Date: Sun, 16 Nov 1997 23:32:00 -0500

From: "Jeutonne P. Brewer" jpbrewer[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]HAMLET.UNCG.EDU

Subject: Re: double negatives and other prescriptions



On Sun, 16 Nov 1997, Kusujiro Miyoshi wrote:

The discussion on double negatives is quite interesting for me in

that it reminds me the arguments in England in the eighteenth

century. This discussion seems to be the one being had between

Priestley and Lowth.



Thanks for mentioning Priestley. He provides a good 18th century

contrast to Lowth later prescriptive popularizing grammarians like

Lindley Murray. Unfortunately, the Lowthian ideas are the ones

that still appear in school grammars.



18th century grammarians like Lowth proclaimed a whole series

of prescriptive statements about English. I remember that Albert

Baugh's history of the language book has/had an interesting list

of these. Offhand, I remember different than/different from in

the list. The 18th century grammarians were also prescriptively

important in imposing generic "he" as "correct."



Jeutonne



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Jeutonne P. Brewer, Associate Professor

Department of English

University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Greensboro, NC 27412

email: jpbrewer[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]hamlet.uncg.edu

URL: http://www.uncg.edu/~jpbrewer

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