do good (was: prescriptivism, etc)

[James Smith]

--- Lynne Murphy <lynnem at COGS.SUSX.AC.UK> wrote:

Hey, this helps me understand why my mother-in-law
uses 'bath' as a verb, the only person I've ever heard
use 'to bath' instead of 'to bathe' for washing in a
bathtub.  But it does make sense: it isn't a
'bathetub', is it?


> I am reminded of an episode in a semantics class
> last term.  A
> (75-year-old) student thought it terrible that
> Americans don't have the
> distinction between 'to bath' and 'to bathe' (the
> latter you do in the
> sea).  He railed politely against me about the loss
> of an important
> semantic distinction-- until the younger students
> came to my rescue and
> said "but we don't say 'bath' either".  He asked me
> "what do you do in the
> sea, then?"  And I said "we swim."
>
> Lynne
>
>
> M Lynne Murphy
> Lecturer in Linguistics
> School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
> University of Sussex
> Brighton BN1 9QH
> UK
>
> phone +44-(0)1273-678844
> fax   +44-(0)1273-671320


=====
James D. SMITH                 |If history teaches anything
SLC, UT                        |it is that we will be sued
jsmithjamessmith at yahoo.com     |whether we act quickly and decisively
                               |or slowly and cautiously.

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