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You reply as if you think I don't know what a descriptivist is. I do. The problem is that I'm not arguing that "language is fixed, and should never change." Tha
by wyclif 15y ago
You reply as if you think I don't know what a descriptivist is. I do. The problem is that I'm not arguing that "language is fixed, and should never change." That is a rather severe misreading of the above link. The point is that people commonly misunderstand the original usage, not that the usage has changed.
- bane 15y agoI don't think anybody misunderstands the original usage. I think that most people don't care in the slightest how something Aristotle wrote in Greek was translated into Latin and then awkwardly translated from Latin into English in the 1500s, into an archaic predecessor of modern English that is almost but not quite intelligible to the modern ear. Prior Analytics is not the Bible, it doesn't have to be quoted verbatim in whatever translation you favor to keep Aristotle from smiting you with thunderbolts or some such.
- pessimizer 15y agoI've definitely never met anyone who used it to mean "I'm about to ask another question" who was aware of the original meaning of the phrase when asked, so we must live at antipodes.