God dammit... I put the IPA stuff in the OP for a reason... /dɪˈsɛkt/
/pedantry
For what it's worth, you would hate the way I pronounce dissect. I grew up in the South, and I don't know anyone who pronounces it the way you (and the OED, for what it's worth) say it's pronounced.
The Southern dialects are infamous for wrongly emphasizing words with latin prefixes, e.g., words that begin in de-, re-, ex-, di-, or in-.
It's not wrong; it's just different. Do you think AAVE is wrong? Do you think Appalachian English is wrong?
Has anything from Appalachia ever not been?
Less snarkily, there's a pretty big difference between varying the way a certain sound is made or stressed across the board (pahk da cah) and just straight out using the wrong sound or getting the word wrong (nookuler).
Bagginses on
0
Options
AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
edited April 2011
MrMister, I promise to try to engage you tomorrow. I'm so wiped out right now. I need sleep.
Atomika on
0
Options
AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
Less snarkily, there's a pretty big difference between varying the way a certain sound is made or stressed across the board (pahk da cah) and just straight out using the wrong sound or getting the word wrong (nookuler).
I often feel extolling the Descriptivist virtues of linguistic phenomena is very similar to citing Unitarianism as an example of non-coercive religious denomination. It broadens the employment and definitions so largely, everything under it begins to lose all value.
Then again, I like to think that anyone who would be consciously concerned with linguistic identity would also be equally concerned with linguistic correctness, as the logical arguments for knowingly portraying yourself as one ignorant of lingual rules are few and not immediately coming to mind.
Descriptivist usage =/= academic grasp, so I feel the two should be argued separately.
I'm currently writing a paper on the Frege-Geach problem for Expressivist semantic theories. Here's a pretty good intro on what Expressivist semantics are and the Frege Geach problem they face:
The semantic theory of expressivism has been applied within metaethics to evaluative words like 'good' and 'wrong,' within epistemology to words like 'knows', and within the philosophy of language, to words like 'true', to epistemic modals like 'might,' 'must,' and 'probably', and to indicative conditionals. For each topic, expressivism promises the advantage of giving us the resources to say what sentences involving these words mean by telling us what it is to believe these things, rather than by telling us what it would be for them to be true. This, in turn, absolves these theories of the burden of holding that there is any general answer to what it is for these sentences to be true. However, expressivism is famously subject to a deep and general problem about how to account for the meanings of complex sentences--a problem variously known as the 'Frege-Geach' or 'embedding' problem...
Expressivist theories seek to give an account of the meaning of some sentences, 'P', without having to say what it would be, for it to be the case that P. Instead of characterizing what 'P' means by saying what it would be for it to be the case that P, the expressivist seeks to characterize what 'P' means by saying what it is to believe that P. So, for example, noncognitivist expressivism in metaethics claims that believing that stealing is wrong is an importantly different kind of state of mind than believing grass is green. Whereas the latter state has a 'mind-to-world' direction of fit and keeps track of the way things are in the world--namely whether grass is green--the former state has a 'world-to-mind' direction of fit, and has the role simply of motivating you not to steal. According to this view, you can't characterize the meaning of 'stealing is wrong' by saying how the world has to be, in order for it to be the case that stealing is wrong, because believing that stealing is wrong isn't taking the world to be any particular way. So we have to understand the meaning of 'stealing is wrong' by instead understanding the distinctive state of mind that you need to be in, in order to believe that stealing is wrong.
Another--in my view, more interesting--application of expressivism is to indicative conditionals. On this view, there is no particular way that you have to be confident that the world is, in order to believe P-->Q--you just have to have high conditional credence in Q, conditional on P. Since there is no way that you are confident that the world is, when you believe that P-->Q, we can't read off what it is to believe that P-->Q, from a story about what it is for it to be the case that P-->Q. So instead, we should give the meaning of 'P-->Q' by understanding what it is to believe that P-->Q--namely, to have a high conditional credence.
The Frege-Geach problem for expressivism is the problem of generalizing the nice things that it is easy to say about simple, unembedded, sentences, into a compositional theory of meaning which tells us not just what it is to believe that P for simple sentences, 'P,' but for arbitrary sentences, composed with the connectives of propositional logic, with quantifiers, modals, tense, generics, attitude reports, and so on.
Several factors conspire to make this problem difficult. First... truth-conditional techniques don't generalize straightforwardly to an expressivist semantics, so expressivists need to come up with their own compositional techniques, effectively treating the meanings of connectives as functions from the mental states expressed by component sentences to the mental state expressed by the whole. Second, these techniques need to work equally well, no matter what attitude is expressed by component sentences, including 'mixed' cases in which one component sentence expresses one kind of state of mind, and another expresses a different one. And third, despite all the extra constraints, the resulting account needs to explain all the right semantic properties of complex sentences, which they have in virtue of the way they are composed--including, famously, among others, logical and inferential properties. Finally, fourth, the account should be conservative in its treatment of purely 'descriptive' sentences--the ones that express ordinary beliefs, which by themselves don't require a special treatment. Each of these factors plays a key role in what has made the Frege Geach problem so tricky for expressivists...
In general, I think expressivism about normative discourse is clearly and obviously false, however, I do not think that the reason it's false is because of it's difficulty in giving a compositional semantics. So that is what I am trying to argue in my paper.
Expressivism has to be true in a certain trivial sense. If a person were to make a statement 'P' they must also necessarily believe that 'P' is the case; otherwise a sentence like "It's raining outside but I don't believe it is" wouldn't seem as odd as it does. The task of casting doubt on Expressivism would have to involve arguments that a belief that 'P' is the case is a necessary but not sufficient account of what one means by 'P'.
edit: Though it appears I may have misunderstood what your argument was referring to.
Less snarkily, there's a pretty big difference between varying the way a certain sound is made or stressed across the board (pahk da cah) and just straight out using the wrong sound or getting the word wrong (nookuler).
I often feel extolling the Descriptivist virtues of linguistic phenomena is very similar to citing Unitarianism as an example of non-coercive religious denomination. It broadens the employment and definitions so largely, everything under it begins to lose all value.
