Re: About linguistic (in)tolerance

Tom Wier wrote:
> Um, I hate to break it to you, but this is what most people, in most periods
> of history, including today, have always done.  The very idea of "standards"
> of speech did not even exist until people in the ruling classes started making
> one (for English anyways) about 300 years ago.
Not entirely true.  Most, if not all, cultures do have preferred
dialects, dialects which are seen as somehow better than others.  Also,
many languages contain semi-artificial registers.  As far as having one
"CORRECT" dialect, however, that IS a new thing.

> The reason why the official line of linguistics is to tolerate these
> things is because they show us more clearly how human beings use language,
> which is, afterall, the study upon which we focus our efforts. To try to tell
> people how to use their language imposes a false restriction on it
Not to mention that it's unscientific.  Science is supposed to be a
STUDY of things.  Biologists don't try to go around saying what animals
SHOULD do, or SHOULD be like, they describe what they DO do, and
sometimes doo-doo ;-)

> (like using "there's" with plural nouns; I always
> use there're in those cases)
Funny, because "there're" doesn't even exist in my idiolect.  If I'm
speaking informally, it's always "there's".  I suspect that it's
analyzed as a single unit in my idiolect.  When speaking formally, I'll
use the non-contracted forms "there is" and "there are".  "There're"
sounds like a mixture of formal and informal, like saying "analyzin'" or
"fusin'"

> If the capitol of England had
> traditionally been up north, say, in Lindisfarne (or something like that),
> the modern Standard English language would be much, much different, I
> assure you.
And it wasn't always London, either.  IIRC, it was once in Canterbury.
If it had remained there, the standard plural would probably be -en,
thus "housen".

> This involves not using "split infinitives" (of course, no such
> thing has ever existed in English, the grammarians to the contrary).
Ah!  Another person agreeing with me on that issue.  :-)

> My experience is that a lot of people I know use longer words because
> they fit the meaning better (because they know the more precise meaning).
> Of course there are people who want to make themselves sound big by
> using big words,
He was referring to people who use made-up long words, often misanalyzed
forms, like "conversate", or "faxilate".  Of course, many unremarkable
words are from misanalyzed forms, like "cherry", which was originally
"cherries", but that was misanalyzed as a plural, and the assumed
singular "cherry" was created.

> There *is  no correct form of the language*, let that be made clear.
Well, I don't know about that.  There is a correct form, but it's not
taught in school.  A person using English as a second language can make
mistakes, because they're importing features of their L1 into English,
or other reasons, but NATIVE speakers don't speak "incorrectly", most of
the time.  (Altho spontaneous errors are possible, as when I once said
"blank" as the past tense of "blink", it's not a form in my idiolect, it
was just a spontaneous error).

--
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was hanged." - Irish proverb
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