Category Archives: usage features

Toward or towards?

Posted on November 11, 2011 by Ingrid Tieken

If you are not a native speaker English, like myself, these are difficult issues. According to Burchfield’s third edition of Fowler’s Modern English Usage (1996), the one is characteristic of American English and the other of British English. (Fowler himself … Continue reading →

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Proscriptivism in the OED

Posted on November 9, 2011 by BtU Admin

Under the first sense for heterogenous, the OED writes: A less correct form of heterogeneous adj. (In mod. use prob. repr. the pronunc. /hɛtəˈrɒdʒɪnəs/ given by some speakers to heterogeneous: cf. homogenous adj. (homogeneous adj. ¶).) Labelling the word as … Continue reading →

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“Split and stranded”: a TLS review

Posted on October 31, 2011 by Ingrid Tieken

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The Bishop’s Grammar (OUP, 2011) was reviewed in last week’s Times Literary Supplement.  One of the aims of my book was to show that Robert Lowth is usually depicted as an icon of prescriptivism, and also that his Short Introduction to English … Continue reading →

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Apostrophe s

Posted on October 23, 2011 by Ingrid Tieken

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In a park in Ealing, London (was it Ealing Common?) we came upon this notice: The arrival and that of their descendant’s have changed the face of Ealing and England forever. If you look carefully, someone tried to erase the … Continue reading →

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Snares in pairs: lie/lay and others

Posted on October 17, 2011 by BtU Admin

Paul Bennett, one of the commenters in this blog, offers language advice to the readers of his website. There is a wealth of information in his Quick Language Guide for Writers, and of particular interest there is his section called … Continue reading →

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Earlier use of the new “like”?

Posted on October 6, 2011 by BtU Admin

Mesthrie et al. (Introducing Sociolinguistics 2nd ed., 2009:117-8) discuss “three newer uses” of like, the “quotative” use (I’m like why did you do that), the use of like as a hedge (My parents like hate you) and the use of like as … Continue reading →

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Attitudes to usage: second poll

Posted on October 5, 2011 by BtU Admin

This poll asks for your attitudes to the acceptability of the next five items in Attitudes to English Usage, by W.H. Mittins, Mary Salu, Mary Edmonson, and Sheila Coyne (OUP, 1970). If you haven’t done the first poll yet, please do … Continue reading →

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Phrasal verbs and informal usage

Posted on October 2, 2011 by Ingrid Tieken

The question whether phrasal verbs are typical of informal usage was raised by Paula Rodríguez-Puente at the Helsinki Corpus Festival yesterday. The title of her paper was “”Talking ‘private’ with phrasal verbs: A corpus-based study of English phrasal verbs from 1650 to … Continue reading →

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A which hunt

Posted on September 30, 2011 by Ingrid Tieken

This was how David Denison (Manchester), in a paper jointly presented at the Helsinki Corpus Festival with Marianne Hundt (Zurich), described the American phobia for which in non-restrictive relative clauses. American users are advised to “use that before a restrictive clause and which before … Continue reading →

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Loss of the passive

Posted on September 29, 2011 by Ingrid Tieken

Today, Geoffrey Leech (University of Lancaster) gave a plenary lecture at the Helsinki Corpus Festival, called “Decline and (?)disappearance: The negative side of recent changes in Standard English”. One of his examples of recent change was the loss of the … Continue reading →

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