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Language Log

Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2006 - 6:15 a.m.

The winner of the linguafranca prescriptive grammar quiz was kelsi. Yes, I gave in and asked the other teachers, and it is 'my', because 'playing' is a gerund. Huh. Who knew.

All these prescriptive rules that I said "pshaw!" to long ago and threw overboard with a weight tied on...nearly all of my students are business students, and apparently the GMAT is finicky about all these stupid rules, so I really do have to know them and teach them if I want to do right by my students. STUPIDSTUPIDSTUPID. There. I feel better. A little. What would make me feel even better would be to throw rotten fruit at the grave of Strunk, but that isn't an option just now. Maybe over Christmas break.

And, weird teaching grammar terminology of the day, they seem to call anything that comes after the verb its complement, whether it really is or not. Adjuncts. Adverbials. Anything! I'm not sure what the analytic usefulness of the term is under this definition. Or if there even is any.

It's true though, there really is very good parking available on campus at 7:30am.

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