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Category Archives: usage features
More prescriptive commentary in the Smiley trilogy
My reading of the last book of John Le Carré’s Karla trilogy, featuring George Smiley, Smiley’s People (1979), produced two more prescriptive comments. (There may have been more, but these caught my attention, possibly because both are in the HUGE … Continue reading
George Smiley a prescriptivist?
Eighteen months or so ago I wrote a post about John le Carré, because I’d discovered that, like Kingsley Amis, Len Deighton and Ian McEwan, he too writes metalinguistic usage comments in his novels. My post then was about a … Continue reading
Just out: paper on flat adverbs by Morana Lukač and Ingrid Tieken
Congratulations, Sandra Jansen and Lucia Siebers, on the appearance of your book, and to Raymond Hickey in whose honour it was published! As for Morana and me, we’re very happy that it is out, and in my case, just in … Continue reading
An anachronism in The Mitford Murders
Being a fan of Nancy Mitford, and having read the Mitford sisters’ entire correspondence (ed. Mosley 2007) as well as their biography by Mary Lovell (2001), I was naturally curious about The Mitford Murders by Jessica Fellowes, the more so since … Continue reading
Describing Prescriptivism
Soon to appear (expected publication date: some time in September):
Posted in announcement, news, usage features, usage guide
Tagged Describing prescriptivism
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More complete?
In 2007, The Dutch Taaladviesdienst (a language advice service run by Genootschap Onze Taal) published Taal top 100, a collection of the 100 most popular usage problems in Dutch, in the fields of spelling, grammar, lexis , punctuation and style. … Continue reading
Posted in usage features
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These ones, those ones
Just finished my article “Of greengrocers, sports commentators, estate agents and television presenters: Who’s in a usage guide and why” for a special issue with papers from Liv Walsh’s workshop In the Shadow of the Standard September last in Nottingham. … Continue reading
British or American – or doesn’t it matter?
I’d never have thought I would read a Young Adult novel, but I did, and here is why. At ICEHL-20, two months ago in Edinburgh, Jane Hodson presented a paper in the course of which she referred to The Knife of … Continue reading
Well, up to a point, Lord Copper!
I can’t even read read a Raymond Chandler novel without a pencil, I told Carol Percy when she was interviewing me for the Journal of English Linguistics (to appear in December this year). It is the fate of the linguist, … Continue reading
Posted in usage features
Tagged Edward St. Aubyn, Kingsley Amis, Lord Copper, Patrick Melrose
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Hen and hun in Dutch. Or: How to Make a Usage Problem Go Away
This is Amos van Baalen’s second blogpost for last semester’s MA course Non-Standard English: Modern Dutch technically does not have a case system anymore. Remnants of this system occur in many set expressions, such as te allen tijde “at all … Continue reading
Posted in usage features, usage guide
Tagged hun/hen, Onze Taal, Wouter van Wingerden
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