Towards/toward (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Laurence Horn]

On Apr 12, 2014, at 6:49 PM, Herb Stahlke wrote:

> I was taught in high school English that the -s form was an adverb and the
> bare form a preposition.  There is a -s suffix that produces adverbs, as in
> nowadays or besides, and it analogizes to anyways.

But "anyway" is an adverb even without the "s" (what else could it be?), and "nowaday" isn't anything without an "s" (, although I guess that might not be a problem for the hypothesis.  As for "toward"/"towards", is there a minimal pair in which the former is being used as a preposition and the latter as and adverb?  "We're heading toward perdition faster than we've ever headed towards"?

LH
>
>
> On Sat, Apr 12, 2014 at 11:46 AM, Jonathan Lighter
> <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:
>
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>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject:      Re: Towards/toward (UNCLASSIFIED)
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> "Towards" actually sounds slightly more normal to me, "toward" being more
>> formal.
>>
>> I guarandamntee you that in my NYC existence I said nothing but "towards,"
>> and I would bet that my 19th century grandparents did the same.
>>
>> JL
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 6:00 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
>>
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>>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
>>> Subject:      Re: Towards/toward (UNCLASSIFIED)
>>>
>>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> At 4/11/2014 01:44 PM, Mullins, Bill CIV (US) wrote:
>>>> Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
>>>> Caveats: NONE
>>>>
>>>> From a handout, when David Foster Wallace was teaching:
>>>>
>> http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2014/03/david-foster-wallace-common-word
>>>> -usage-mistakes/
>>>>
>>>> "1. The preposition towards is British usage; the US spelling is toward.
>>>> Writing towards is like writing colour or judgement. (Factoid: Except
>>>> for backwards and afterwards, no preposition ending in -ward takes a
>>>> final s in US usage.)"
>>>
>>> How about "amongst"?  :-)
>>> Joel
>>>
>>>
>>>> I grew up in Tennessee, and "towards" doesn't sound wrong to me.  Is
>>>> this usage more common in the South?
>>>>
>>>> Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
>>>> Caveats: NONE
>>>>
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>>
>>
>> --
>> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
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