Then again, I like to think that anyone who would be consciously concerned with linguistic identity would also be equally concerned with linguistic correctness, as the logical arguments for knowingly portraying yourself as one ignorant of lingual rules are few and not immediately coming to mind.
Descriptivist usage =/= academic grasp, so I feel the two should be argued separately.
I tend to take the systematic view, where internal consistency is key. For example, the African American dialect is correct because all of the deviances (deviants?) from American standard are applied consistently across all cases, indicating a basis in a variant grammatical system (there are, of course, issues with using a subset dialect in mixed company, but let's ignore them for now). On the other hand, the usage of the plural "they" with singular subjects without obvious gender (each person thought they were the winner) is bad because you never see it anywhere else and it messes up the consistency of the sentence ("they were the winner" only makes sense if everyone is sharing the win).
Edit: of course, being an academic is an inherently descriptivist practice, as the duty of the academic is the study of a subject. That's one of the big differences between biologists and doctors.
Less snarkily, there's a pretty big difference between varying the way a certain sound is made or stressed across the board (pahk da cah) and just straight out using the wrong sound or getting the word wrong (nookuler).
I often feel extolling the Descriptivist virtues of linguistic phenomena is very similar to citing Unitarianism as an example of non-coercive religious denomination. It broadens the employment and definitions so largely, everything under it begins to lose all value.
Then again, I like to think that anyone who would be consciously concerned with linguistic identity would also be equally concerned with linguistic correctness, as the logical arguments for knowingly portraying yourself as one ignorant of lingual rules are few and not immediately coming to mind.
Descriptivist usage =/= academic grasp, so I feel the two should be argued separately.
I tend to take the systematic view, where internal consistency is key. For example, the African American dialect is correct because all of the deviances (deviants?) from American standard are applied consistently across all cases, indicating a basis in a variant grammatical system (there are, of course, issues with using a subset dialect in mixed company, but let's ignore them for now). On the other hand, the usage of the plural "they" with singular subjects without obvious gender (each person thought they were the winner) is bad because you never see it anywhere else and it messes up the consistency of the sentence ("they were the winner" only makes sense if everyone is sharing the win).
Edit: of course, being an academic is an inherently descriptivist practice, as the duty of the academic is the study of a subject. That's one of the big differences between biologists and doctors.
Appalachian English is internally consistent as well.
Also, "they" has been used as a singular, genderless pronoun for about 400 years.
Less snarkily, there's a pretty big difference between varying the way a certain sound is made or stressed across the board (pahk da cah) and just straight out using the wrong sound or getting the word wrong (nookuler).
I often feel extolling the Descriptivist virtues of linguistic phenomena is very similar to citing Unitarianism as an example of non-coercive religious denomination. It broadens the employment and definitions so largely, everything under it begins to lose all value.
Then again, I like to think that anyone who would be consciously concerned with linguistic identity would also be equally concerned with linguistic correctness, as the logical arguments for knowingly portraying yourself as one ignorant of lingual rules are few and not immediately coming to mind.
Descriptivist usage =/= academic grasp, so I feel the two should be argued separately.
I tend to take the systematic view, where internal consistency is key. For example, the African American dialect is correct because all of the deviances (deviants?) from American standard are applied consistently across all cases, indicating a basis in a variant grammatical system (there are, of course, issues with using a subset dialect in mixed company, but let's ignore them for now). On the other hand, the usage of the plural "they" with singular subjects without obvious gender (each person thought they were the winner) is bad because you never see it anywhere else and it messes up the consistency of the sentence ("they were the winner" only makes sense if everyone is sharing the win).
Edit: of course, being an academic is an inherently descriptivist practice, as the duty of the academic is the study of a subject. That's one of the big differences between biologists and doctors.
Appalachian English is internally consistent as well.
Also, "they" has been used as a singular, genderless pronoun for about 400 years.
Then why is it followed by "are?"
Also, find me one other context is which "they" is singular.
Edit: It's also not like people only started fucking up grammar in the last twenty years. If you went by what you can find a few examples of over the whole history of the English language, you could spell any name less British than "Smith" as a random jumble of letters.
But the idea that antecedents of unknown gender was a later invention. The people who insisted on using "he" were the ones "fucking up the grammar."
Singular "they" is no more inconsistent or confusing than the tu/vous distinction in French and other Romance languages. In some contexts "they" refers to a group of people; in other contexts it refers to a single person of indeterminate or unknown gender. I can't imagine any possible context in which this would be confusing, because obviously nobody would be talking about "them" without having mentioned the antecedent first.
Anyway I don't see the point of a "rule" that has been ignored by many great English writers over the past few centuries. What use is a rule for good writing that is not followed by good writers?
I have a problem with that map of the US. People from Michigan, Eastern Wisconsin, and the northern parts of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois do not sound like people from the Dakotas or Minnesota.
I have a problem with that map of the US. People from Michigan, Eastern Wisconsin, and the northern parts of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois do not sound like people from the Dakotas or Minnesota.
Not really at all no. Well, that's a lie. People from rural portions of Minnesota in the northern regions sound similar. People from rural (western) ND and a large part of SD have a completely different accent entirely.
Oh, there's this lady at work... English is not her first language by far. She works with me (who's 26) and a bunch of younger guys and she's picked up saying "man" as a normal part of phrasing because she has heard all of us use it a lot.
The catch is that she doesn't understand that context and tone of voice turn the simple words, "Hey man..." into something totally insulting/disrespectful.
Sadly she's not the kind of person that you can tell this to without an argument ensuing.
Less snarkily, there's a pretty big difference between varying the way a certain sound is made or stressed across the board (pahk da cah) and just straight out using the wrong sound or getting the word wrong (nookuler).
I often feel extolling the Descriptivist virtues of linguistic phenomena is very similar to citing Unitarianism as an example of non-coercive religious denomination. It broadens the employment and definitions so largely, everything under it begins to lose all value.
Then again, I like to think that anyone who would be consciously concerned with linguistic identity would also be equally concerned with linguistic correctness, as the logical arguments for knowingly portraying yourself as one ignorant of lingual rules are few and not immediately coming to mind.
