Snow

[Bill Palmer]

Normally I would go off list to send a personal reply, but I'd like other
subscribers to know how much I appreciate JL's complete, convincing, and
richly illustrated response and explanantion.

Bill P

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jonathan Lighter" <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Tuesday, March 03, 2009 5:39 PM
Subject: Re: Snow


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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Snow
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>
> There are crucial differences between most kinds of linguistic study
> and mathematics or the physical sciences.
>
> Mathematics and physical science demand objective proofs (or at least
> falsifiable results). This necessity has led to methodological standards
> that must be rigorously adhered to if the results are to be accepted.
>
> Language, as I tell my introductory linguistics students, isn't like math
> or
> science. In fact, it isn't much like *anything* else.  As I said before,
> it's psychological rather than purely logical.
>
> Even the question of "standards" is misleadingly simple, partly because
> generations of many generations of schoolteachers misinformed their pupils
> about the nature of language in general and of English in particular. At
> first they insisted that English be made to conform as much as possible to
> Classical Latin. Why? Because Latin was more complicated (and "therefore"
> more "precise") and because it was a much older language (and
> "therefore" had undergone less "decay" from some Edenic ideal).  To be
> entirely consistent, they should have insisted that English model itself
> on Hebrew, but with so few English pedagogues who were fluent in Hebrew,
> Latin was accepted as a solid compromise. (They did have to be practical.)
>
> Some people are still terrified of splitting an infinitive.  Why were they
> instructed not to? Because Roman writers did not split Latin infinitives.
> The reason they didn't, however, is that Latin infinitives are composed of
> a
> single word and it's impossible to split them.  This is not the sort of
> rule
> that has anything to do with the internal logic of English, which often
> encourages you to split infinitives for the sake of clarity or emphasis.
>
> The obsession with English as a debased form of Latin eventually passed,
> but
> its soul kept marching on. That soul was the belief that English could be
> "improved" through the observance of innumerable subtle principles that
> often seemed "logical" in the abstract but whose "logic" was not always
> sufficiently obvious to be adopted by the millions of native speakers of
> English. Take "ain't."  From the pedagogical point of view, "ain't" had
> several strikes against it.  Unlike "don't" and "isn't," it was not
> transparently a contraction of anything (and well into the nineteenth
> century all contractions were rather frowned upon). Furthermore, since it
> can be used with any person (I, you, etc. ain't) it "obscured grammatical
> distinctions," something that was supposed to be ruinous for your mind as
> well as for your language. People who like to judge such things
> sometimes said it had an "ugly" sound. Strike four was the perception
> (correct or not - it's impossible to say) that the vast majority of people
> who used "ain't" were ignorant, illiterate rustics; dangerous, illiterate
> slum dwellers; and social climbers stupid enough to give away their
> hereditary boorishness by saying "ain't."  In other words, lunkheads.
>
> Now consider this. The war against "ain't" has been going for well over
> 200
> years. With interesting results.  On the one hand, the absolute number of
> "ain't"-sayers in the world has undoubtedly exploded from what it was in,
> say, 1790, when the population of the U.S. was under three million. On the
> other, the taboo against using "ain't" in formal writing has been
> so thoroughly accepted that in twenty-odd years of teaching I don't think
> I
> saw a single freshman, no matter how benighted otherwise, use it seriously
> in a theme. And I never told them not to, because they already knew.
>
> Let me make my major point and go away. There are many different
> "standards"
> applicable to a language. Possibly the most obvious is the distinction
> between what's "acceptable" in speech and what's "acceptable" in writing.
> In
> speech, any locution seems to be functionally acceptable to the world at
> large if it is perfectly understandable and if it does not incite
> violence.
> In writing, it is acceptable to the university-educated community of
> readers
> and writers if it is perfectly understandable. not obviously illogical,
> not
> ridiculously or distractingly novel, and not associated with lunkheads.
> If
> you believe I'm belaboring this "lunkhead" idea, think about it. Writing
> that seems to have originated with a stranger whose command of spelling
> (not
> an issue in speech), vocabulary, punctuation (not an issue in speech),
> syntax, etc., is much less than perfect in the eyes of his audience is
> likely to be utterly unpersuasive. That stranger appears to be too
> feckless
> to have learned how to "write" like an educated person.
>
> In speech there are regional standards, social expectations, and on and
> on.
> Why do Northerners sing pop songs with fake Southern accents and nobody
> seems to notice? Because it's become a "standard" feature.  It can be
> explained historically but not justified logically.  As we've discussed
> here
> recently, if "decimare" in Latin meant "to execute every tenth one" (one
> of
> those unsplittable infinitives) must to "decimate" in English be confined
> to
> an identical meaning?  And if so, how can we enforce our decision?  Or any
> decision like it that the public doesn't feel like honoring?
>
> An astronomer who thinks "Jupiter" is really called "Venus" will not keep
> his position long because other astronomers won't stand for it.  If
> people talk of Marines as soldiers, who can stop them? (I agree that a
> professional journalist should be held to a higher standard, but most
> people
> are not journalists.)
>
> So what is "right" and what is "wrong" in English usage?  Usage ultimately
> decides; that's how we got from Beowulf's English to here.  One may prod
> and
> protest, but common usage always wins out.
>
> One more word. The popular belief about English in general being at risk
> of
> "decay" in any meaningful sense of  the word is nonsense.  People have
> always made blunders that don't stick; the ones that do stick and spread
> become "normal" and the system adjusts elsewhere to retain clarity. By the
> principle of "decay," Shakespeare and Chaucer were much poorer writers
> than
> Bede because Will and Geoff didn't use his presumably "purer" Old English.
> If English hasn't produced a later writer as great as Shakespeare (and
> "greatness" cannot be measured mathematically), blame Shakespeare's
> genius,
> not the supposed "decay" of English.
>
> JL
>
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