response 83 of 151:

Nov 22 04:16 UTC 2000

..."us English majors"...   ;-)

response 85 of 151:

Nov 22 09:43 UTC 2000

Re 80.  I use a semicolon where it is appropriate to do so.  Have you
ever seen me misuse a semicolon?

I think the chess metaphor may be useful here.

Beyond the rules of the game of chess itself, there are certain rules of
play which, in general, you violate at your peril.  I'm sure that someone
has written up and codified all these rules.  If you're a beginning
player, you could learn from studying them.  However, as an experienced
player, if you stick to following all those rules, all the time, then you
are playing terrible chess.

I suppose you could take that a step further to describe the computers
which will soon be defeating even the world's greatest human chess
players.  Presumably the software for computer chess is full of formulas
and probabilities and thousands of complex rules of play.  In the end,
computing power wins out, sure, just as a computer can calculate the
stresses in a bridge design better than a human can intuit them.  In those
kinds of endeavors, resistance to mathematics is silly, and the rules
expand the possibilities for ever greater human accomplishments.

By contrast, applying ever more complex rules to human writing and speech
is a dead end, useful only in learning.  Fluency in a langage, or at any
task, consists in part of forgetting the rules; it becomes an automatic,
left-brain activity requiring little conscious intervention.  When you
drive, you can shift gears, change lanes, adjust speed, etc., without even
breaking your unrelated train of thought.  When you read, you do not have
to focus on each letter individually, or consciously notice punctuation
marks.  When you speak, you don't have to consider where to place your
tongue to make the "T" sound.

Similarly, when I write, I do not have to focus on rules to decide when a
semicolon is correct.  As I type, my finger taps that key, and the
character ends up in the right place.  When I started this response, I
wanted to give an example of a sentence containing a semicolon, but
couldn't think of one and gave up.  Now I see that I used a semicolon
in the previous paragraph.  Obviously, it didn't take any conscious
thought.  I didn't even notice that I was doing it.

I remember a discussion of Artificial Intelligence and houseflies some
time back.  A fly buzzes around the room, controlling its altitude,
avoiding obstacles, seeking goals, etc., and it does all this with
remarkably little hardware in real time.  An AI fly would have to solve
equations to calculate its position and velocity and appropriate wing
flapping speed, etc.; the real fly does not seem to find this necessary.

response 87 of 151:

Nov 22 17:57 UTC 2000

Re 86.  No, that's not it.  The fly makes its decisions about speed and
direction and wing flap rate and so on without any outside intervention,
and it doesn't have the hardware to solve any equations.  Reaching for
a glass of lemonade is the same thing.  Nothing in my head is calculating
the square root of the estimated distance, or doing any math at all.

response 89 of 151:

Nov 22 19:10 UTC 2000

Re 88.  Ah!  Well said.  The mathematics is not the real system.  The
grammar rules are a description only, not the real communication.

response 91 of 151:

Nov 22 22:22 UTC 2000

The rules of grammar serve as a framework for passing on the means of
communication to the next generation.  The goal is to preserve the ability
to communicate between people with different experiences of socialization
-- primarily due to inevitable changes in the ways of the world as
generations go by.

The rules have to adapt in order to maintain relevance to the experiences
of each generation, but they are necessary to slow the rate of change in
the language to that which allows three generations of people living
simultaneously to communicate successfully at at least rudimentary levels. 

Under ordinary circumstances, the older generation(s) will protest the
changes, while the younger generation(s) will proclaim the framework
insufficiently flexible to maintain relevance. 

response 93 of 151:

Nov 22 22:40 UTC 2000

That's a cynical interpretation.  Dumbing down is only one way of looking at
it, and I'm sure that most older generations would apply it to the process
undertaken by subsequent generations to modify the grammatical structure of
our language.
That doesn't mean it is the exclusive interpretation.

response 95 of 151:

Nov 23 02:27 UTC 2000

Re #90 - I'm hardly PC.  It was a fucking typo.

response 97 of 151:

Nov 23 03:12 UTC 2000

actually, third person singular neuter is its, not his.  

response 99 of 151:

Nov 23 05:48 UTC 2000

Yup.  Icky.

response 101 of 151:

Nov 23 07:17 UTC 2000

Yeah, but for some reason people object to using the pronoun 'it' to refer
to other people. ;>

response 103 of 151:

Nov 23 07:47 UTC 2000

Re 102.  Kindergarten-2nd grade: Swift School, Chicago IL
         3rd grade: Red Cedar School, East Lansing MI
         4th-6th grade: Bailey School, East Lansing MI
         7th-8th grades: McDonald Middle School, East Lansing MI
         9th-12th grades: East Lansing High School, East Lansing MI
         Undergrad: Michigan State University, East Lansing MI
         Law school: Wayne State University, Detroit MI
         Grad school: Cornell University, Ithaca NY

Teaching grammar was out of style at the time I was passing through the
grades in which it was traditionally taught.  However, I also ignored a
lot of what they attempted to teach me.  I do vaguely recall refusing to
get involved with diagramming sentences, around 6th grade.

response 105 of 151:

Nov 23 17:42 UTC 2000

I *hated* diagramming sentences.  They had also changed "noun" and "verb" to
"subject" and "predicate" at that point.  Icky.

response 107 of 151:

Nov 23 18:52 UTC 2000

I diagrammed sentences in elementary school, but I think that is too early
for a good appreciation of what it really means. I didn't learn English
grammar until I studied German grammar.