Descriptivist usage =/= academic grasp, so I feel the two should be argued separately.
I tend to take the systematic view, where internal consistency is key. For example, the African American dialect is correct because all of the deviances (deviants?) from American standard are applied consistently across all cases, indicating a basis in a variant grammatical system (there are, of course, issues with using a subset dialect in mixed company, but let's ignore them for now). On the other hand, the usage of the plural "they" with singular subjects without obvious gender (each person thought they were the winner) is bad because you never see it anywhere else and it messes up the consistency of the sentence ("they were the winner" only makes sense if everyone is sharing the win).
Edit: of course, being an academic is an inherently descriptivist practice, as the duty of the academic is the study of a subject. That's one of the big differences between biologists and doctors.
Appalachian English is internally consistent as well.
Also, "they" has been used as a singular, genderless pronoun for about 400 years.
Then why is it followed by "are?"
Also, find me one other context is which "they" is singular.
Edit: It's also not like people only started fucking up grammar in the last twenty years. If you went by what you can find a few examples of over the whole history of the English language, you could spell any name less British than "Smith" as a random jumble of letters.
I'm fine with the creation of new words, but grievous mispronunciation of existing ones bothers me. I can't hear someone say "die-sekt" when they mean "dissect" without grinding my teeth.
. . .
How do you pronounce it?
Speaker on
0
Options
Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
I'm fine with the creation of new words, but grievous mispronunciation of existing ones bothers me. I can't hear someone say "die-sekt" when they mean "dissect" without grinding my teeth.
. . .
How do you pronounce it?
The 'di' is like the 'di' in "dick" as opposed to the 'di' in "dice" according to the IPA guide that was posted above.
God dammit... I put the IPA stuff in the OP for a reason... /dɪˈsɛkt/
/pedantry
For what it's worth, you would hate the way I pronounce dissect. I grew up in the South, and I don't know anyone who pronounces it the way you (and the OED, for what it's worth) say it's pronounced.
The Southern dialects are infamous for wrongly emphasizing words with latin prefixes, e.g., words that begin in de-, re-, ex-, di-, or in-.
It's not wrong; it's just different. Do you think AAVE is wrong? Do you think Appalachian English is wrong?
Has anything from Appalachia ever not been?
Less snarkily, there's a pretty big difference between varying the way a certain sound is made or stressed across the board (pahk da cah) and just straight out using the wrong sound or getting the word wrong (nookuler).
There isn't really a right and wrong way to pronounce things if you are speaking your native language naturally.
I'm fine with the creation of new words, but grievous mispronunciation of existing ones bothers me. I can't hear someone say "die-sekt" when they mean "dissect" without grinding my teeth.
. . .
How do you pronounce it?
The 'di' is like the 'di' in "dick" as opposed to the 'di' in "dice" according to the IPA guide that was posted above.
If everything was pronounced as in the IPA guide virtually every accent would be incorrect.
That's a silly approach to language. Why would the IPA guide be the "correct" pronunciation?
Speaker on
0
Options
Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
I'm fine with the creation of new words, but grievous mispronunciation of existing ones bothers me. I can't hear someone say "die-sekt" when they mean "dissect" without grinding my teeth.
. . .
How do you pronounce it?
The 'di' is like the 'di' in "dick" as opposed to the 'di' in "dice" according to the IPA guide that was posted above.
If everything was pronounced as in the IPA guide virtually every accent would be incorrect.
That's a silly approach to language. Why would the IPA guide be the "correct" pronunciation?
Well it's a guide written in the IPA alphabet, but LoveIsUnity wrote it AFAIK.
The reasoning is that it's more in keeping with the Latin roots and consistent - consider 'disunity' and then 'dissect'.
Of course, I would argue that this is a relatively naive approach to how morphology and phonology interacts...
No one argues that wife should be pronounced "wif", or werewolf as "wer-wolf" because they would be more in keeping with the old english roots.
Absolutely.
Likewise certain phonemes far more naturally roll off the tongue after other phonemes and so that kind of systematization flies in the face of other facets of the language.
I feel like there's a lot of pretentiousness in calling things 'wrong' and 'incorrect' which are decided by informal consensus.
Its like saying it's wrong that they allow zone defense in college basketball, or that Europeans paint their keys the wrong shape.
Nevermind that things like "y'all" and singular "they" are used because they make up for pronoun failures of the English language, and for the most part are less cumbersome and more understandable than the alternatives.
Is this thread really going to be about people using long words to describe low-status or foreign accents and dialects which are wholly effective as 'wrong' because they are different?
Less snarkily, there's a pretty big difference between varying the way a certain sound is made or stressed across the board (pahk da cah) and just straight out using the wrong sound or getting the word wrong (nookuler).
I often feel extolling the Descriptivist virtues of linguistic phenomena is very similar to citing Unitarianism as an example of non-coercive religious denomination. It broadens the employment and definitions so largely, everything under it begins to lose all value.
Then again, I like to think that anyone who would be consciously concerned with linguistic identity would also be equally concerned with linguistic correctness, as the logical arguments for knowingly portraying yourself as one ignorant of lingual rules are few and not immediately coming to mind.
Descriptivist usage =/= academic grasp, so I feel the two should be argued separately.
I tend to take the systematic view, where internal consistency is key. For example, the African American dialect is correct because all of the deviances (deviants?) from American standard are applied consistently across all cases, indicating a basis in a variant grammatical system (there are, of course, issues with using a subset dialect in mixed company, but let's ignore them for now). On the other hand, the usage of the plural "they" with singular subjects without obvious gender (each person thought they were the winner) is bad because you never see it anywhere else and it messes up the consistency of the sentence ("they were the winner" only makes sense if everyone is sharing the win).
Edit: of course, being an academic is an inherently descriptivist practice, as the duty of the academic is the study of a subject. That's one of the big differences between biologists and doctors.
Appalachian English is internally consistent as well.
Also, "they" has been used as a singular, genderless pronoun for about 400 years.
