I was just reading up on the guy I mentioned earlier who's an etymologist. I was mainly looking to see if he was married. :D He is 45 years older than me, so never mind, but just look at what I found:
"His main graduate works, written under the auspices of the renowned philologist M.I. Steblin-Kamensky, focused on Middle English and Icelandic phonetics." DOES THAT SOUND LIKE SOMEONE YOU KNOW???
I am just getting a huge kick out of this. I read a little bit of the blog and am extremely impressed and entertained. I'm going to read some more and then I am going to email him. I just can't believe someone's brain can contain that much information.
What really got me, though, is that in the entry I was reading, he mentioned in passing "descriptive grammar", which is a topic I've tried and failed to explain to all of you guys (especially Sarah) many times. I feel a lot more validated now. It wasn't something I made up in my mind! God, I love finding stuff like this.
4 comments:
What is descriptive grammar? I don't recall you attempting to describe it to me. But maybe it was b/c I didn't understand it, therefore threw it out of my head. I guess.
Two linguistic questions for you:
1) Are you the one who told me (or can you confirm) that Americans today sound more like British folk from 1770s than British people today sound like British folk of the 1770s?
2) Did the word Knight used to be pronounced K-nig-hit? Ala Monty Python-"You English K-nig-hits!"
I told these two things to a few people recently, but I was doubting my brain.
Are you saying I'm dumb? JK. I remember those conversations.
Was descriptive grammar the idea that grammar is about how someone uses language, not whether it's right or wrong? Grammar is about describing one's language use, not evaluating it compared to some traditional standard model of accuracy or correctness.
If this is at all close, feel better about yourself. Also, taking a linguistics course of my own may have helped.
Emily:
I remember learning about #1 in some class I took or t.v. show I watched; I can't remember the specifics.
Get back to us Liz. What is D.G.? Waiting with nervous anticipation.
Weirdly, Sarah, I was just typing this as you wrote "Get back to us". Great minds.
Sai, you're right, descriptive is the one that says usage is correct as opposed to grammar. In linguistics they only focus on that. Rules of grammar don't have any kind of place in linguistics, which makes sense.
Emily: Yep. That was me. It was more Shakespearean time, but maybe also 1770s. Also, it was specifically Southern American accents.
Not exactly, but close. H was like the ch in Loch, and knight was cniht. So it was k-ni-ch-t. If that makes sense. Basically like what you said but without the extra i.
Post a Comment