[Ads-l] Yale Grammatical Diversity Project - Slate

[Benjamin Barrett]

Perhaps it was intended as an exercise on grammatical diversity. BB

> Joel Berson <mailto:berson at ATT.NET>
> June 30, 2015 at 6:51 AM
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society<ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Joel Berson<berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: Yale Grammatical Diversity Project - Slate
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> It came out that way to me, although I too had to decode it and had a momen=
> t of difficulty with the "or just wrong".
>
> Joel
>
>        From: Laurence Horn<laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>   To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU=20
>   Sent: Monday, June 29, 2015 11:50 PM
>   Subject: Re: [ADS-L] Yale Grammatical Diversity Project - Slate
>    =20
>> On Jun 29, 2015, at 11:22 PM, Wilson Gray<hwgray at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> =20
>> On Mon, Jun 29, 2015 at 8:43 PM, Laurence Horn<laurence.horn at yale.edu>
>> wrote:
>> =20
>>> "nascent"
>> =20
>> =20
>> Actually, that struck me as a hip way to put it, abstracting away from th=
> e
>> e.g.-ed group. Consider the that bit of Facebookery that I posted:
>> =20
>> "More transgender representation and direct voices in this matter _is_
>> critical."
>> =20
>> The government of the number of the verb according as the number of the
>> number of the nearest nominal preceding the verb instead of according as
>> the number of the subject NP is certainly a feature of contemporary Engli=
> sh
>> that's a-borning.
>> =20
>> You see it everywhere.
>> =20
>> On the other hand, the blurb does seem to say that a hearer may base his
>> judgment of the worth of a variety of speech on his emotional response to
>> its, e.g. Appalachian speakers and then it proceeds to say that it's not
>> the speakers, but their speech, full of patterns unfamiliar to the hearer=
> ,
>> which is the source of problems. Or is it the case that the blurb is sayi=
> ng
>> that the emotional response to the speakers is triggered by their apparen=
> t
>> misuse of the language and not by their non-standard personal aspect. Or
>> something.
>
> Well, it shouldn't have said that; the idea is that we consider unfamiliar =
> patterns either quaint (the British "They didn't leave but they should have=
>   done") or reprehensible and "illiterate" (black speakers, Appalachian/sout=
> hern white speakers) depending on our attitude toward the social group, not=
>   on our attitude toward the specific construction, but I suppose it's not s=
> urprising if it didn't come out that way.=C2=A0=20
>
> LH

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