cross-posting

[Laurence Horn]

>Thanks, Larry, for alerting me to this. I looked at this last week, and
>Geoff Nunberg is aware of this too.
>
>The author of this article, Peter Corey, is an extreme traditionalist,
>whose quest seems to be logical consistency in language. An "epilogue" to
>his book is entitled "How Linguistics Killed Grammar."
>
>A couple of the "mistakes" that he observes in AHD are that "like" is
>identified as a preposition, and "none" as a pronoun.
>Among the reasons he gives for "like" not being a preposition is that,
>unlike any other preposition, "like" can be negated by the prefix un-.
>(The AHD deals with this by listing "unlike" as a preposition as well as an
>adjective.)  "None" is not a pronoun, in Corey's view, because it can be
>"modified" by "almost," and pronouns cannot be modified by definition, ergo
>. . .
>
>Far be it from me to say that the categorization of words into traditional
>parts of speech is unencumbered by ambiguity, but I can't see investing a
>lot of time to refute such assertions.
>
>Joe
>
Hi, Joe.  I did notice the references in his web site to _How
Linguistics Killed Grammar_, and figured he was Mrs. Grundy
personified, which he has certainly done nothing to dispel with his
current crusade.  So presumably "everybody" can't be a pronoun either
according to Corey?  It's nice that at least one preposition can be
un-prefixed, since un- can also attach to all the other major
categories (adjectives, verbs, nouns).  Makes for a more symmetric
system, in fact.  (Most U.S. dictionaries seem to share this "error"
of classifying "unlike" as a preposition.)

larry