A bit of spelling, punctuation, and grammar just for fun.... - Page 8

Ghoti · #**106** Jun 8, '08, 7:29 am

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Originally Posted by Phemie

fewer problems or less trouble

grumble grumble

Ghoti · #**107** Jun 8, '08, 7:43 am

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Originally Posted by Thing

A Lesser-Spotted Problem. Will this thread go on 'til the cows come home?

I believe, according to Fowler, there is no such word as 'til. It's either until, or till.

Random House:

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Till1 and until are both old in the language and are interchangeable as both prepositions and conjunctions: It rained till (or until) nearly midnight. The savannah remained brown and lifeless until (or till) the rains began. Till is not a shortened form of until and is not spelled 'till. 'Til is usually considered a spelling error, though widely used in advertising: Open 'til ten.

American Heritage

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Usage Note: Till and until are generally interchangeable in both writing and speech, though as the first word in a sentence until is usually preferred: Until you get that paper written, don't even think about going to the movies. · Till is actually the older word, with until having been formed by the addition to it of the prefix un-, meaning "up to." In the 18th century the spelling 'till became fashionable, as if till were a shortened form of until. Although 'till is now nonstandard, 'til is sometimes used in this way and is considered acceptable, though it is etymologically incorrect.

Till has an unusual usage in Irish and Newfoundland English:

Give me a chair till I sit down,/And a pen and ink till I write down. -- "The Butcher Boy"

Come here till I tells you. -- also shows another Irish influence in Newfoundland English: the third person singular formation for present tense nouns.

strngrnrth · #**108** Jun 8, '08, 7:56 am

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Originally Posted by Ghoti

So you also disagree with multiple meanings of a word, as well as multiple words for one meaning (synonyms)?

No, I just think a word's origins, while detectable, influence (flow into) every instance of it thus making perfect synonymy unreachable. Likewise, a multiple meaning means the context must make clear what is meant or the homonymy is lost.

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So if a particular artist makes an impression on you, it's because he beaned you with a portrait and it left a mark?

Or he imitated me to my detriment

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At what point in a word's history do you take a word's meaning as established, immutable, and no longer subject to evolution?

When it is most useful and beautiful and further evolution would cause a serious loss, the meaning at that time must be saved though some alternative usages may be added, under the rules of slang (from a Scandianvian word meaning to sling insults or exchange rude remarks; it came to lose its suggestion of insult because a word for what we call slang was needed and there was not one already in the language).

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I see a problem here as well in your use of words in figurative and idiomatic senses. Words and their meanings do not have "tensile strength", they do not "sag". The meaning of a word can be "expanded" however, but it does not get "physically larger"; words can be "softened", but they do not become "more physically malleable" because words are not solid objects. They do not "pull weight" any more than they "pull wagons" -- unless they are words like "horses", in which case only that which is represented by the word "horse" can perform the action labeled "pull" on an object represented by the word "weight" or "wagon".

There is nothing wrong with metaphor as long as it is conscious and mixing is limited to what the mind can handle (hold).

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While I do believe that language evolves (if it didn't, I'd have far less problems reading Shakespeare than I do), I also believe there is a place for the dogmatic prescriptivist: and that is to balance out the effect of the radical progressives. Word-coiners and meaning-expanders are the gas pedal of language development; prescriptivists are the brakes. It is because of the former that "nice" is a nice word, that I can chortle at a joke, and that I can take a taxicab to work instead of a taximeter cabriolet; it is thanks to the latter that I don't necessarily have to grok all the new offerings, fo'shizzle.

Sure. But most people are driving so fast that they never see the scenery and often miss their turns, IMO.

Thing · #**109** Jun 8, '08, 9:06 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ghoti

I believe, according to Fowler, there is no such word as 'til. It's either until, or till.

Random House:

American Heritage

Till has an unusual usage in Irish and Newfoundland English:

Give me a chair till I sit down,/And a pen and ink till I write down. -- "The Butcher Boy"

Come here till I tells you. -- also shows another Irish influence in Newfoundland English: the third person singular formation for present tense nouns.

You're right. Cross Irish mothers to their children have another saying; "Come here till I hit you."

Della · #**110** Jun 8, '08, 9:32 am

And my biggest pet peeve is using the word RELATIVE for RELATION. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!

No one has relatives. We have relations. My uncle isn't relative to me he is related to me.

The misuse of the word relative is every where--even in our prayer books! GAGH!!!

I understand why the word relative became the norm, though. It's because the word relation has been co-opted to mean sex. The upshot is we use a completely unrelated word to describe our relationships.

Ghoti · #**111** Jun 8, '08, 11:23 am

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Originally Posted by Della

And my biggest pet peeve is using the word RELATIVE for RELATION. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!

No one has relatives. We have relations. My uncle isn't relative to me he is related to me.

The misuse of the word relative is every where--even in our prayer books! GAGH!!!

I understand why the word relative became the norm, though. It's because the word relation has been co-opted to mean sex. The upshot is we use a completely unrelated word to describe our relationships.

