Thanks to Geoffrey Pullum, who pointed me to this older Language Log article by Arnold Zwicky which discusses some of the history of the prescriptive rule regarding that vs. which in restrictive relative clauses. It outlines what he knows about the development and origin of this rule and discusses the more general mechanisms which bring such rules about and ensconce them in style manuals and English classes.
Geoffrey Pullum can be a bit harsh for my taste when he rails against non-experts who make pronouncements about language (though it's almost always deserved), but he's just written an article which is if anything far too understanding. He's annoyed at people who consider vocabulary size and speed of lexical access to be measures of intelligence.
To me, this has always been up there with that mythical cousin or uncle who can tie his shoes, chew gum, find the cube root of 543 and play the star spangled banner on kazoo, as the story goes, all at the same time!
The lore surrounding intelligence is another way that people try to differentiate themselves and feel superior to others, that's clear. But it is interesting to wonder, since most of it is baseless, why it takes the particular forms it does. In most cases, I suppose, these supposed indexes of intelligence are in fact more directly indexes of group membership, whether via education level (vocabulary size, the memorization of arbitrary rules of usage, bibliophilia), or class linked cultural trappings (a taste for classical music, or expensive taste generally).
In some cases, such as standard language usage rules (in English, the injunction against split infinitives, etc.), the more arbitrary the rules the more valuable they seem to be. Such rules cannot be derived in any way, they must simply be memorized, and further they can only be obeyed, if at all, through constant practice, which means that they are products of long term cultural training (in the case of usage rules we call it education). Since they cannot be acquired through reason, the one thing you can be certain of is that they will not be learned through intelligence alone, which keeps them out of the hands of anyone who is not properly acculturated.
Another beneficial aspect to arbitrary standards of this kind is that, in obeying them, one is granting ultimate authority to the person(s) who think them up. It is one thing if I can convince someone to do something logical, which clearly benefits them in some obvious way. It is quite another to convince someone to do something which makes no sense while insisting that it does make sense, and, what's more, to get them to pretend they understand just how it makes sense.
In accepting and attempting to follow such rules, an individual is signaling their willingness to deny their own capacity to reason and make up their own mind in exchange for being granted some level of access to a socially privileged group. The more obviously illogical the rule, the more submission to group norms is signaled by this obedience.
In general, this seems to be a feature of all social groups. The difference is that the dominant groups claim that their particular markers of group membership are logical, intelligent, and so on. Come to think of it, maybe even that is not peculiar to dominant groups.
Why people do this is something of a mystery to me. I suppose it proves something any scientist probably knows through somewhat bitter experience: people are not naturally rational creatures. Of course there's no reason to expect we would be.
The Echidne site, via Ursula Le Guin, introduces six-word short stories. I like this one from Orson Scott Card: "The baby's blood type? Human, mostly."
Who'll try first?
BTW, if this system won't accept your comment below, please send items to bridegam [at] pacbell.net, whence publication is however not guaranteed.
Cat came north again with us, two days in the car, and on arrival mysteriously turned out to have fleas. Owner of house in question has been exceedingly forgiving about same, and cat hence occupies her hallowed place surrounded by the family in front of the fire, with no reduction in self-assurance. There really is nothing like the household gathered around the hearth.
Wishing you all the same or similar, minus fleas.
Hoping btw that folks who post on the Scottish Newsgroup will read here as well. I'd post greetings over there too but logistics prevent it at the moment.
Geoff Nunberg wins my phrase of the year award, squeaking by at the last minute to unseat...actually I made it all up just now. Worth reading, though.
Every college student has groused about textbook prices at one point or another. No fewer than four hand-wringing articles appeared in Inside Higher Ed during the 2006 fall semester alone.
The consensus seems to be that textbook prices are following the absurd survival-of-the-fittest cycle that leads to enormous antlers on bull elk. Consumers purchase books with prettier illustrations but illustrations increase printing costs and prices. Consumers faced with costlier books demand them to be higher quality, so publishers increase illustrations. Repeat.
The thing is, those textbooks are getting prettier. I started teaching myself geology a few weeks ago, and was astonished by the difference between selections on the shelves of my used bookstore. Modern geology textbooks are so well illustrated that I simply couldn't consider buying an early text, even an inexpensive introduction that was designed for Texas students. My final choice, The Earth Through Time, Fifth Edition is a visual feast.
But.
The prose is awful. I've re-read the same sections over and over again, since nothing seems to stay in my head. Terminology is used without introduction. The book makes little attempt to introduce concepts progressively, or provide clear explanations for processes. Some passages are little more than lists of terms referring to concepts that will not be elaborated upon for hundreds of pages. Worst of all, the whole thing is written is a sort of "textbookese," which combines the phraseology of contract law, the punctuation of amateur technical writing, and the maddening vagueness of post-1980 middle-school science classes.
One example should suffice. This one is from page 88:
The aforementioned rock terms provide for direct objective mapping of sedimentary beds as well as bodies of metamorphic and igneous rocks. If one is to make inferences about events recorded in rock units, it is useful to employ the term facies. A sedimentary facies refers to the characteristics or aspects of a rock from which its environment of deposition can be inferred.
The thing I don't understand is why the prose is so bad. I read technical books all the time. Occasionally I see bad Buddhism jokes or strained metaphors to white-water rafting, but I've really never encountered this sort of thing.
Gene's post on the National Bolshevist Party over at Harry's Place got me poking around Wikipedia a bit this evening.
One young lady's single-day edit history turns up the depressing sort of contributions you'd expect from a documentation project that operates under the insignia of the NKVD.
I've just finished building a set of bookshelves to house our mass-market paperbacks. Part of this involved moving a light switch and concealing the new switchbox's location. The best way to make the work invisible was to cover the switchbox with the spines of books glued to a two-by-four.
But which books? Running a paperback through a bandsaw is an act of high desecration for someone like me -- the sort of person Anne Fadiman calls a "courtly lover" of books, who cringes at a bent spine or dog-eared page. Only the most horrendous dreck is worthy of such treatment. But in order for the work to be invisible, the titles needed to blend in with the selection of used mass-market sci-fi and thrillers already on my shelves.
What would you choose? What books wouldn't cause embarassment -- either to own, or to have demolished?