That's the main difference between a dead language such a latin, where
grammar can be normative and prescriptive as the corpus is finite,
and English, still alive for all I know and where you can only
describe what its users actually do with it and its trends.
Closed system v. open system.
Compare"as I said" and "like i said".
Which one wins in the current stats? ;-)
Amities
Philippe
Le 5 janv. 14 à 17:47, Jez Cunningham a écrit :
> Couldn't agree more. Although I fear it's >30 years - I went to a
> public
> school (between '64 and '70) and only learnt grammar through Latin
> lessons.
> Jez
>
>
> On 5 January 2014 16:40, Chris Barker <ftog@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> I’m sure, Jez, that that is the reason for the mistake, now
>> widespread.
>> It’s also probably rooted in the fear (of radio producers) that
>> someone
>> will start listening to such a report halfway through the sentence
>> and draw
>> that conclusion. But it’s still wrong, and if we had taught our
>> language
>> properly in schools over the last 30 years we would not be in this
>> fix.
>> And it is a fix: our teachers apparently cannot teach English
>> grammar,
>> partly because they know little themselves, partly because common
>> usage has
>> drifted from Standard English and now makes rules hard to learn,
>> let alone
>> teach.
>>
>> Chris
>>
>> On 5 Jan 2014, at 16:03, Jez Cunningham <jez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>>> 'Trouble is, when you write "The Prime Minister reported that he
>>> was
>> keen
>>> to preserve the State Pension." it's all too easy to infer that
>>> now he is
>>> no longer keen so to do.
>>> Innit?
>>
>> --
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