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The burden for justifying the change lies with those supporting the change. You’re the one categorically claiming that the way people talk is somehow ‘wrong’.

The burden for justifying the change lies with those supporting the change. You’re the one categorically claiming that the way people talk is somehow ‘wrong’. If you want to make that claim, you need to support it. Without going into highly technical details, I explained some ways why the usage could make sense. Your response was simply to say, as if declaring it somehow makes it true, that there is no reason for the usage. There is nothing anecdotal about my experience. If I have to blink and think twice about what someone is saying, then he is using nonstandard idiom. By definition your experience is anecdotal. I doubt you have to think twice when someone says it, but we’d have to subject you to an experiment to be sure. But simply put, there are so many cognitive biases that may potentially be at work that you really can’t reliably judge yourself whether it takes you longer to process. Sentence processing happens on the order of tens of milliseconds. That stuff can fossilize, doesn't mean we should let it fossilize. You’re assuming that you have some control over whether the use develops in the language. I’m saying that’s a flawed assumption and that you don’t. If you’re so sure the usage is wrong, it may be interesting to note how many hits there are for each phrase in Google’s index: 2,220,000 for "could care less" 1,410,000 for "couldn't care less" I readily admit that this, too, is anecdotal evidence. But it’s quite telling, no?

tome 17y ago
Confusion never used the word 'wrong' actually. You might be thinking of me.
- codyrobbins 17y ago
  He said people were lazy and ignorant for using could care less. I’d consider that equivalent to calling them wrong. You’re just nit-picking.
  - tome 17y ago
    Part of our difficulty to understand each other may be that "wrong" is often used to imply some sort of value judgment. I should stress I'm not using it in that way, just as a statement of fact. I would strongly assert that X years ago, when "I couldn't care less" was the only popularly used version, saying "I could care less" was both lazy and ignorant: lazy because it's dropping a syllable for the ease of the speaker despite making it more difficult for the listener; ignorant because the speaker doesn't realise they're doing it. Whether it's lazy and ignorant now is a harder question to answer. I'm not familiar with North American usage of the phrase.
    - codyrobbins 17y ago
      I guess my comments may come across as slightly antagonistic, but I don’t mean them that way at all. I’m just very excited about the topic of language in general. I should tell you that I have a masters degree in linguistics, so I’m not pulling any of this out of thin air. Most of the arguments I’ve made are more or less generally understood among the linguistic community. Most of the objections and issues you are raising are the kind of questions that are dealt with in undergraduate linguistics courses. I don’t have time to continue discussing this today unfortunately, but if you’re really interested in this stuff, you should reader The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker. He does a far better job at systematically explaining these issues than I do. Something like The Foundations of Language by Jackendoff is much more technical but also a very good introduction. http://www.amazon.com/Language-Instinct-Steven-Pinker/dp/0060976519 http://www.amazon.com/Language-Instinct-Steven-Pinker/dp/006... http://www.amazon.com/Foundations-Language-Meaning-Grammar-Evolution/dp/0198270127 http://www.amazon.com/Foundations-Language-Meaning-Grammar-E...
      - tome 17y ago
        Oh no, don't worry. Quick-fire written discussions are hard, so I don't hold any antagonism against you. No offence taken, and I hope you understand I too was writing out of interest rather than a desire to be argumentative. I was wrong in my assumptions about the current usage of the phrase, as you've already pointed out, so I concede the argument. I'm very interested in the use of language too, which is why I enjoyed the discussion, though I've never formally studied it. Thank you for the recommendations. This debate is an instance of a strange phenomenon which I don't yet know yet understand how to resolve. If someone wrote a serious piece on the internet, containing in all seriousness, the phrase "I isn't very happy about dat" then it's certainly possible to write an interesting essay on culture, the use of colloquialism, evolution of language etc., but I also think it's equally valid for me to summarize my position by saying "Your grammar is incorrect, and you've spelled 'that' wrongly. Please don't do it again in a serious article.". In much the same way, if someone wrote "integration is reverse of differentiation" I could explain at length why this is not true but often it's more effective to accept it as an approximately true statement and move on to discussing more important things.
tome 17y ago
How would you describe the use of "it's" to mean "of it", or "its" to mean "it is"? "Wrong" is the word I'd use, regardless of what definition you wish to give that word. What word or words would you use?
- codyrobbins 17y ago
  The presence of the apostrophe is an orthographic convention and has nothing to do with language in the least. There’s no apostrophe in it’s when people pronounce it.
  - tome 17y ago
    Hmm, I'm intrigued by your assertion that orthography has nothing to do with language, but indeed you're right that this is an issue which relates to spoken language, so I'll ask a different question: How would you describe the use of "isn't" where "am not" is generally considered grammatical? For example "I isn't a liar" rather than "I am not a liar".
    - codyrobbins 17y ago
      Again, you’re missing the point. I can’t prescriptively judge whether something is grammatical or not, nor can anyone else. Grammaticality isn’t something which someone decides — a grammatical sentence is by definition a sentence which speakers of the language produce and understand. It is grammatical if people use it. If there is a particular dialect of English where they use isn’t as the first person singular form of the copula, then it is grammatical. It would not be grammatical in the standard American English dialect, which I think is what you’re getting at. But you have to be careful with your terms here, because in the technical sense ‘grammatical’ means an acceptable sentence of the language, whereas I have a feeling your understanding of ‘grammatical’ means ‘how we were taught to write in school to communicate to other people that we have been educated’. My entire point is that there’s a difference. You would probably call the sentence He been had that job. completely ungrammatical. In Black Vernacular English, however, it’s perfectly acceptable. What’s more, depending on the pronunciation of been, this sentence can communicate a tense that doesn’t exist in standard American English. In SAE it can only be communicated by adjunct material like ‘for a long time’. Ostensibly, this is more efficient. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_English http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_Eng...

