Cool malapropism/eggcorn

Amy West medievalist at W-STS.COM
Thu Feb 8 15:12:49 UTC 2007


Perfect timing! I'm going to be hitting that section of our grammar
book (Longman Writer's Companion) in the coming week. I've been
taking a very prescriptive approach with my students this semester so
that they become aware of variances between their idiolects and the
more conservative Standard Written English that they might have
foisted on them in academia. Please do post that to LL. I've been
pointing out "rules" in LWC where there's little to no support (like
restricting use of the superlative of adjs for groups of only 3 or
more).

---Amy West

>  > I'm not denying that unattached "which" clauses are out there, but we
>>  need to be careful in identifying the "real" ones and the processing
>>  lapses.
>
>i've been meaning to post to the Language Log about a collection of
>phenomena that are routinely castigated in usage manuals as involving
>"vague pronoun reference".  among them are final non-restrictive
>relative clauses that are intended to refer to the situation denoted
>by a preceding VP or clause, as in

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