Then why is it followed by "are?"
Also, find me one other context is which "they" is singular.
Edit: It's also not like people only started fucking up grammar in the last twenty years. If you went by what you can find a few examples of over the whole history of the English language, you could spell any name less British than "Smith" as a random jumble of letters.
Also, find me one other context is which "they" is singular.
Edit: It's also not like people only started fucking up grammar in the last twenty years. If you went by what you can find a few examples of over the whole history of the English language, you could spell any name less British than "Smith" as a random jumble of letters.
It really helps to read what you're replying to.
Bagginses on
0
Options
HachfaceNot the Minister Farrakhan you're thinking ofDammit, Shepard!Registered Userregular
In Spanish, the pronoun usted -- meaning you -- is semantically second-person but grammatically third-person: even though it refers to the second person, when it is paired with a verb the verb is conjugated into a third-person form. Why can't English have a similar construction, in which they has the meaning of a singular pronoun but functions grammatically as a plural?
Hachface on
0
Options
AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
Is this thread really going to be about people using long words to describe low-status or foreign accents and dialects which are wholly effective as 'wrong' because they are different?
That would be awful.
I think it strongly depends on context.
If two Appalachians want to engage using their native dialect, a dialect that diverges strongly from whatever the Received Pronunciation analogue is for US English, the descriptive difference is negligible.
But dialects and accents can become so insular as to hamper communications outside their boundaries. When I worked in very rural parts of the South near the Ozarks, people who spoke with pronounced regional dialects became far enough removed from common understanding that I would have trouble figuring out what they were talking about. Which, since my work is in emergency medicine, that's kind of a problem. For example, these are some of the terms and phrases I would frequently come across:
- "I've been vomerkin"/I've been vomiting
- "burl" or "risin"/infected abscess
- "leg fever"/peripheral blood clot
- "rummatiz"/arthritis
- "high blood"/diabetes
- "poltice"/a homemade salve, usually quite useless or even harmful
It's hard to say any form of facilitated communication is objectively "wrong," but I would lay more fault upon the user of the fringe dialect in instances where communication is NOT easily facilitated.
In Spanish, the pronoun usted -- meaning you -- is semantically second-person but grammatically third-person: even though it refers to the second person, when it is paired with a verb the verb is conjugated into a third-person form. Why can't English have a similar construction, in which they has the meaning of a singular pronoun but functions grammatically as a plural?
Because it's plural everywhere else, and you never see that type of construction anywhere in English outside of people miking it up as an excuse for this one construction.
Really, the big issue is that it's pretty ridiculous to say that it's singular in this case and only this case and that this singular is still treated as plural. That's pretty much a perfect example of bullshit.
In Spanish, the pronoun usted -- meaning you -- is semantically second-person but grammatically third-person: even though it refers to the second person, when it is paired with a verb the verb is conjugated into a third-person form. Why can't English have a similar construction, in which they has the meaning of a singular pronoun but functions grammatically as a plural?
Because it's plural everywhere else, and you never see that type of construction anywhere in English outside of people miking it up as an excuse for this one construction.
Really, the big issue is that it's pretty ridiculous to say that it's singular in this case and only this case and that this singular is still treated as plural. That's pretty much a perfect example of bullshit.
English already has a pronoun that is grammatically plural but often semantically singular--"you." Are you seriously arguing that using "you" instead of "thou" when addressing single persons is "ridiculous" and "bullshit"?
Again, as that link shows, singular "they" is not a modern invention; it can be traced back to Middle English, and great English writers of every generation from Chaucer to Shakespeare to Austen to CS Lewis have used it. It's the grammarians trying to impose a rule that did not formerly exist in English that were "fucking up the rules." Singular "they" is at least as old as singular "you," so it's ridiculous to argue so strongly against one but not the other.
EDIT: And I still don't understand your objection that "it's singular only in this case." Yes, "they" is only singular when it refers to a singular antecedent. Congratulations on the tautology?
In Spanish, the pronoun usted -- meaning you -- is semantically second-person but grammatically third-person: even though it refers to the second person, when it is paired with a verb the verb is conjugated into a third-person form. Why can't English have a similar construction, in which they has the meaning of a singular pronoun but functions grammatically as a plural?
Because it's plural everywhere else, and you never see that type of construction anywhere in English outside of people miking it up as an excuse for this one construction.
Really, the big issue is that it's pretty ridiculous to say that it's singular in this case and only this case and that this singular is still treated as plural. That's pretty much a perfect example of bullshit.
English already has a pronoun that is grammatically plural but often semantically singular--"you." Are you seriously arguing that using "you" instead of "thou" when addressing single persons is "ridiculous" and "bullshit"?
Again, as that link shows, singular "they" is not a modern invention; it can be traced back to Middle English, and great English writers of every generation from Chaucer to Shakespeare to Austen to CS Lewis have used it. It's the grammarians trying to impose a rule that did not formerly exist in English that were "fucking up the rules." Singular "they" is at least as old as singular "you," so it's ridiculous to argue so strongly against one but not the other.
"You" is a word that is the same in both the singular and plural, although I will admit that that is a case of "to be" being used as the plural on the singular. "They" is the plural form of "he" "she" and "it" which is only attached to a singular while still being treated as a plural in exactly one case some people are extremely emotionally attached to.
Bagginses on
0
Options
HachfaceNot the Minister Farrakhan you're thinking ofDammit, Shepard!Registered Userregular
In Spanish, the pronoun usted -- meaning you -- is semantically second-person but grammatically third-person: even though it refers to the second person, when it is paired with a verb the verb is conjugated into a third-person form. Why can't English have a similar construction, in which they has the meaning of a singular pronoun but functions grammatically as a plural?
Because it's plural everywhere else, and you never see that type of construction anywhere in English outside of people miking it up as an excuse for this one construction.
I... what? This doesn't make sense. You see this construction (the singular they) all the time in English. If we didn't see it all the time, we wouldn't be discussing it.
Really, the big issue is that it's pretty ridiculous to say that it's singular in this case and only this case and that this singular is still treated as plural. That's pretty much a perfect example of bullshit.