tome 17y ago

Confusion never used the word 'wrong' actually. You might be thinking of me.

codyrobbins 17y ago
He said people were lazy and ignorant for using could care less. I’d consider that equivalent to calling them wrong. You’re just nit-picking.
- tome 17y ago
  Part of our difficulty to understand each other may be that "wrong" is often used to imply some sort of value judgment. I should stress I'm not using it in that way, just as a statement of fact. I would strongly assert that X years ago, when "I couldn't care less" was the only popularly used version, saying "I could care less" was both lazy and ignorant: lazy because it's dropping a syllable for the ease of the speaker despite making it more difficult for the listener; ignorant because the speaker doesn't realise they're doing it. Whether it's lazy and ignorant now is a harder question to answer. I'm not familiar with North American usage of the phrase.
  - codyrobbins 17y ago
    I guess my comments may come across as slightly antagonistic, but I don’t mean them that way at all. I’m just very excited about the topic of language in general. I should tell you that I have a masters degree in linguistics, so I’m not pulling any of this out of thin air. Most of the arguments I’ve made are more or less generally understood among the linguistic community. Most of the objections and issues you are raising are the kind of questions that are dealt with in undergraduate linguistics courses. I don’t have time to continue discussing this today unfortunately, but if you’re really interested in this stuff, you should reader The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker. He does a far better job at systematically explaining these issues than I do. Something like The Foundations of Language by Jackendoff is much more technical but also a very good introduction. http://www.amazon.com/Language-Instinct-Steven-Pinker/dp/0060976519 http://www.amazon.com/Language-Instinct-Steven-Pinker/dp/006... http://www.amazon.com/Foundations-Language-Meaning-Grammar-Evolution/dp/0198270127 http://www.amazon.com/Foundations-Language-Meaning-Grammar-E...
    - tome 17y ago
      Oh no, don't worry. Quick-fire written discussions are hard, so I don't hold any antagonism against you. No offence taken, and I hope you understand I too was writing out of interest rather than a desire to be argumentative. I was wrong in my assumptions about the current usage of the phrase, as you've already pointed out, so I concede the argument. I'm very interested in the use of language too, which is why I enjoyed the discussion, though I've never formally studied it. Thank you for the recommendations. This debate is an instance of a strange phenomenon which I don't yet know yet understand how to resolve. If someone wrote a serious piece on the internet, containing in all seriousness, the phrase "I isn't very happy about dat" then it's certainly possible to write an interesting essay on culture, the use of colloquialism, evolution of language etc., but I also think it's equally valid for me to summarize my position by saying "Your grammar is incorrect, and you've spelled 'that' wrongly. Please don't do it again in a serious article.". In much the same way, if someone wrote "integration is reverse of differentiation" I could explain at length why this is not true but often it's more effective to accept it as an approximately true statement and move on to discussing more important things.

tome 17y ago

How would you describe the use of "it's" to mean "of it", or "its" to mean "it is"? "Wrong" is the word I'd use, regardless of what definition you wish to give that word. What word or words would you use?

codyrobbins 17y ago
The presence of the apostrophe is an orthographic convention and has nothing to do with language in the least. There’s no apostrophe in it’s when people pronounce it.
- tome 17y ago
  Hmm, I'm intrigued by your assertion that orthography has nothing to do with language, but indeed you're right that this is an issue which relates to spoken language, so I'll ask a different question: How would you describe the use of "isn't" where "am not" is generally considered grammatical? For example "I isn't a liar" rather than "I am not a liar".
  - codyrobbins 17y ago
    Again, you’re missing the point. I can’t prescriptively judge whether something is grammatical or not, nor can anyone else. Grammaticality isn’t something which someone decides — a grammatical sentence is by definition a sentence which speakers of the language produce and understand. It is grammatical if people use it. If there is a particular dialect of English where they use isn’t as the first person singular form of the copula, then it is grammatical. It would not be grammatical in the standard American English dialect, which I think is what you’re getting at. But you have to be careful with your terms here, because in the technical sense ‘grammatical’ means an acceptable sentence of the language, whereas I have a feeling your understanding of ‘grammatical’ means ‘how we were taught to write in school to communicate to other people that we have been educated’. My entire point is that there’s a difference. You would probably call the sentence He been had that job. completely ungrammatical. In Black Vernacular English, however, it’s perfectly acceptable. What’s more, depending on the pronunciation of been, this sentence can communicate a tense that doesn’t exist in standard American English. In SAE it can only be communicated by adjunct material like ‘for a long time’. Ostensibly, this is more efficient. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_English http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_Eng...