Pedants' Paradise

[LeMartinPecheur]

One of my personal bugbears is the use of "lay" for "lie". "Lay" can be lots of things besides the past tense of "lie", , but never conjugable into its present or future tense, as in, "I'll lay down and you can get me an aspirin". But this in my experience is a colloquialism right across the UK - as indeed, incidentally, is substituting "sat" for "sitting".

A reason for the growing preference for 'lay' in place of 'lie' is that the latter has become tainted by its association with the hompohone verb meaning to tell a porkie.

[Extended Play]

... an interesting question indeed. A 'descriptive' grammar or dictionary (OED is by and large such) - if it describes usage, what about one nutter who completely mangles English - is his 'usage' to be incorporated in a description of what constitutes English usage?

It's an example of the problems addressed by fuzzy logic and Wang's Paradox ("How many hairs are there on the head of a bald man?") - or more formally, the philosophical area of sorites -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sorites-paradox/

Would a corresponding musical paradox be: how many wrong notes are allowed before a work ceases to be the work you believed you were listening to?

(Apologies for the non-Churchillian placing of that preposition).

[jean]

One of my personal bugbears is the use of "lay" for "lie". "Lay" can be lots of things besides the past tense of "lie", , but never conjugable into its present or future tense, as in, "I'll lay down and you can get me an aspirin". But this in my experience is a colloquialism right across the UK - as indeed, incidentally, is substituting "sat" for "sitting".

Somebody ought to have told Jonathan Battishill, before he wrote Sir Andrwew Keeling:

Here on his back doth lay Sir Andrew Keeling;
And at his feet his mournful lady kneeling.
But when he was alive and had his feeling,
She laid upon her back and he was kneeling.

[french frank]

In studying the evolution of a language, how do you know when a "tipping point" has been reached? By that, I mean the point at which a previously frowned-upon word or usage gains such wide currency as to be generally accepted as "correct".

There will be various arbiters all of which/whom will take their own decision.

When I did A Level examining there were certain 'mistakes' that came up year after year, and each year they were discussed anew. And opinions differed around the examiners' table. On some points we had eventually to admit that the tide had washed over us and that considering a usage 'wrong' was no longer tenable.

The linguist Simeon Potter described how he came to adopt certain usages eventually because they had, in his experience, become so common that they became natural to him. I used the word 'attendee' the other day ...

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Some languages became mangled before they were formalised, written down and grammarised (is there such a word?). These languages are among the most difficult ones to learn. Without wishing to cause offence, I would cite Welsh as an example. I have become acquainted with the language over many years, but I still consider it to be very difficult for non-native speakers.
It makes Latin seem very easy (though when reading Cicero, you have the disadvantage of having to wait until the final chapter, where all the verbs are written).

[vinteuil]

Would a corresponding musical paradox be: how many wrong notes are allowed before a work ceases to be the work you believed you were listening to?

).

Yes indeed - your example is one that comes up in the philosophy of aesthetics as a sorites problem

[Pabmusic]

...how do you know when a "tipping point" has been reached? By that, I mean the point at which a previously frowned-upon word or usage gains such wide currency as to be generally accepted as "correct"..."To appeal" is now often used as a transitive verb, e.g. "to appeal the verdict". Even the noun "impact" is making inroads as a verb: how will this impact the future of English?...Perhaps these trends have been accelerated by the prevalence of texts and tweets, which force users to compress forms of expression.

English has always been like this. William Caxton wrote in 1490, "And certaynly our language now used varyeth ferre from that which was used and spoken when I was borne". Just looking at that sentence, we can appreciate just how much has changed since he wrote it - and I'm not really meaning the spellings. First, there's the third person singular ending -eth in 'varyeth'; it would now be 'varies'. "Ferre' is 'far'. It has altered twice: the -e ending was pronounced in Caxton's day (that's why it's there) and the -er in the middle was pronounced -ar (as it still is in Derby, Berkshire, and the like). 'Borne' would have been 'born-e', but it's now become one syllable.

