ahold

[Dennis R. Preston]

arnold,

There is at least one more reason (other than saving your valuable
time) why you should stop messing with 'supercede,' as MW tells us:

  Etymology: Middle English superceden

Course, Latin and French have the 's.'

dInIs

PS: This would also please the 'things oughta be like they uster' crowd.

>On Jun 13, 2005, at 9:31 AM, John Baker asks:
>
>>... What are your views on supercede and alright?
>
>i generally correct "supercede" and "idiosyncracy", but i'm not
>entirely sure this is a good use of my time and other people's.
>especially since these two occur in the writing of highly educated
>careful writers, including some linguists, and they aren't slips of
>the pen.
>
>on "alright", see MWDEU again.  i've totally given up on this one,
>though i myself write "all right".  it's just one of my little quirks.
>
>the situation with "alright" has gone so far that a great many people
>perceive the spelling "all right" as the innovation -- and an
>ignorant one at that.  several people have written me with the
>suggestion that "all right" is in fact an eggcorn, a mistaken
>reanalysis of the unitary "alright"!  and they can explain why
>"alright" is phonologically, syntactically, and semantically a unit,
>so should not be written as two words.  on the semantic side, they
>point out that absolutely none of their uses of "alright" can be
>paraphrased as "completely correct".  some even observe that they do
>have the expression "all right" in sentences like "Your answers are
>all right" 'All of your answers are right', but that this is
>phonologically, syntactically, and semantically distinct from their
>"alright"; note "Your answers are all, every one of them, right".
>this is excellent reasoning, and at this point i'm not willing to
>maintain that all these sensitive observations are irrelevant and
>that the correct spelling is "all right", just because.
>
>arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)


--
Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor of Linguistics
Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian, and African Languages
A-740 Wells Hall
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824
Phone: (517) 432-3099
Fax: (517) 432-2736
preston at msu.edu