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From: ed@mtxinu.UUCP (Ed Gould)
Newsgroups: net.women,net.nlang
Subject: Re: Non-sexist language (historical)
Message-ID: <416@mtxinu.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 19-Jun-85 21:01:39 EDT
Article-I.D.: mtxinu.416
Posted: Wed Jun 19 21:01:39 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 23-Jun-85 01:32:33 EDT
References: <11267@brl-tgr.ARPA> <among> <others> <290@wuphys.UUCP> <5327@fortune.UUCP>
Reply-To: ed@mtxinu.UUCP (Ed Gould)
Distribution: net
Organization: mt Xinu, Berkeley, CA
Lines: 15
Xref: watmath net.women:5987 net.nlang:3231

In article <5327@fortune.UUCP> polard@fortune.UUCP (Henry polard) writes:
>Does anyone have information on the success of attempts of 
>"conscious" linguistic change?

The removal of the double negative from English was such a conscious
change.  It is now considered "bad grammar" to say things like "I don't
like none of the things in that basket"  (meaning, in conventional
prasing "I don't like any ...").

I don't have any statistics about how often things like this have been
tried, but the double negative is an example.

-- 
Ed Gould		    mt Xinu, 2910 Seventh St., Berkeley, CA  94710  USA
{ucbvax,decvax}!mtxinu!ed   +1 415 644 0146