Category Archives: Uncategorized

A review from the UK Guardian yesterday: “Linguists say that random chance plays a bigger role than previously thought in the evolution of language – but also that ‘English is weird’”, available here.

To put the final (well, almost final) touches on my study of usage guides and usage problems, I decided to have one more survey, on the acceptability of –lily adverbs. These are words like cowardlily, ghastlily, heavenlily, livelily, lovelily, lowlily, manlily, mannerlily, … Continue reading →

Anne Curzan (Fixing English: Prescriptivism and Language History, Cambridge University Press, 2014) has recently(?) launched an “English Grammar Boot Camp” with The Great Courses. This is “a thorough immersion in all of the key elements of English grammar and usage”, … Continue reading →

The relevant entries from the OED are: I also had a look at Worcester’s dictionary, primarily to see if he had any citations.  I’m not sure about the date, as the first twenty pages are missing, but these are the … Continue reading →

Here’s a UK Guradina newspaper fluff piece for Harold Evans’ new book on writing dos and donts. He seems very confident!

Here’s an article from the UK Guardian newspaper on the use of grammar metalanguage in UK primary school tests!

This post is dedicated to Clive Upton, who was surprised that I spelled Granddad with two d’s in the middle. I’m no native speaker, and just told myself: surely it must be grand + dad. Since then I looked it … Continue reading →

For English Today readers, and indeed anybody else who may have missed it last time, here is my trial survey, on number concord in the species noun phrase, which I have posted on Qualtrics. You will find the survey HERE. … Continue reading →

On behalf of all the members of the Bridging the Unbridgeable project: our very best wishes for Christmas and the New Year, hoping for continuing very useful input from you all!