a joke about two pere ubuists

[Paul Mackin]

On Fri, 2003-03-07 at 10:19, Abdiel OAbdiel wrote:
> 
> --- Malignd <malignd at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > There's a story about someone presenting a paper on
> > linguistics and making the point that whereas, two
> > negatives can be used to create a positive or to
> > create an emphatic negative, there was no example in
> > language where two positives were used to create a
> > negative.
> > 
> > To which someone in the audience responded, "Yeah,
> > yeah."
> > 
> > As to Mr. OAbdiel, who seems to believe all usage
> > different but equal, I wonder how he'd feel in court
> > if his lawyer pled to the judge that-- 
> > 
> > "Poor Abdiel, he no have no way to get home,
> > meeahmore." 
> 
> 
>  
> 
> In Chaucer's and Shakespeare's English, double
> negative words like NOT, NO, or NEVER, reinforce each
> other in the same sentence. In modern English, this
> duplication is considered nonstandard. 
> 
> Every language is a composite of dialects. Some people
> believe languages are well defined and fixed systems
> with various dialects diverging from this norm.  These
> folks tend to be prescriptive rather than descriptive
> grammarians. Prescriptive grammarians usually consider
> the dialect used by politicians, business leaders, the
> upper socioeconomic class, the dialect used for
> literature and printed documents, the dialect taught
> in schools and used in courts, and propagated by the
> mass media, as the "correct" form of language. These
> so-called "language purists" have no support for their
> claim other than political one. Standard American
> English is an ideal. Nobody speaks this dialect, and
> if somebody did, we wouldn't know it because the ideal
> (SAE) is not defined precisely. 
> 

In addition to the two named grammars there is also PROscriptive
grammar. Some will instantly jump to the conclusion that this is a typo,
where prescriptive grammar was actually intended. These folks obviously
were not around however in the mid-sixties when Webster's Third New
International Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged appeared.
Many American high school teachers were said to have forbidden its
presence in their class rooms, preferring  continued use of Webster's
Second International Dictionary where good grammar was still practiced.

P.