Volokh on prescriptivism and "assertionism"

[Victor Steinbok]

Eugene Volokh frequently posts style/grammar comments on his blog.
Earlier he commented on wilful vs. willful. Today he posted a follow up
that--like several earlier posts--picks up on an obnoxious comment on
his post.

http://goo.gl/io2Xv
> Earlier this month, I blogged about assertionism
> [http://goo.gl/WYKC5]-- my label for usage claims that sound like
> prescriptivism, but are actually bare assertions: They don't rely on
> any claims about what the (supposed) Linguistic Authorities say, on
> any detailed logical arguments, or on claims about allegedly superior
> clarity or precision; they just consist of a person's bare assertions.
> And when one asks for evidence supporting the claim, all one gets is
> more bare assertions. Prescriptivists ought to dislike assertionism as
> much as descriptivists do, partly because assertionism often comes
> across as unintentional parody of prescriptivism.
> Here's an interesting example, which started on the wilful vs. willful
> [http://goo.gl/MfLBh] thread. I started my post with, "A student saw
> 'wilful' used in an opinion, and asked whether it was a typo." A
> commenter then responded that the sentence
>
>>     does not conform to proper English usage. The "whether" indicates
>>     that what follows is speculative, requiring that the verb be
>>     rendered in the subjunctive mood. "Was" is always indicative.
>>
>
> And the commenter then gave several assertedly "proper renderings of
> the sentence," the first of which was:
>
>>     A student saw "wilful" used in an opinion, and asked whether it
>>     were a typo.
>>
>

He then responds to criticism (and responds further in comments).

     VS-)

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