"Relative" has been used in the substantive (vs adjectival) sense since at least 1657. As a noun it is offered as the first meaning by Random House, American Heritage, Chamber's (UK) and Oxford; and the third by Merriam-Webster. It is also listed (unnumbered) by Webster's Revised Unabridged (1913), and Cambridge Dictionary of American English.

By whose authority do you declare the word misused?

**jmcrae** · #**112** Jun 8, '08, 1:13 pm

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Originally Posted by Thing

You're right. Cross Irish mothers to their children have another saying; "Come here till I hit you."

This is nothing compared to my mother-in-law's incessant use of "going away" - God rest her soul, every day of her life she was "going away" to do the laundry, and "going away" to wash the dishes - my husband would always ask her, "And where, Ma, are you going away to? France? Canada?"

strngrnrth · #**113** Jun 8, '08, 1:34 pm

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Originally Posted by jmcrae

This is nothing compared to my mother-in-law's incessant use of "going away" - God rest her soul, every day of her life she was "going away" to do the laundry, and "going away" to wash the dishes - my husband would always ask her, "And where, Ma, are you going away to? France? Canada?"

GM tends to say "Here's you a piece of pizza" instead of "here's a piece of pizza for you." I've never heard anyone else do that.

Thing · #**114** Jun 8, '08, 2:46 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by jmcrae

This is nothing compared to my mother-in-law's incessant use of "going away" - God rest her soul, every day of her life she was "going away" to do the laundry, and "going away" to wash the dishes - my husband would always ask her, "And where, Ma, are you going away to? France? Canada?"

Little Mary · #**115** Jun 8, '08, 4:48 pm

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Originally Posted by strngrnrth

GM tends to say "Here's you a piece of pizza" instead of "here's a piece of pizza for you." I've never heard anyone else do that.

You've never lived in the south, have you?

strngrnrth · #**116** Jun 8, '08, 4:50 pm

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Originally Posted by Little Mary

You've never lived in the south, have you?

I've never even heard another Southerner, even her immediate family, say it like that. What part of the South is it common in? Maybe she got it from someone at school when she was little or something, or from her husband's father's side.

Little Mary · #**117** Jun 8, '08, 4:55 pm

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Originally Posted by strngrnrth

I've never even heard another Southerner, even her immediate family, say it like that. What part of the South is it common in? Maybe she got it from someone at school when she was little or something, or from her husband's father's side.

I grew up on the MS gulf coast, lived in Mobile, Houston, Savannah, Atlanta and Birmingham. I've heard it all my life.

"Here's you a piece of pizza"

"Go get you one of those umbrellas." Or, worse: "Go get you one of them umbrellas"

"I'm gonna get me a bird."

strngrnrth · #**118** Jun 8, '08, 5:04 pm

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Originally Posted by Little Mary

I grew up on the MS gulf coast, lived in Mobile, Houston, Savannah, Atlanta and Birmingham. I've heard it all my life.

"Here's you a piece of pizza"

"Go get you one of those umbrellas." Or, worse: "Go get you one of them umbrellas"

"I'm gonna get me a bird."

"Get me" and "get you" are common here, too, but not as much as in the South. But "here's you" and constructions such as "Go you and your Mommy to the store for me, girl" are definitely unusual. The Gulf Coast connection makes sense. We were river people before some became Texans and would have known a lot of New Orleans natives for a lot of years. Some of GM's siblings were and some weren't close to the family members who had lived in that milieu, and that would explain not all of them talking that way. She has a lot of Southernisms, but also some odd habits of speech I can't think of right now that seem unusual even in the South. They might be holdovers of river slang. Maybe one day I'll investigate it.

Ghoti · #**119** Jun 8, '08, 7:28 pm

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Originally Posted by Thing

You're right. Cross Irish mothers to their children have another saying; "Come here till I hit you."

And the verb "to be" + "after" + gerund of verb, instead of the present perfect:

- "I'm after telling him..." instead of "I have told him..."

"I'm after telling you a thousand times not to exaggerate! Come here till I hit you!"

Ghoti · #**120** Jun 8, '08, 7:39 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by Little Mary

I grew up on the MS gulf coast, lived in Mobile, Houston, Savannah, Atlanta and Birmingham. I've heard it all my life.

"Here's you a piece of pizza"

"Go get you one of those umbrellas." Or, worse: "Go get you one of them umbrellas"

"I'm gonna get me a bird."

It's the use of the standard personal pronoun instead of a reflexive pronoun...

Go get yourself one of those umbrellas.
I'm gonna get myself a bird.

Note that both constructions you mention above become standard if you change the subject pronoun so that the reflexive is not needed.

I'll go get you one of those umbrellas.
He's gonna get me a bird.

Basically, it's actually a more regular construction -- (Pers pron, nom) (verb) (pers pron, dative) etc -- used in all occasions; the diff is, in standard English, if the subject and indirect object are the same person, the indirect object takes on the reflexive form.

I don't think it's limited to the South; it may have originated there and spread, but I have heard it, it doesn't make me raise my eyebrows like "go get you" would. Like in the song lyrics I have heard: "Gonna buy me a bluebird", "I'm gonna buy me a dog", "gonna have me another drink", etc.