Re[2]: [tied] Missing Singulars

At 8:05:40 PM on Friday, December 19, 2008, Andrew Jarrette wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott"
> <BMScott@...> wrote:

[...]

>> I merely pointed out that as a matter of empirical fact
>> 'I could care less' is today an acceptable idiom
>> expressing indifference.

> Who says that it is acceptable?

Those who use it completely unselfconsciously. I rather
suspect that they're a majority of the U.S. population; I
don't know about the rest of the English-speaking world.

[...]

> How can anyone say who it is that decides what is proper
> or acceptable or normal?

You keep talking about proper English as if the notion were
well-defined; I'm simply trying to get you to see

> The president? The Queen? You and I are both dealing in
> subjective territory, and we have a difference of
> subjective opinion.

I'm not arguing about a difference in subjective opinion;
I'm objecting to the introduction of the irrelevant notion
of 'proper English'. Miss Thistlebottom has little if any
place in a discussion of how the language is actually used.

As a child I internalized a great many of the prescriptive
rules cooked up by 17th and 18th century grammarians. As a
result, many violations of these rules simply sound ugly to
me, even when the rule in question is an arbitrary one with
no historical basis. I don't, however, pretend that this is
anything more than a personal aesthetic judgement, or that
proper English is anything other than a privileged range of
lects.

[...]

> You agreed that you would probably not say "ten police",
> but differ from me in saying that your speech is not
> representative.

I know damned well that it's not representative, in all
sorts of ways.

> OK not representative, but does that mean that the
> standard is to say and write "ten police"?

Of course not. This is a straw man: at some point I
explicitly said that this seemed to be a minority usage.

Brian