SPUG: need another list moderator

[Bill Campbell]

On Sat, Sep 19, 2009, Michael R. Wolf wrote:
>
> On Sep 19, 2009, at 9:39 PM, Andrew Sweger wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 19 Sep 2009, Michael R. Wolf wrote:
>>
>>> OK.  I'll bite.  Just where is the world's third largest fresh water
>>> lake without computers or networks?
>>
>> The "without computer or networks" was not meant to be a qualifier for
>> third-largest-fresh-water-lake. Sadly, I flunked all my English  
>> classes.
>
> Sadly, English wasn't *designed* by linguists.  Its loose and flexible  
> "grammar rules" are descriptive rather than prescriptive.  Had it been  
> designed, there would be more structural underpinnings, probably  
> punctuation, to reduce ambiguities and increase expressiveness.

Early languages such as Latin were pretty structured with
extensive differentiation in declension of nouns and adjectives,
and conugation of verbs (I didn't learn much English grammer
until I started taking Latin and French in 8th grade).

As languages mature they tend to get less structured, and, to a
degree, simplified.  English is pretty much the mongrel child of
Latin, Greek, and Germanic languages.

Bill
-- 
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