think/thing

[Amy West]

Thanks, Arnold. I noted that Jan Freeman's On Words column in the
Boston Globe yesterday was on this. And she came down on the "think"
variant side. Thanks for reminding us that there really aren't
"sides" in this and that we all sometimes engage in unclear,
egocentric, or fallacious thinking sometimes.

---Amy West

>Date:    Sat, 3 May 2008 11:30:02 -0700
>From:    "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
>Subject: think/thing
>
>in Jeremiah Wright's speech:
>
>ML, 5/3/08: Another thing coming about another think coming:
>   http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=120
>
>short version: as i expected, you really can't tell from the phonetics
>which version wright intended to say.
>
>some further comments on the discussion here, which has once again
>dissolved into defenses of one variant and disparagements of the
>other.  both sides exhibit grammatical egocentrism: if you're a
>"think" speaker, you suppose "thing" is an error of some sort (a slip
>of the tongue, or more likely an eggcorn); if you're a "thing"
>speaker, you suppose "think" is a hypercorrection. the fact is that
>there are two variants, both of which should now be treated as
>acceptable.
>
>and appeals to history are invalid. the fact that the "think" variant
>is the older one doesn't tell us *anything* about the status of the
>variants now. appealing to history is a kind of "originalism", related
>to the etymological fallacy.
>
>arnold

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