Posts by Steve Parks
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...in light of the veritable beating I received from all and sundry on this here website, for appearing to suggest that tastes are absolute.
I missed that one. Man, you are such a troublemaker, BenWilson.
I like that.
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Nobody gets my Simpsons references on PAS.
Ants.
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Anyway, BenWilson, I've got a way to settle this argument once and for all, you jus...
Anyhoo, it's been fun, folks. Over and out.
...aw crap.
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(NOTE: Posting without having fully caught up: ... )
English is a creolised bastard language, though. That is its history. And that's always been its strength.
Yes, and that is one reason I partly agreed with Islander earlier about language complexity.
Also, I think there's been a fair amount of straw man arguments on both sides in this argument, and it ain't helping. To wit,
Nothing to do with the armies and the economic might, then?
You’ve missed his point.
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All hail the comma!
Ben was right: Grammar Nazis!
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Are you thinking of The Pretenders' 'Hymn to Her'?
Ah, yes. As soon as I imagined Chrissie Hind's voice sing "something is lost..." it fell into place.
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On the flipside, when the meaning was clear, but there is some violation of some rule or other, is that person a poor communicator? I don't think so.
Not necessarily, especially in informal situations, on that we agree. But I don't think it is useful to brush off every rule as "arcane" if it serves a purpose.
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But the point of course is that in pre-literate societies minds were trained in all sorts of ways to cope with the lack of the capacity to jot things down. Plato famously wrote that the invention of writing would weaken the mind and lead to the decay of culture, and if nothing also he had certainly anticipated that something would be lost in the process.
I agree something is lost in the process, but something is gained (is that song lyric?). Plato was wrong, and as Ben said, we probably wouldn't know what he or Socrates thought if it hadn't been written down.
Pre-literate societies were trained in ways to cope without writing, but you aren't suggesting that oral history is as effective as written at storing information? I'll read your thesis eventually, though.
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I disagree with your point about 'dropping rules that are essential to disambiguation' being a no-no. Ambiguity is so easily avoided without arcane rules...
Now you're just being silly. If a rule is essential to disambiguation, it's not an arcane rule, it's a useful convention for communication.
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And anyone who thinks punctuation conventions are little more than the orthographic equivalent of dressing for dinner...
I don't think anyone is going that far.
Also, if I were to write a note for an assassin, I'd get to the point:
"Kill the King"
or in these more enlightened days,
"Throw a shoe at George Bush"