26 August 2012

Textbook Love

I am going to start to post my favorite quote from a text book some time at the end of the week. A new...feature? I suppose you could call it that if this was a normal blog...which it's not...but hey! It's fun, though it may not be consistant. You'll notice that there are two here. I couldn't decide which I liked better, and they're both from the same pages of my syntax notebook so I figured you'd let it slide.

"Someone, somewhere, must be making decisions about "correct English" for the rest of us. Who? There is no English Language Academy, and this is just as well; the purpose of the Academie Fracaise is to amuse journalists from other countries with bitterly argued decisions that the French gaily ignore." Steven Pinker on Syntax. The Language Instinct. 1994. 384-85.


"Who would settle for being a schoolmarm when one can be an upholder of rationality itself?" Steven Pinker on Whorfianism. The Language Instinct. 1994. 385.

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