Fwd: Not P but Steven Pinker's “Grammar Puss”

[Neal Fultz]

Wow that was fast -

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Pinker, Steven <pinker at wjh.harvard.edu>
Date: Mon, Dec 5, 2022 at 10:55 AM
Subject: RE: Not P but Steven Pinker's “Grammar Puss”
To: Neal Fultz <nfultz at gmail.com>


Dear Neal,

The title was chosen by the editors of The New Republic, and is a play
on the expression "glamour puss," referring to a consciously
fashionable and stylish person. Feel free to post this to the list.

Best,
Steve




-----Original Message-----
From: Neal Fultz <nfultz at gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, December 5, 2022 12:48 PM
To: Pinker, Steven <pinker at wjh.harvard.edu>
Subject: Fwd: Not P but Steven Pinker's “Grammar Puss”

Dr Pinker,

On the Thomas Pynchon email list, someone brought up your article
"Grammar Puss" in the context of David Foster Wallace - we are
wondering if you choose that title yourself or the magazine editor did
- it's a bit more colorful than the rest of article, but on the other
hand you're taking some shots at linguistics in the article so maybe
they are the puss aforementioned.

Thanks much,

Neal Fultz
UCLA Social Sciences

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Neal Fultz <nfultz at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Dec 5, 2022 at 9:42 AM
Subject: Re: Not P but Steven Pinker's “Grammar Puss”
To: Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
Cc: Pynchon Mailing List <pynchon-l at waste.org>


It's online - https://newrepublic.com/article/77732/grammar-puss-steven-pinker-language-william-safire

Not sure if headlines at TNR are chosen by authors or the editors,
"Puss" only is in the headline.

On Mon, Dec 5, 2022 at 9:19 AM Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> From DFW's "Authority and American Usage":
>
> p. 75–76 “Once introduced, a prescriptive . . .” = Steven Pinker,
> “Grammar Puss” (excerpted from ch. 12 of Pinker’s book The Language
> Instinct, Morrow, 1994), which appeared in the New Republic on 31 Jan. ’94 (p. 20).
> Some of the subsequent Pinker quotations are from the NR excerpt
> because they tend to be more compact.
>
> What's the meaning of the title "Grammar Puss"?
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l