mike's web logmike pope's Web logPolitical truths- June 3, 2008 A funny, and I'm sure quite intentional, juxtaposition just now on iGoogle:http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=1977 The politics of ambiguity: a series on LL- June 1, 2008 As you probably know, the Language Log is maintained by a bunch of hard-core descriptivist ("liberal") linguists who have a habit of challenging received editorial wisdom. Recently, Mark Liberman put forth a challenge that claims about the relative clarity, etc. of one construct over another (unfavored) one should have to be backed up with some quantitative data to support the superiority of the favored verbiage. We editorial types tend to go a lot by our instincts, which probably are pretty...http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=1976 |