podcastle (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} podcastle) wrote,@ 2008-03-08 09:41:00 |
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Grammar
Posted by Ann
Those of you who know me personally know that a good way to annoy me is to declare singular they to be ungrammatical.
Rant, condensed--Is not, and even if it were, if it was good enough for Jane Austen, it's damn well good enough for me.
So. I read and very much enjoyed this essay on the topic. Which I found via Language Log. You all read Language Log, don't you? Yes?
Go, read!
Posted by Ann
Those of you who know me personally know that a good way to annoy me is to declare singular they to be ungrammatical.
Rant, condensed--Is not, and even if it were, if it was good enough for Jane Austen, it's damn well good enough for me.
So. I read and very much enjoyed this essay on the topic. Which I found via Language Log. You all read Language Log, don't you? Yes?
The last time the Academic-Industrial Complex unilaterally changed the rules of grammar was in the 18th century, when grammarians, taking a bit too much of a cue from Latin, made up a rule that pronouns had to agree in number with their antecedents, a “rule” which, in fact, had been regularly violated by such writers as Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Jane Austen to say nothing of thousands of less notable authors and, no doubt, hundreds of thousands of plain old native English speakers.
Go, read!
