Prescriptive Linguists

[Geoff Nathan]

>
> Date:    Fri, 25 Jan 2008 10:03:19 -0200
> From:    "David A. Daniel" <dad at POKERWIZ.COM>
> Subject: Re: Prescriptive linguists
>
> *Which car did you put Mary in the garage?
>
> So this is supposed to mean "Which car did you put in the garage for Mary
> (or at Mary's behest/request)?"?
> DAD
>
Yes, that was his interpretation.
The fun part was, that no one else in the class was a native
speaker--they were all international students.  I'm Jewish of the usual
Ashkenazic background, which he knew, and he took my rejection of the
sentence as further evidence that Chomsky and I ;-) were not native
speakers, having grown up solely around immigrants, and thus not exposed
to the full 'RANGE' of American dialects.

Geoff

--
Geoffrey S. Nathan <geoffnathan at wayne.edu>

Faculty Liaison, Computing and Information Technology,
and Associate Professor of English, Linguistics Program
Phone Numbers (313) 577-1259 or (313) 577-8621
Wayne State University
Detroit, MI, 48202

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