The semantic meaning and grammatical features of a word are not always congruent. This is true in all languages and is obviously not "bullshit."
"You" is a word that is the same in both the singular and plural, although I will admit that that is a case of "to be" being used as the plural on the singular. "They" is the plural form of "he" "she" and "it" which is only attached to a singular while still being treated as a plural in exactly one case some people are extremely emotionally attached to.
So you're objection is to they having more than one meaning...?
Because if so, that's pretty silly. Words have multiple meanings all the time.
In Spanish, the pronoun usted -- meaning you -- is semantically second-person but grammatically third-person: even though it refers to the second person, when it is paired with a verb the verb is conjugated into a third-person form. Why can't English have a similar construction, in which they has the meaning of a singular pronoun but functions grammatically as a plural?
Because it's plural everywhere else, and you never see that type of construction anywhere in English outside of people miking it up as an excuse for this one construction.
Really, the big issue is that it's pretty ridiculous to say that it's singular in this case and only this case and that this singular is still treated as plural. That's pretty much a perfect example of bullshit.
English already has a pronoun that is grammatically plural but often semantically singular--"you." Are you seriously arguing that using "you" instead of "thou" when addressing single persons is "ridiculous" and "bullshit"?
Again, as that link shows, singular "they" is not a modern invention; it can be traced back to Middle English, and great English writers of every generation from Chaucer to Shakespeare to Austen to CS Lewis have used it. It's the grammarians trying to impose a rule that did not formerly exist in English that were "fucking up the rules." Singular "they" is at least as old as singular "you," so it's ridiculous to argue so strongly against one but not the other.
"You" is a word that is the same in both the singular and plural, although I will admit that that is a case of "to be" being used as the plural on the singular. "They" is the plural form of "he" "she" and "it" which is only attached to a singular while still being treated as a plural in exactly one case some people are extremely emotionally attached to.
No, "you" is the plural of "thou." Due to a series of sociolinguistic phenomena "thou" dropped out of standard usage by the 17th century, and "you" took over as the only second-person pronoun.
"They" has been used to fill a gap in English usage where none of the existing third-person pronouns seem to do the job. I do not understand what's so wrong with this. Native English speakers throughout the ages have felt uncomfortable attaching the pronouns "he" or "she" to indefinite antecedents like "everybody" or "whoever" since the times of Middle English. They have found "they" more appropriate in these contexts. None of this is bullshit.
No one argues that wife should be pronounced "wif", or werewolf as "wer-wolf" because they would be more in keeping with the old english roots.
Well, the thing that makes this specific example silly is that "di-" and "dis-" are both valid English prefixes, and pronouncing "dissect" as though it began with "di-" instead of "dis-" makes it sound as though it means "to divide a thing in two" rather than "to take a thing apart". Plus, we already have a word for "to divide a thing in two"--that word is "bisect".
It's annoying when language starts to change in a way that makes its meaning less clear.
No one argues that wife should be pronounced "wif", or werewolf as "wer-wolf" because they would be more in keeping with the old english roots.
Well, the thing that makes this specific example silly is that "di-" and "dis-" are both valid English prefixes, and pronouncing "dissect" as though it began with "di-" instead of "dis-" makes it sound as though it means "to divide a thing in two" rather than "to take a thing apart". Plus, we already have a word for "to divide a thing in two"--that word is "bisect".
It's annoying when language starts to change in a way that makes its meaning less clear.
Less clear if you are trying to puzzle out word meanings like a math problem maybe, but, you know, that's not really how people learn or use language.
All the "less clear" argument amounts to is a convoluted "I can't understand your accent" line. Except you can understand it and just prefer the word to be pronounced the way you pronounce it because . . . strangers bad.
It occurs to me to wonder what hilarious pronunciation you have for bi-plane.
No one argues that wife should be pronounced "wif", or werewolf as "wer-wolf" because they would be more in keeping with the old english roots.
Well, the thing that makes this specific example silly is that "di-" and "dis-" are both valid English prefixes, and pronouncing "dissect" as though it began with "di-" instead of "dis-" makes it sound as though it means "to divide a thing in two" rather than "to take a thing apart". Plus, we already have a word for "to divide a thing in two"--that word is "bisect".
It's annoying when language starts to change in a way that makes its meaning less clear.
Less clear if you are trying to puzzle out word meanings like a math problem maybe, but, you know, that's not really how people learn or use language.
All the "less clear" argument amounts to is a convoluted "I can't understand your accent" line. Except you can understand it and just prefer the word to be pronounced the way you pronounce it because . . . strangers bad.
It occurs to me to wonder what hilarious pronunciation you have for bi-plane.
Bip-Lane?
Who pissed in your Cheerios?
I don't know why you're trying to read some kind of xenophobia into a simple comment on how I'd prefer language to evolve in a different (and more internally consistent) direction. I don't have any problem understanding people who pronounce that word differently, and I don't think any less of them. I even went so far as to acknowledge implicitly that language does evolve and change, even if it makes thing less convenient on the whole.
And I know how to pronounce "biplane" correctly. That you think I wouldn't implies you don't understand my argument in the slightest and are instead here to throw around personal attacks. I don't think "strangers bad" and I'm more than a little annoyed that you'd insinuate that.
No need for the "biplane" gibe. "Biplane" means "plane with two wings," so it uses the long-i "bi" (= two) prefix (not that there's a "bip" prefix anyway). "Dissect" means "cut apart," so it gets the short-i "dis" (= apart) prefix, as opposed to the long-i "di" (= two) prefix.
I'm not saying that anyone's pronouncing the word wrongly - the long-i dissect comes not from using the wrong prefix, but from subjecting the correct one to a phonetic shift, which is fine if it's understood. As I think someone noted upthread, the Southern accent tends to replace short vowels with long ones is all. And since long vowels are usually stressed, the emphasis gets moved to the first syllable. (If you just read that as "em-phah-sis" and "sy-lah-ble", 8-)).
I admit, though, that I find "die-sekt" hard to pronounce, because the "kt" also kind of demands stress, so I end up awkwardly stressing both syllables.
