Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site gitpyr.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!zehntel!hplabs!sdcrdcf!sdcsvax!akgua!gatech!gitpyr!dts From: dts@gitpyr.UUCP (Danny Sharpe) Newsgroups: net.nlang Subject: Grammatical Rules Message-ID: <34@gitpyr.UUCP> Date: Fri, 18-Jan-85 10:29:23 EST Article-I.D.: gitpyr.34 Posted: Fri Jan 18 10:29:23 1985 Date-Received: Tue, 22-Jan-85 05:11:45 EST Distribution: net Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA Lines: 27 All this talk of grammar and what's right/wrong reminds me of something I read in _Words_and_Ways_of_American_English_ by Thomas Pyles. It seems that Noah Webster (father of Webster's Dictionary, that Definitive Authority and Arbitrater of all disputes about American English) advocated the use of the word "them" as plural demonstrative adjective. In other words, "them horses" is proper and "those horses" is improper. This viewpoint didn't catch on. His reasoning was by analogy with German. He said that in German the phrase "in dem Himmel" means "in them heavens". I think this points out something about grammatical rules. Some of them *are* derived from observation of the language (a point in favor of adopting "them" instead of "those" as the official word for this usage is that a lot of people do use it this way. They are typically branded as "uneducated".) But some rules are entirely arbitrary, usually the product of some armchair linguist's reasoning. They become rules if said linguist convinces enough teachers that he's right. -- Either Argle-Bargle IV or someone else. -- Danny Sharpe School of ICS Georgia Insitute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332 ...!{akgua,allegra,amd,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo,ut-ngp}!gatech!gitpyr!dts