Many forms are being returned for my attitudes survey, so thanks to everyone filling them in, and helping with my research. Particularly the members of the University of the Third Age in the UK, who have been responding in great … Continue reading
In our usage polls we use the same criteria of acceptability as those of the survey from which they are taken, Mittins et al.’s Attitudes to English Usage. We ask you to rate usage items according to whether they are … Continue reading
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One of my most delightful discoveries when I was looking for first quotations from eighteenth-century authors in the OED was that Fanny Burney was cited as the first user of ain’t. The source was Evelina, her first novel published in … Continue reading
This is a question Jimmie Fane, a character in Kingsley Amis’s novel The Biographer’s Moustache (1996), asks his biographer Gordon Scott-Thomson. The question relates to the word often, and he asks: How do you pronounce O, F, T, E, N? Sounding the … Continue reading
How old is could of, should of, would of, the controversial issue reported on elsewhere in this blog? On reading the proofs for my chapter in the second edition of The Oxford History of English, edited by Lynda Mugglestone and … Continue reading
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High time for a new usage poll: items 31 – 35 from Mittins et al. (1970). Let us have your votes please! And should this poll really get you into the mood for more, there are six more polls to … Continue reading
Elsewhere in this blog I reported on the first quotation from the OED for the term “flat adverb”: 1871 J. Earle Philol. Eng. Tongue vii. 361 The Flat Adverb is simply a substantive or an adjective placed in an adverbial position. (This … Continue reading
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For a paper I’m writing in the context of the Bridging the Unbridgeable project I’m doing a survey into attitudes to particular usage problems. For this pilot study, I’m collecting texts in which people express their opinions to such usage … Continue reading
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Next academic year, second semester, Ingrid Tieken will teach an MA course called “Prescription and Prescriptivism”. More details will be announced on the Leiden University website soon. Course description: Prescription and prescriptivism are perceived, particularly by linguists, as rather negative … Continue reading
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Kingsley Amis distinguishes two types of people in his amusing usage guide The King’s English based on their attitudes and usage: berks & wankers. These terms he quite obviously uses in absolutely nothing else but their most strictly technical sense as … Continue reading
Bridging the Unbridgeable 