Tag Archives: prescriptivism

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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Prescriptivism in other languages?

Posted on September 27, 2011 by BtU Admin

Fowler is a virtual icon of British prescriptivism. But what about other languages? Do other languages – French, Dutch, Russian, Chinese … – have similar traditions of prescriptive writing on language for a general public?

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Was Lowth a purist?

Posted on September 25, 2011 by Ingrid Tieken

When I gave a presentation on my recently published book The Bishop’s Grammar (OUP, 2011) in Cambridge earlier this year, a member of the audience asked if Lowth was ever described as a purist. The only reference I could think of was … Continue reading →

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Project events

Posted on September 21, 2011 by BtU Admin

The first presentation in the Bridging the Unbridgeable project was on 21 September, as a contribution to the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics Taalgebruiksseminar: Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade, “Bridging the Unbridgeable”. Shortly after that, another paper on the topic of … Continue reading →

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Conference on prescriptivism

Posted on September 20, 2011 by BtU Admin

The next conference on Prescriptivism will be held in Leiden, from 12 – 14 June 2013. It will be hosted by the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics. Previous conferences took place in Sheffield, UK (2003), Ragusa, Sicily (2006) and Toronto … Continue reading →

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Attitudes to usage

Posted on September 19, 2011 by BtU Admin

A little while ago, a survey was held among alumni of the English department of the University of Leiden to find out about their attitudes to particular usage problems. The items surveyed can be found in David Crystal’s Encyclopedia of … Continue reading →

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“Guardians of the language”

Posted on September 18, 2011 by Ingrid Tieken

Who are the guardians of the English language, and why do they have so much authority? Why are their books so popular, and what are they expecting to gain by it all? These are some of the questions that Flor … Continue reading →

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Prescriptivism and how it all began

Posted on September 17, 2011 by Ingrid Tieken

In the English language, the rise of prescriptivism is closely linked with the publication of Robert Lowth’s Short Introduction to English Grammar, in 1762. One of the new features of this grammar was the appearance of detailed criticism of grammatical … Continue reading →

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