gripe from a lurker

[Dennis R. Preston]

Chuck,

Good for you to keep your finger on the pulse of usage. Usually when you
find things you don't like, that's the future. Notice that many people who
would have laid their lives down for the "uninterested" versus
"disinterested" distinction would have lost those lives in vain.

Dennis (who has only a very few examples of your distinguished ancestor's
t-shirt left; they sold like hot-cakes; this year, Louise Pound on a
bicycle)

>I've been on the ADS list quietly for a while now,
>
>but I can't contain myself any longer, and the ADS crowd seems the right
>place to complain.
>
>Which of the following quotes from semi-fictional news stories are valid usage
>?
>
>1) "the flood last week was of historical proportions."
>2) "last night a five-alarm fire destroyed an historical building in the
>heart of the theater district."
>3) "Abraham Lincoln was an historical person."
>4) "Abraham Lincoln was an historic person."
>
>2) and 3) I think actually are OK (I hope I'm not embarrassed here),
>though the meaning is different in each case,
>but I'm tired of hearing with what it seems like increasing frequency things
>like
>1) and 2), where it would seem "historic" and "historical" are synonymous,
>whereas I don't think they are at all.
>
>Chuck Grandgent,   chuck at chuckg.com

Dennis R. Preston
Professor of Linguistics
Department of Linguistics and Languages
Michigan State University
East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA
preston at pilot.msu.edu
Office: (517)353-0740
Fax: (517)432-2736