like us on facebook
- Follow Bridging the Unbridgeable on WordPress.com
-
Join 519 other subscribers
Tags
Blogroll
- A Robert Lowth blog
- A Way with Words
- Alison Edwards
- Arnold Zwicky's Blog
- Arrant Pedantry
- Common Errors in English Usage
- David Crystal's Blog
- Genootschap Onze Taal
- Grammar Girl
- Grammar Monkeys
- Grammarianism
- HiPhiLangSci
- Jeremy Butterfield: making words work for you
- Langitudes
- Language Log
- Languagehat
- Lexicon Valley
- Lingua Franca
- Linguistics Readers Digest
- Mind Your Language
- Not One-Off Britishisms
- NWO Humanities
- On Language
- OUPblog Lexicography & Language
- Proper English Usage
- Sentence first
- Separated by a Common Language
- Sin and Syntax
- Strong Language
- The Web of Language
- Throw Grammar from the Train
- Turning over a New Leaf
- Wordlady
- World Wide Words
Author Archives: Viktorija Kostadinova
What are your thoughts on the Microsoft grammar and style checker?
In the past two years, we’ve been publishing a series of interactive features in the journal English Today as a way to engage more readers in issues of interest to our research project. (Past features can also be found on … Continue reading
Posted in polls and surveys
Tagged attitudes to usage, English Today, grammar, Microsoft Grammar Checker, survey
Leave a comment
Sitcoms and language humour
Those who are familiar with Frasier would certainly recall that language was one of the things Frasier and Niles were nitpicky about. In one episode, Frasier manages to irritate a caller by commenting on his inappropriate use of literally: “I’m sorry Doug, … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Archer, Frasier, language in sitcoms, literally, Parks & Recreation, television
1 Comment
Literally, too big a fuss about nothing – the latest English Today interactive feature
The sixth installment in the Bridging the Unbridgeable series of interactive features was published in the June 2015 issue of the English Today journal. In this feature, we ask readers to contribute to investigating the issue of the non-literal, intensifier use of … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged attitudes survey, English Today, language change, literally, pet peeves, usage problems
Leave a comment
Fragment (consider revising)
We’ve all been there. You are writing (what you think is) a perfectly good sentence in a Word document when, suddenly, the MS Word grammar checker tells you that you should consider revising the ‘fragment’, because something is wrong. Very … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Anne Curzan, Geoffrey Pullum, Microsoft Grammar Checker, passive
Leave a comment
Bridging the Unbridgeable Lunch Lecture on ELAN
The next Bridging the Unbridgeable lunch lecture will take place on 21 October 2014, at 13:00 in Lipsius 308. During this session Amanda Delgado Galvan, a PhD candidate at LUCL, will introduce the language annotation tool ELAN and show how it … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Leave a comment
A parody within a parody?
The latest prescriptive lesson on correct grammar doesn’t come from a usage guide or a grammar blog. It comes from “Weird Al” Yankovic’s latest album called “Mandatory Fun” in the form of a parody of Robin Thicke’s popular song “Blurred Lines”. … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized, usage features
Tagged "Weird Al" Yankovic, grammar rules, netspeak, proscriptions, usage problems, Word Crimes
4 Comments
Something must have went on
The first time I read about have went as a usage problem was in the context of what 18th century prescriptivists wrote about it: Robert Lowth and Noah Webster, two 18th (and, in the case of Webster, 19th) century grammarians, both … Continue reading
Posted in polls and surveys, usage features
Tagged AmE vs BrE, attitudes to usage, have went, online survey, usage problem
Leave a comment
Give me some data!
Researching language in its social context inevitably includes collecting considerable amounts of data. As I move closer to the fieldwork period of my research project, I have set up a new blog to help me get in touch with (primarily) … Continue reading
Posted in polls and surveys
Leave a comment
Spellergies, or the Rise of the Usage Problem
Over the last couple of years I have been plagued with an unusual allergy, and to this day I have no idea what the cause might be. I have been tested for pollen, dust mites, particular types of food groups, … Continue reading
Posted in usage features
1 Comment
English Language Usage on Facebook – Survey
In the beginning of the last century, some notable linguists and scholars, George Philip Krapp, Sterling Leonard, and Fred Walcott, to name a few, expressed their cogent views on the relativity of linguistic correctness. Correct language is not something absolute, … Continue reading
Bridging the Unbridgeable 