Rules against most?

[Tom Zurinskas]

Perhaps he's thinking that "most students" in this sentence means majority.  But the common usage he might be thinking about is when you say "Who has the most students".  That does not mean majority.  He may not be comfortable with most meaning "majority".

Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+ 
see truespel.com


 
 





 
> Date: Tue, 10 Mar 2009 13:07:29 +0800
> From: strangeguitars at GMAIL.COM
> Subject: Re: Rules against most?
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> 
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Randy Alexander <strangeguitars at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Re: Rules against most?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 12:05 PM, Barbara Need <bhneed at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I am teaching developmental writing these days and one of my students
> > threw me this evening. We working on organizing ideas and I was
> > putting together a paragraph from what we have and I wrote a sentence
> > that began something like the following: Next, most students use the
> > internet for communication. When I was just about done with the
> > paragraph, one of my students (40-ish black male, if that should be
> > relevant--Chicagoland) said he thought I should delete "most" and he
> > expressed surprise that a writing instructor should use this
> > construction. I asked him to say why he found the surprising, but he
> > could not articulate it beyond he didn't expect an writing instructor
> > to use. Any guesses as to what rule I violated?
> >
> > It did occur to me as I was driving home that he may have been told
> > not to use most when it is short for almost, but I'm not sure.
> 
> I can't imagine anything wrong with that usage. As I was reading
> this, I thought the problem was going to be with "next", which sounds
> strange to me without a context. Here, "most" is most certainly not
> short for "almost". It's a perfectly normal use of the determinative.
> 
> Maybe (I'm just guessing of course) his objection was one of citation?
> It's certainly foul play to pop out facts like "most X do Y" without
> supporting numbers.
> 
> [As I was writing that, I mistyped "pop" as "poop" and then cracked up
> at the eggcornishness.]
> 
> --
> Randy Alexander
> Jilin City, China
> My Manchu studies blog:
> http://www.bjshengr.com/manchu
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

_________________________________________________________________
Windows Live™: Life without walls.
http://windowslive.com/explore?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_allup_1a_explore_032009
------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org