(EDIT: This was in response to Speaker.)
Akei Arkay on
0
Options
MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
I think his point is legitimate. It might be harder to understand "die-sect" than "dis-sect" if you are attempting to puzzle out the meaning of English words via their latin etymologies. But of course that is not how anyone learns English. English is a living language which is responsible to the standards and conveniences of actual speakers, and actual speakers do not learn English by first learning Latin and then attempting to puzzle out the meanings from the constructions.
MrMister on
0
Options
MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited April 2011
I think that the current discussion going on here could be best summarised as a debate over the morality of adhering to linguistic norms when communicating. It's a should discussion.
While on one hand I respect the need for a clear communication system and try to adhere to a certain standard.
On the other hand I think that if two people are communicating and one person stops trying to interpret the meaning of the other actively because that person used a technical "gaffe" that person is at fault in the communication.
Communication is a two way street. You express and you interpret. If you refuse to reasonably engage in effortful interpretation, you've failed your part in the deal.
It isn't all on the speaker. It's also on the listener.
This is assuming two people are attempting to engage in a dialogue with equal willingness. In other words a discussion.
If one party is mainly speaking and expects the other to mainly listen, such as in a formal argument, essay or formalised debate setting, then they have a much greater onus on them to adhere more strictly to formal norms.
A basic example would be something like: if I talked to you one on one in a chat program or over voice chat I do not sound like a snotty upmyself brit. I relax and chat. I take much greater care with posts, even more so in a proper debate thread.
Except with regard to british s. I use british s. You buggers want to z up your words feel free. I'm putting my foot down.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
0
Options
AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
I think that the current discussion going on here could be best summarised as a debate over the morality of adhering to linguistic norms when communicating. It's a should discussion.
While on one hand I respect the need for a clear communication system and try to adhere to a certain standard.
On the other hand I think that if two people are communicating and one person stops trying to interpret the meaning of the other actively because that person used a technical "gaffe" that person is at fault in the communication.
Communication is a two way street. You express and you interpret. If you refuse to reasonably engage in effortful interpretation, you've failed your part in the deal.
It isn't all on the speaker. It's also on the listener.
This is assuming two people are attempting to engage in a dialogue with equal willingness. In other words a discussion.
If one party is mainly speaking and expects the other to mainly listen, such as in a formal argument, essay or formalised debate setting, then they have a much greater onus on them to adhere more strictly to formal norms.
A basic example would be something like: if I talked to you one on one in a chat program or over voice chat I do not sound like a snotty upmyself brit. I relax and chat. I take much greater care with posts, even more so in a proper debate thread.
Except with regard to british s. I use british s. You buggers want to z up your words feel free. I'm putting my foot down.
If memory serves, the British used both until Webster decided to make spelling more consistent by picking one letter ("z") and sticking with it in all cases. Over time, the British have stopped using "z" out of what I can only assume to be petty spite. In some former commonwealth colonies (Australia), people have actually been switching old business names and signs away from their original spelling in an effort to de-Americanize even in cases where to signs predate American ascendancy.
Bagginses on
0
Options
MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited April 2011
That's fascinating Baggins.
I mean that.
I only mean I learnt it that way growing up and I'm not going to change something so banal.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
I think that the current discussion going on here could be best summarised as a debate over the morality of adhering to linguistic norms when communicating. It's a should discussion.
While on one hand I respect the need for a clear communication system and try to adhere to a certain standard.
On the other hand I think that if two people are communicating and one person stops trying to interpret the meaning of the other actively because that person used a technical "gaffe" that person is at fault in the communication.
Communication is a two way street. You express and you interpret. If you refuse to reasonably engage in effortful interpretation, you've failed your part in the deal.
It isn't all on the speaker. It's also on the listener.
This is assuming two people are attempting to engage in a dialogue with equal willingness. In other words a discussion.
If one party is mainly speaking and expects the other to mainly listen, such as in a formal argument, essay or formalised debate setting, then they have a much greater onus on them to adhere more strictly to formal norms.
A basic example would be something like: if I talked to you one on one in a chat program or over voice chat I do not sound like a snotty upmyself brit. I relax and chat. I take much greater care with posts, even more so in a proper debate thread.
Except with regard to british s. I use british s. You buggers want to z up your words feel free. I'm putting my foot down.
If memory serves, the British used both until Webster decided to make spelling more consistent by picking one letter ("z") and sticking with it in all cases. Over time, the British have stopped using "z" out of what I can only assume to be petty spite. In some former commonwealth colonies (Australia), people have actually been switching old business names and signs away from their original spelling in an effort to de-Americanize even in cases where to signs predate American ascendancy.
Do you have any evidence for that? Because of course Webster, being American, would use the 'z', and the British changed out of 'petty spite'? Seriously?
I have a question about linguistics, and although it's a confrontational question, it's not a rhetorical one.
Why are so many people (in this thread, for example) so deeply attached to their own idiolect's variations in phonology and lexis? And this attachment seems to me to be more deeply entrenched in educated people.
Is it fear? The rules and systems we learned as educated people give us linguistic power, and an undermining of that scares us, in the same way that a trained classical musician might fear punk or any other more anarchic variation?
In fact, it's hard to find a good analogy to language education. Any other 'communicative education' (art, music, literature etc) has a wide range of styles available to a user, but language isn't taught that way. Educated English is powerful, and outside of a few very narrow situations, (e.g. angry uneducated people getting angry at book learnin' types) that's always the case.
Perhaps that's why we're so fearful of others using language differently to us? Few challenges to the status quo plus a subconscious awareness of the weakness of such a position?
Posts
Has anything from Appalachia ever not been?
Less snarkily, there's a pretty big difference between varying the way a certain sound is made or stressed across the board (pahk da cah) and just straight out using the wrong sound or getting the word wrong (nookuler).
I often feel extolling the Descriptivist virtues of linguistic phenomena is very similar to citing Unitarianism as an example of non-coercive religious denomination. It broadens the employment and definitions so largely, everything under it begins to lose all value.
