More on substituting

[Arnold Zwicky]

On Aug 14, 2011, at 10:27 AM, victor steinbok wrote:
>
>
> There appear to be multiple levels of miscommunication in the latest
> development on this thread. JL noted a reversal that upsets him because he
> thinks it fails to communicate the desired meaning--in fact, in standard
> interpretation, it says the opposite (hence, reversal). AZ is annoyed
> (mildly?) at the repetition of people expressing pet peeves about subjects
> that have been previously covered and rehashed (in this case, anywhere from
> 4 to 6 years ago).

i am annoyed (significantly) at several levels.  getting pet peeves about subjects that have been repeatedly covered here is the least of it.  worse is getting them again and again from the same people on the same subject, as if each fresh example the writers come across is a fresh insult to them.  much worse is the basis for the complaint -- that people are "saying the opposite of what they mean"; that was the main point in my posting before this one.  finally, it's hugely annoying that people on this list, who should know better, toss off such complaints.

> DG comes up suggesting that this is not simply a
> complaint about usage--that would indeed be quite ordinary--but about the
> non-standard usage that's seeped into formally edited materials, i.e., it
> has been tacitly accepted as standard. Thus the observation is not of new
> usage but of a new level of spread. Some may find this to be a more
> significant fact that others.

reversed "substitute" seems to be getting to the point that intensifying "literally" and speaker-oriented "hopefully" got to some time ago, when they began appearing in edited text.  the outcry gets serious at that point -- and the outcry rarely has any impact (these two are now standard variants).  but it's a sign of change in progress.

arnold

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