My point is that most of these changes could have been remarked upon in their day ("I can't stand this habit of pronouncing -er as 'ur'"; saying "varies" instead of "varieth" is just so lazy). The loss of most word endings is a good example. There were at least six that denoted plurals; we have two now, and -en is limited to only a handful of words. Then there were the hordes of new words that entered the language - science, for instance. They would have all seemed strange at first. Jane Austen would never have written "breakfast was being prepared", but someone 50 years later might have done. It seems innocuous now.

Maybe there never is a single tipping-point, just as you can never tell when you stop being a child and become an adolescent.

[vinteuil]

I like Pabmusic's quote from Caxton.

And they were still worrying about the mutability of English in the 17th century...

''Poets that lasting Marble seek
Must carve in Latine or in Greek,
We write in Sand, our Language grows,
And like the Tide our work o'erflows.''

'Of English Verse' - Edmund Waller [1606-1687]

[Serial_Apologist]

Somebody ought to have told Jonathan Battishill, before he wrote Sir Andrwew Keeling:

Here on his back doth lay Sir Andrew Keeling;
And at his feet his mournful lady kneeling.
But when he was alive and had his feeling,
She laid upon her back and he was kneeling.

It must be my dirty mind that makes me smile from reading that!

[jean]

Jane Austen would never have written "breakfast was being prepared", but someone 50 years later might have done. It seems innocuous now.

She'd have written breakfast was preparing (I've no actual examples of that, but I know she wrote 'while the boxes were unpacking...')

Many passive forms are relatively recent arrivals.

[vinteuil]

She'd have written breakfast was preparing (I've no actual examples of that, but I know she wrote 'while the boxes were unpacking...')

Many passive forms are relatively recent arrivals.

... yes: contemporary with Jane Austen we have Maria Edgeworth :

"To Miss Honora Edgeworth.
Berne,
August 19, 1820.
The day we set out from Pregny we breakfasted at Coppet; from some misunderstanding M. de Stael had not expected us and had breakfasted, but as he is remarkably well—bred, easy, and obliging in his manners he was not put out, and while our breakfast was preparing he showed us the house."

Many 19th century examples - including HG Wells...

"And having got back in this way to a gloomy kind of self-satisfaction, he had another attempt at his hair preparatory to leaving his room and hurrying on breakfast, for an early departure. While breakfast was preparing he wandered out into South Street and refurnished himself with the elements of luggage again. "No expense to be spared," he murmured, disgorging the half-sovereign." ['The Wheels of Chance', 1896]

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

You may deplore these developments, but as a previous poster said in another context, they're not going to go away.

Perhaps these trends have been accelerated by the prevalence of texts and tweets, which force users to compress forms of expression.

There's nothing worse than this kind of apathy. So presumably the future of the English language is to be determined by the ones who do not bother to listen in their English lessons at school, and by those who are too lazy to write in sentences, use punctuation and capital letters appropriately? Well Radio 3 dumbs down, so lets all give up and say there's nothing we can do about shoddy English.

Er, no...

[MrGongGong]

There's nothing worse than this kind of apathy. So presumably the future of the English language is to be determined by the ones who do not bother to listen in their English lessons at school, and by those who are too lazy to write in sentences, use punctuation and capital letters appropriately? Well Radio 3 dumbs down, so lets all give up and say there's nothing we can do about shoddy English.

Er, no...

Lighten up old chum
the "future of English" is NOT determined by what happens in English lessons any more than the "future of music" is determined by what happens in music lessons ........ thank whatever deity you choose to believe in

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Lighten up old chum
the "future of English" is NOT determined by what happens in English lessons any more than the "future of music" is determined by what happens in music lessons ........ thank whatever deity you choose to believe in

Actually, I would disagree with you about both.

[MrGongGong]

Do you really think that music is fundamentally driven by what happens to take place in schools ?
even though I spend much of my time in them I wouldn't think that for a minute
even if I wanted it to be the case