Why subjunctive?

[Wilson Gray]

On Thu, Aug 12, 2010 at 3:09 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:

> the prescriptive edict

There's a prescriptive edict WRT this? Who knew? Grammar has really
passed me by. IAC, I've always used intuition, irregardless of whether
it be prescriptively or idiomatically correct, in the opinion of
others.

FWIW, in this case, I agree with Ron, for no more essential reason
than that what he says is, IMO, "correct," whatever that word may mean
in the context of a discussion of the description of a living language
by its native speakers. Perhaps, "This is what *I* prefer, but I don't
have a problem with *your* preference to have it be some other way."
Unless you be working class, poor, immigrant or otherwise lacking
command of the "standard" language, of course. The purity of our noble
native tongue, sufficient unto the needs of Chaucer, Shakespeare, and
Dubya must be preserved.

As the last is reputed to have observed (here, I depend upon my own
translation of an unknown-to?/by?-me English original that had been
translated into Spanish):

"Most of America's imports come from overseas."

That's true on several - or should that be, "so many"? - levels.

-Wilson
--
-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"––a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
–Mark Twain

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