Is there anything ungrammatical about this sentence, beyond...

[Jonathan Lighter]

Wrong as can be, regardless of syntax.

Would you say, "Puberty started its development when I was 13"?

On the other hand, "Puberty starts at 13" is OK.

Believe It - or Not!!!

JL


On Mon, Jul 7, 2014 at 1:45 AM, Randy Alexander <strangeguitars at gmail.com>
wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Randy Alexander <strangeguitars at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Is there anything ungrammatical about this sentence,
>               beyond...
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> "I started puberty at 13" doesn't suggest it was my idea.
>
> I guess you could argue that nobody willfully pubesces while cultivation is
> always willful. (But thinking further you might be opening up a nice can of
> worms -- so many expressions are anthropomorphic, expressing inanimate
> things in human terms. Where would you draw the line?)
>
> Nothing syntactically wrong.
> On Jul 6, 2014 11:54 PM, "Laurence Horn" <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> > Subject:      Re: Is there anything ungrammatical about this sentence,
> >               beyond...
> >
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > On Jul 6, 2014, at 11:02 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
> >
> > > "I wouldn't put it this way"?
> > >=20
> > > Purslane started its cultivation in India and Persia.
> >
> > This does seem to suggest fairly strongly that this was purslane's idea.
> =
> >  Could be the writer started with something perfectly normal like  =
> > "Purslane began being cultivated=85" or "Purslane was first =
> > cultivated=85", only to get a comment from the grammar check tsk-tsking =
> > over the use of the passive.
> >
> > LH
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org