Nobel Prize for Archaeological Grammar

[Laurence Horn]

At 6:49 AM -0700 8/22/07, Laurence Urdang wrote:
>Of course dived is "far older" than "dove": the verb dive is what is
>called a "weak" verb (amongst those who know anything about general
>or comparative linguistics), hence does not change internally but
>adds the "weak" marker of the past, namely, "-d," "-ed," or some
>other dental sound.
>   I am getting very tired of those who label "correct" as
>"hypercorrect" as if there were (that's a contrary-to-fact
>subjunctive, folks) some stigma attached to being correct.

I don't understand this objection.  The only way I've seen
"hypercorrection" used is as applied to forms that are not normally
taken to be "correct" at all, such as (from our recent discussion)
"Give it to Tom and I".  It's not that there's a stigma associated
withe being "correct" (even assuming prescriptivist norms), but that
the _motivation_ for using such forms (as opposed to "Me and Tom gave
it to you", which is neither "correct" nor "hypercorrect") is the
speaker's worry that the form that would normally have been chosen
(e.g. "Give it to Tom and me/to me and Tom") is incorrect ('Don't say
"me and Tom", say "Tom and I"!') and that the unnatural or artificial
("Tom and I") form should be chosen instead.  Similarly for
phonological examples (e.g. the inserted /r/ between vowels, e.g.
"the idear of it", in non-rhotic dialects.)  Am I missing something?

LH

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