"due"

[Wilson Gray]

Whatever happeneOn Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 9:23 AM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Consider the universal journalistic phrase "due to." Â As in
>
> "The President is due to deliver his speech on blah-blah this afternoon at
> Wacka-Wacka."
>

What ever happened to

"... coughs _due to_ colds"

the single, quintessential example of the proper syntactic structure
in which the use of _due to_ is licensed, in accord with the
etymological source of _due_, as prescribed in the textbook, English
Grammar? That is, I was taught to interpret the example sentence as a
word-salad equivalent to

"The President is caused by / is a consequence of / results from,
etc., deliver his speech ..."

For real, y'all! I ain't bullshittin' ONE pound! (_or_ I ain't
bullshittin' a POUND!)

And yet, I still believe that prescriptive grammar has real-world uses.

--
-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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