon (Continue Reading)

Mistakes Made

English dual

  09/04/2011       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

For those who think we have no dual in English, note “either”, “each of two”, from   “…Old English aegther (before 900), contraction of aeghwaether (Continue Reading)

Mistakes Made

Confusing words

  04/22/2011       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

This phrase is ambiguous: are the words confusing or is someone confusing them?   Here are three words that I believe are confusing because they (Continue Reading)

Mistakes Made

You done good

  09/06/2010       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

On one listserv polemics broke out several times over the adverbial use of “good”. One time the phrase that elicited outrage was, “How are you?” (Continue Reading)

Mistakes Made

Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue

  06/20/2010       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

– about half-way through Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue. It’s clear McWhorter is applying the same techniques to English that he has to the Spanish Creoles (Continue Reading)

Mistakes Made

The grammar mavens fall to my wit and charm

  05/30/2010       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

The following is a series of posts and the last one should be read first. Following that last one are some additional comments to the (Continue Reading)

Mistakes Made

An idiom or saying which will probably be incomprehensible

  03/18/2010       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Here’s an idiom or saying that is on the verge of incomprehensibility: dumb as a post For people who do not know that dumb means (Continue Reading)

Mistakes Made
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