Then again, I like to think that anyone who would be consciously concerned with linguistic identity would also be equally concerned with linguistic correctness, as the logical arguments for knowingly portraying yourself as one ignorant of lingual rules are few and not immediately coming to mind.
Descriptivist usage =/= academic grasp, so I feel the two should be argued separately.
Expressivism has to be true in a certain trivial sense. If a person were to make a statement 'P' they must also necessarily believe that 'P' is the case; otherwise a sentence like "It's raining outside but I don't believe it is" wouldn't seem as odd as it does. The task of casting doubt on Expressivism would have to involve arguments that a belief that 'P' is the case is a necessary but not sufficient account of what one means by 'P'.
edit: Though it appears I may have misunderstood what your argument was referring to.
I tend to take the systematic view, where internal consistency is key. For example, the African American dialect is correct because all of the deviances (deviants?) from American standard are applied consistently across all cases, indicating a basis in a variant grammatical system (there are, of course, issues with using a subset dialect in mixed company, but let's ignore them for now). On the other hand, the usage of the plural "they" with singular subjects without obvious gender (each person thought they were the winner) is bad because you never see it anywhere else and it messes up the consistency of the sentence ("they were the winner" only makes sense if everyone is sharing the win).
Edit: of course, being an academic is an inherently descriptivist practice, as the duty of the academic is the study of a subject. That's one of the big differences between biologists and doctors.
Appalachian English is internally consistent as well.
Also, "they" has been used as a singular, genderless pronoun for about 400 years.
Then why is it followed by "are?"
Also, find me one other context is which "they" is singular.
Edit: It's also not like people only started fucking up grammar in the last twenty years. If you went by what you can find a few examples of over the whole history of the English language, you could spell any name less British than "Smith" as a random jumble of letters.
Singular "they" is no more inconsistent or confusing than the tu/vous distinction in French and other Romance languages. In some contexts "they" refers to a group of people; in other contexts it refers to a single person of indeterminate or unknown gender. I can't imagine any possible context in which this would be confusing, because obviously nobody would be talking about "them" without having mentioned the antecedent first.
Anyway I don't see the point of a "rule" that has been ignored by many great English writers over the past few centuries. What use is a rule for good writing that is not followed by good writers?
Not really at all no. Well, that's a lie. People from rural portions of Minnesota in the northern regions sound similar. People from rural (western) ND and a large part of SD have a completely different accent entirely.
Oh, there's this lady at work... English is not her first language by far. She works with me (who's 26) and a bunch of younger guys and she's picked up saying "man" as a normal part of phrasing because she has heard all of us use it a lot.
The catch is that she doesn't understand that context and tone of voice turn the simple words, "Hey man..." into something totally insulting/disrespectful.
Sadly she's not the kind of person that you can tell this to without an argument ensuing.
Edit: Wow sorry for the terrible TOP
http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/austheir.html#X1x
. . .
How do you pronounce it?
The 'di' is like the 'di' in "dick" as opposed to the 'di' in "dice" according to the IPA guide that was posted above.
There isn't really a right and wrong way to pronounce things if you are speaking your native language naturally.
You can't have whole wrong accents.
If everything was pronounced as in the IPA guide virtually every accent would be incorrect.
That's a silly approach to language. Why would the IPA guide be the "correct" pronunciation?
Well it's a guide written in the IPA alphabet, but LoveIsUnity wrote it AFAIK.
The reasoning is that it's more in keeping with the Latin roots and consistent - consider 'disunity' and then 'dissect'.
Of course, I would argue that this is a relatively naive approach to how morphology and phonology interacts...
No one argues that wife should be pronounced "wif", or werewolf as "wer-wolf" because they would be more in keeping with the old english roots.
Absolutely.
Likewise certain phonemes far more naturally roll off the tongue after other phonemes and so that kind of systematization flies in the face of other facets of the language.
Its like saying it's wrong that they allow zone defense in college basketball, or that Europeans paint their keys the wrong shape.
Nevermind that things like "y'all" and singular "they" are used because they make up for pronoun failures of the English language, and for the most part are less cumbersome and more understandable than the alternatives.
That would be awful.
Then why is it followed by "are?"
Also, find me one other context is which "they" is singular.
Edit: It's also not like people only started fucking up grammar in the last twenty years. If you went by what you can find a few examples of over the whole history of the English language, you could spell any name less British than "Smith" as a random jumble of letters.
It really helps to read what you're replying to.
Why does this matter?
In Spanish, the pronoun usted -- meaning you -- is semantically second-person but grammatically third-person: even though it refers to the second person, when it is paired with a verb the verb is conjugated into a third-person form. Why can't English have a similar construction, in which they has the meaning of a singular pronoun but functions grammatically as a plural?
I think it strongly depends on context.
If two Appalachians want to engage using their native dialect, a dialect that diverges strongly from whatever the Received Pronunciation analogue is for US English, the descriptive difference is negligible.
But dialects and accents can become so insular as to hamper communications outside their boundaries. When I worked in very rural parts of the South near the Ozarks, people who spoke with pronounced regional dialects became far enough removed from common understanding that I would have trouble figuring out what they were talking about. Which, since my work is in emergency medicine, that's kind of a problem. For example, these are some of the terms and phrases I would frequently come across:
- "I've been vomerkin"/I've been vomiting
- "burl" or "risin"/infected abscess
- "leg fever"/peripheral blood clot
- "rummatiz"/arthritis
- "high blood"/diabetes
- "poltice"/a homemade salve, usually quite useless or even harmful
It's hard to say any form of facilitated communication is objectively "wrong," but I would lay more fault upon the user of the fringe dialect in instances where communication is NOT easily facilitated.
Because it's plural everywhere else, and you never see that type of construction anywhere in English outside of people miking it up as an excuse for this one construction.
Really, the big issue is that it's pretty ridiculous to say that it's singular in this case and only this case and that this singular is still treated as plural. That's pretty much a perfect example of bullshit.
English already has a pronoun that is grammatically plural but often semantically singular--"you." Are you seriously arguing that using "you" instead of "thou" when addressing single persons is "ridiculous" and "bullshit"?
