ellis@flairvax.UUCP (Michael Ellis) (02/17/84)
The idea that using of nouns freely as adjectives (or using verbs as nouns, etc.) is poor English goes against a long established tendency in the Teutonic language family. German's notorious noun compounds reflect the same tendency that we have in such phrases as: console command language syntax summary Elegant, yes? I recall a theory of linguistic drift, where inflectional languages (like proto Indo-European) tend to become synthetic (like the Chinese dialects, or Orwellian english), which in turn become poly-synthetic (some Native American languages supposedly are in this unfamiliar category), then to agglutinative (like Finnish, having very analyzable inflections), back to inflectional again. Does anyone know if this theory is still in vogue? It sounded simplistic ten years ago. Not that I care to provide an excuse for ugly english -- the most beautiful prose I ever heard violates as many schoolbook rules as it seems to follow. *=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=* This net has seen the great sexist pronoun debate many times. I suppose it's only fair that newcomers should also have their opportunity to experience the thrill of flaming about the pros and cons of s/he, they, co, per &c. versus the established, sexist, generic `he'. My vote goes for `they' -- think how often existing pronouns have been called upon to fill new roles in all languages (eg. thou => you; du, Ihr => Sie). But my opinion means nothing. Language changes naturally to accomodate the needs of its speakers, with grammarians telling people how they used to speak years earlier. If women feel generic `he' sucks, and I can't blame them, common practice will gravitate towards the easiest alternative that offends nobody. -michael