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Their distinction follows dictionaries that I've looked at, but common usage is clearly diverging from that. It's unclear to me at what point we should stop sa
by DougMerritt 3y ago
Their distinction follows dictionaries that I've looked at, but common usage is clearly diverging from that.
It's unclear to me at what point we should stop saying that lots of people are using words incorrectly, and start saying that lots of dictionaries are sticking with outmoded definitions, but looking at the past, transitions certainly occur sometimes.
- greiskul 3y agoThere are lots of people that have this view that there is "objectively correct" language, and that you can find it in grammar books and dictionaries. Any linguist worth their salt knows that is a completely outdated and classist way of studying language. Dictionaries are supposed to be updated acording to how people use language, not people be "corrected" to try to follow the dictionary. While language learners speak a language "wrong", any group of native language speakers has rights of ownership of their language as any other group, and as long as they are communicating in a way that they can understand each other, they are never wrong.
- DougMerritt 3y agoAs an avocational linguist I am sympathetic to all of that, but effective communication requires a large degree of mutual understanding of words, so it's not like anything goes, either; plus most people have not studied linguistics and do believe in "correct language" (prescriptive) and do not hesitate to correct people who use "incorrect language" -- so it's a bit complicated culturally, if not from the stance of descriptive linguistics. In this particular case, there's no danger of misunderstanding, so I agree that this was just a nitpick about dictionary definitions versus a fairly common usage.