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From: ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis)
Newsgroups: net.women,net.nlang
Subject: Artificial vs natural language
Message-ID: <351@spar.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 21-Jun-85 14:36:42 EDT
Article-I.D.: spar.351
Posted: Fri Jun 21 14:36:42 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 24-Jun-85 02:27:00 EDT
References: <11267@brl-tgr.ARPA> <among> <others> <290@wuphys.UUCP> <5327@fortune.UUCP> <416@mtxinu.UUCP>
Reply-To: ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis)
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Organization: Schlumberger Palo Alto Research, CA
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>>Does anyone have information on the success of attempts of 
>>"conscious" linguistic change? -- Henry Pollard
>
>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"...  -- Ed Gould

    Some native peculiarities that have survived centuries of suppression
    by prescriptive grammarians include:
   
    1. split infinitives: to proudly go
    2. `prepositions' at end of sentences: who did you give it to?
    3. singular they/their/them: each person must pay their own way

    These somehow refuse to die...

-michael