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