So I won’t be spending the month of April toasting 50 years of the overopinionated and underinformed little book that put so many people in this unhappy state of grammatical angst. I’ve spent too much of my scholarly life studying English grammar in a serious way. English syntax is a deep and interesting subject. It is much too important to be reduced to a bunch of trivial don’t-do-this prescriptions by a pair of idiosyncratic bumblers who can’t even tell when they’ve broken their own misbegotten rules. –Geoffrey K. Pullum
Dude. Burrnn…
(The rest of “50 Years of Stupid Grammar” is here.)
That article makes me so happy.
In all my linguistics courses, it’s been made clear that “grammatical” has basically no meaning except “what most native speakers won’t raise their eyebrows at”. Prescriptivism really has no basis in anything except grouchy-old-man syndrome.
He has a book. I want it.
ETA: He has a couple! I will pass on the one Amazon is selling for $184, but he also has a website.