Again, as that link shows, singular "they" is not a modern invention; it can be traced back to Middle English, and great English writers of every generation from Chaucer to Shakespeare to Austen to CS Lewis have used it. It's the grammarians trying to impose a rule that did not formerly exist in English that were "fucking up the rules." Singular "they" is at least as old as singular "you," so it's ridiculous to argue so strongly against one but not the other.
EDIT: And I still don't understand your objection that "it's singular only in this case." Yes, "they" is only singular when it refers to a singular antecedent. Congratulations on the tautology?
"You" is a word that is the same in both the singular and plural, although I will admit that that is a case of "to be" being used as the plural on the singular. "They" is the plural form of "he" "she" and "it" which is only attached to a singular while still being treated as a plural in exactly one case some people are extremely emotionally attached to.
I... what? This doesn't make sense. You see this construction (the singular they) all the time in English. If we didn't see it all the time, we wouldn't be discussing it.
The semantic meaning and grammatical features of a word are not always congruent. This is true in all languages and is obviously not "bullshit."
EDIT:
So you're objection is to they having more than one meaning...?
Because if so, that's pretty silly. Words have multiple meanings all the time.
No, "you" is the plural of "thou." Due to a series of sociolinguistic phenomena "thou" dropped out of standard usage by the 17th century, and "you" took over as the only second-person pronoun.
"They" has been used to fill a gap in English usage where none of the existing third-person pronouns seem to do the job. I do not understand what's so wrong with this. Native English speakers throughout the ages have felt uncomfortable attaching the pronouns "he" or "she" to indefinite antecedents like "everybody" or "whoever" since the times of Middle English. They have found "they" more appropriate in these contexts. None of this is bullshit.
It's annoying when language starts to change in a way that makes its meaning less clear.
Less clear if you are trying to puzzle out word meanings like a math problem maybe, but, you know, that's not really how people learn or use language.
All the "less clear" argument amounts to is a convoluted "I can't understand your accent" line. Except you can understand it and just prefer the word to be pronounced the way you pronounce it because . . . strangers bad.
It occurs to me to wonder what hilarious pronunciation you have for bi-plane.
Bip-Lane?
I don't know why you're trying to read some kind of xenophobia into a simple comment on how I'd prefer language to evolve in a different (and more internally consistent) direction. I don't have any problem understanding people who pronounce that word differently, and I don't think any less of them. I even went so far as to acknowledge implicitly that language does evolve and change, even if it makes thing less convenient on the whole.
And I know how to pronounce "biplane" correctly. That you think I wouldn't implies you don't understand my argument in the slightest and are instead here to throw around personal attacks. I don't think "strangers bad" and I'm more than a little annoyed that you'd insinuate that.
I'm not saying that anyone's pronouncing the word wrongly - the long-i dissect comes not from using the wrong prefix, but from subjecting the correct one to a phonetic shift, which is fine if it's understood. As I think someone noted upthread, the Southern accent tends to replace short vowels with long ones is all. And since long vowels are usually stressed, the emphasis gets moved to the first syllable. (If you just read that as "em-phah-sis" and "sy-lah-ble", 8-)).
I admit, though, that I find "die-sekt" hard to pronounce, because the "kt" also kind of demands stress, so I end up awkwardly stressing both syllables.
(EDIT: This was in response to Speaker.)
I think his point is legitimate. It might be harder to understand "die-sect" than "dis-sect" if you are attempting to puzzle out the meaning of English words via their latin etymologies. But of course that is not how anyone learns English. English is a living language which is responsible to the standards and conveniences of actual speakers, and actual speakers do not learn English by first learning Latin and then attempting to puzzle out the meanings from the constructions.
While on one hand I respect the need for a clear communication system and try to adhere to a certain standard.
On the other hand I think that if two people are communicating and one person stops trying to interpret the meaning of the other actively because that person used a technical "gaffe" that person is at fault in the communication.
Communication is a two way street. You express and you interpret. If you refuse to reasonably engage in effortful interpretation, you've failed your part in the deal.
It isn't all on the speaker. It's also on the listener.
This is assuming two people are attempting to engage in a dialogue with equal willingness. In other words a discussion.
If one party is mainly speaking and expects the other to mainly listen, such as in a formal argument, essay or formalised debate setting, then they have a much greater onus on them to adhere more strictly to formal norms.
A basic example would be something like: if I talked to you one on one in a chat program or over voice chat I do not sound like a snotty upmyself brit. I relax and chat. I take much greater care with posts, even more so in a proper debate thread.
Except with regard to british s. I use british s. You buggers want to z up your words feel free. I'm putting my foot down.
Who pizzed in your Cheerioz?
If memory serves, the British used both until Webster decided to make spelling more consistent by picking one letter ("z") and sticking with it in all cases. Over time, the British have stopped using "z" out of what I can only assume to be petty spite. In some former commonwealth colonies (Australia), people have actually been switching old business names and signs away from their original spelling in an effort to de-Americanize even in cases where to signs predate American ascendancy.
I mean that.
I only mean I learnt it that way growing up and I'm not going to change something so banal.
Do you have any evidence for that? Because of course Webster, being American, would use the 'z', and the British changed out of 'petty spite'? Seriously?
I have a question about linguistics, and although it's a confrontational question, it's not a rhetorical one.
Why are so many people (in this thread, for example) so deeply attached to their own idiolect's variations in phonology and lexis? And this attachment seems to me to be more deeply entrenched in educated people.
Is it fear? The rules and systems we learned as educated people give us linguistic power, and an undermining of that scares us, in the same way that a trained classical musician might fear punk or any other more anarchic variation?
In fact, it's hard to find a good analogy to language education. Any other 'communicative education' (art, music, literature etc) has a wide range of styles available to a user, but language isn't taught that way. Educated English is powerful, and outside of a few very narrow situations, (e.g. angry uneducated people getting angry at book learnin' types) that's always the case.
Perhaps that's why we're so fearful of others using language differently to us? Few challenges to the status quo plus a subconscious awareness of the weakness of such a position?