Monthly Archives: June 2016

9 December – Life after HUGE? Registration now closed

Posted on June 16, 2016 by Ingrid Tieken

Registration for the symposium is now closed. Should you wish to attend the symposium after all, please leave a comment, and we will see what we can do. Below, you will find the preliminary programme for the symposium Life after HUGE? … Continue reading →

Posted in news | Tagged Harry Ritchie, HUGE database, Oliver Kamm, Prescriptivism symposium, Rebecca Gowers, Robin Straaijer, symposium | 3 Comments

How do sticklers react to linguistic findings?

Posted on June 14, 2016 by Ingrid Tieken

Here is Lingyun Lai’s second blogpost: Sometimes, grammar handbooks and usage guides address similar usage issues, but their conclusions are not always the same. Nowadays, quite a few grammar references are based on corpus linguistics, and many such descriptive findings disaffirm … Continue reading →

Posted in MA Leiden | Leave a comment

Forever dangling? The unstoppable dangling participle under scrutiny

Posted on June 13, 2016 by Ingrid Tieken

Here is Ina Huttenga’s second blog post: The dangling participle is a pervasive structure in the English language. These “misrelated” modifiers have been used throughout English language history, but they seem to have become problems only recently, in the 20th … Continue reading →

Posted in MA Leiden, usage features | Tagged dangling participle | Leave a comment

Write it Right: A very pedantic usage guide

Posted on June 10, 2016 by Ingrid Tieken

Here is Madeleine Ibes’s second blog post: Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) was an American short story author, journalist and satirist who authored books like The Devil’s Dictionary (1906/1909), which contained definitions like this one for grammar: “A system of pitfalls thoughtfully prepared for … Continue reading →

Posted in MA Leiden, usage guide | Tagged Ambrose Bierce | Leave a comment

You should not borrow that!

Posted on June 9, 2016 by Ingrid Tieken

Here is Sara Sánchez-Molina Santos’s second blog post: Should we blame on language users the borrowing of words from other languages? Are speakers mistaken when they borrow words that are apparently already present in the language? Is this a new phenomenon? … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Álex Grijelmo, El País, English loanwords in Spanish, José Antonio Pascual, spoiler alert | 1 Comment

Your Top 5 of grammatical errors in English?

Posted on June 1, 2016 by Ingrid Tieken

Hielke Vriesendorp is a research master student of Linguistics at Leiden, who is trying to collect data for his paper for Ingrid Tieken’s MA course Testing Prescriptivism. To this end, he compiled a brief survey asking about people’s Top 5s of most … Continue reading →