a joke about two pere ubuists

[MalignD at aol.com]

In a message dated 3/8/03 1:22:21 PM, abdieloabdiel at yahoo.com writes:


> 
> It's obvious that you understood me. But how? I'd
> taken a position opposed to yours. I'd stated that no
> linguist in the world supports your claim. I repeated
> that assertion, but omitted the word "not" and used
> "that." You understood me. Because language doesn't
> work the way you think it does. It's far more complex.
> 
A couple of things.   For one, stating that "no linguist in the world 
supports your claim," is not the same as citing a linguist and stating what 
he does believe.

Secondly, nothing in what I've written about prescriptive grammar and its 
function tells you anything about how I think language works.   Presumptions 
aren't arguments.   

And yes, I've managed (I think) to understand you despite your garbled 
syntax, but that's only true (if true) because what you've written is fairly 
simplistic and because you are deviating in only small ways from established 
rules that you are otherwise following.   Take your argument to its logical 
end and you'll be speaking an ideolect that is, to anyone but yourself, rank 
gibberish.





-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20030308/ae14984c/attachment.html>