anne curzan
151088876
The Grammatical Status of However
Popular grammar books have long admonished their readers for using conjunctive adverbs as coordinators, and nowhere more than in the case of however. The very force of this prescription suggests that the rule is far from intuitive for many users of standard edited English: examples of however taking on a syntactically coordinating function (equivalent to but) are not difficult to find, nor are they limited to unedited sources. This paper addresses the question of whether prescriptivism is clouding our view of a linguistic change in the grammatical status of however. Drawing on data from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA) we argue that the apparent "confusion" about whether however can serve as a clausal coordinator may be closely related to its increasing preference, over the past century and a half, for clause initial placement. Descriptive grammars of the last twenty years have labeled select conjunctive adverbs other than however "marginal coordinators." This paper presents the hypothesis that however is following a historical trajectory similar to the "marginal coordinators" so and yet, whose mixed function is now accepted as standard; and it explores the extent to which shifting patterns in sentence placement preferences as a result, perhaps, of colloquialization may be a factor in the changing grammatical function of however.
Journal of English Linguistics
Lizzie Hutton Anne Curzan
165946506
Chapter 2: Periodization in the History of the English Language
Anne Curzan Laurel J Brinton Alexander T Bergs
63079674
and Questioning the Rules of Grammar
Anne Curzan
60260832
Fixing English: Prescriptivism and Language History
Introduction: does prescriptivism fail? 1. Prescriptivism's umbrella: standards, style, restoration, and political intervention 2. Prescriptivism's lessons: scope and 'The history of English' 3. Checking grammar and grammar checkers 4. Dictionaries and the idea of 'real words' 5. Non sexist language reform and its effects 6. Reappropriation and challenges to institutionalized prescriptivism 7. Finding shared ground: public conversations about prescriptivism.
Anne Curzan
161991933
Fixing English: Nonsexist language reform and its effects
Nonsexist language reform, or the set of efforts to make the English language more equitable to and inclusive of men and women, falls under the more general heading of "politically correct" language reform. The scare quotes around "politically correct" in that sentence are highly intentional, designed to emphasize the charged and problematic nature of this term at the beginning of the twenty first century. The phrase "politically correct" has undergone semantic pejoration (that is, its meaning has become more negative) such that it no longer refers neutrally to efforts to reform language in order to make it more respectful and inclusive of all persons, but instead suggests overly sensitive if not silly and unnecessary efforts to change language "at the whim" of underrepresented groups and their advocates. Politically correct language and the efforts to promote it are regularly ridiculed in the public arena. Fabricated language reforms such as personhole cover for manhole cover and vertically challenged for short are held up as symptomatic of the movement's excesses. I call these fabricated because I have never actually heard any advocate of nonsexist language reform seriously propose personhole cover or anyone proposing any kind of language reform make a serious case for vertically challenged Yet they can show up side by side with more common, even at this point mainstream reforms such as Native American for Indian African American for Black If Urban Dictionary provides a snapshot of attitudes about the term political correctness the term's negative connotations have gone beyond silly and unnecessary and now include manipulative, harmful, and silencing. The first definition in Urban Dictionary in Fall 2012 (which means it had the best ratio of thumbs up to thumbs down) read: "Organized Orwellian intolerance and stupidity, disguised as compassionate liberalism."
Anne Curzan
148094035
Fixing English: References
Anne Curzan
163152613
Fixing English: Prescriptivism's lessons: scope and "the history of English"
Anne Curzan
162159814
Fixing English: Checking grammar and grammar checkers
The sentence which opens this chapter (and which you are reading right now) has made the Microsoft Word Grammar Checker (MSGC) unhappy. It puts a green squiggly line under the string of words which opens this chapter and suggests the following rewording: that opens this chapter The Microsoft grammar checker perpetuates the idea that the relative pronouns which and that are not interchangeable in a restrictive relative clause such as the sentence ____ opens this chapter There are at least three ways to make the green line go away in this sentence: (a) turn off the grammar checker entirely; (b) click "ignore" when the grammar checker suggests changing the sentence; or (c) change the sentence, replacing the word which with that or revising the syntax so that it doesn't require a relative pronoun (e.g. this chapter's opening sentence A significant number of writers, however, do not know how to turn off the grammar checker, which is on by default, or do not have the confidence to turn off and/or ignore the grammar checker. These writers may feel some compunction to obey the grammar checker, assuming it to be a reliable authority that is alerting the writer to a confirmed error. The assumed authority of the Microsoft grammar checker, combined with its ubiquity, make it arguably the most powerful prescriptive language force in the world at this point. Any best selling usage guide pales in comparison, both in terms of the number sold (a few million compared with hundreds of millions) and in terms of the ready availability of the prescriptive guidance. The grammar checker requires no additional purchase; it comes with the Microsoft suite of programs. Writers do not even need to get up from the chair and walk to the bookshelf to consult the grammar checker as it is already available on the computer. The embedding of the grammar checker into the Microsoft Word program, with no author's name attached, can make its rules and advice seem neutral and authoritative; its similarities to published usage guides can become almost hidden.
Anne Curzan
163125842
Fixing English: Finding shared ground: public conversations about prescriptivism
Anne Curzan
32376428
Fixing English: Introduction: does prescriptivism fail?
In January 2010, the American Dialect Society voted fail, the noun, the Most Useful Word of the Year. I first encountered the word a year and a half earlier, when the students in my Structure of English course taught me the slang phrase "epic fail."An epic fail is not just any fail: it is a fail of monumental proportion, often, my students explained, involving hubris. As Slate magazine described it in an article in October of that year: "Not just coming in second in a bike race but doing so because you fell off your bike after prematurely raising your arms in victory" (Beam 2008) The collapse of several major American investment banks in 2008: an epic fail. The University of Michigan football team losing to Appalachian State in 2007: another epic fail. Fail as a noun is linguistically interesting because it exemplifies language change, whether it represents a clipping from the noun failure or a functional shift from the verb fail to the noun fail. (The noun fail existed earlier in English but was listed by the Oxford English Dictionary as obsolete, except in the phrase without fail, until this innovative meaning of the noun fail was added to theDictionary in 2011. The emergence of the noun fail is the kind of linguistic change that linguists enjoy studying, a change that bubbles up "from the people" in this case, perhaps, from a late 1990s arcade game in which players were told that "you fail it." This phrase became a more widespread exclamation in response to someone's failure at a range of activities, and once shortened to "Fail!" it would easily have enabled a functional shift of fail from verb to noun. The noun fail simultaneously exemplifies the kind of change that stereotypical prescriptive language pundits pundits who take it upon themselves to tell English speakers how they should and should not talk and write in order to use "good" or "correct" English would lament: Why do we need another noun when we already have failure? And why do people insist on nouning verbs? The previous paragraph sets up a traditional binary in modern linguistics: the descriptive linguist standing in opposition to the prescriptive pundit or "grammarian."Descriptive linguists study language change as a natural and inevitable part of any living language. Prescriptive commentators and scholars react to language change, typically with a desire to "fix" the language: both fix in the sense of hold stable (i.e. fix in time) and fix in the sense of improve.
Anne Curzan