Geoffrey Nunberg
American linguist
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
In the end, though, the meaning of "marriage" will be determined by the way ordinary people use the word, not the edicts of courts or legislatures. And popular usage can be surprisingly adaptable -- as attitudes evolve, it has few qualms about modifying the traditional definitions of words, however sanctified they seem at the time.
—Geoffrey Nunberg, American linguist, The New York Times, February 22, 2004
Posted on March 9, 2004 at 7:39 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Like christening a boat or adjourning a meeting, marriage is a state of affairs that can be brought about merely by pronouncing certain words in an appropriate setting — words that have traditionally conferred not just solemn rights and obligations, but permission to canoodle, too.
—Geoffrey Nunberg, American linguist, The New York Times, February 22, 2004
Posted on February 24, 2004 at 6:32 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Not that curbing jargon is likely to do much for a company's bottom line all by itself. But it can't do any harm to call people on the buzzwords they use. It's like requiring gang members to leave their colors at home and wear blazers and ties to school — it may not subdue their obstreperous natures, but it makes those cocky poses a little harder to strike.
—Geoffrey Nunberg, American linguist, The New York Times, August 3, 2003
Posted on November 20, 2003 at 1:33 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
I have a weakness for writers who build up their sentences with the full panoply of tools — writers who aren't diffident about occasionally dropping a semicolon into the middle of a parenthetical.
—Geoffrey Nunberg, American linguist, The Way We Talk Now, 2001
Posted on July 6, 2000 at 11:58 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Those of us who write dictionaries and grammar books will have to keep dutifully setting down the rules. We know they have more to do with folklore than with fact — most of them were spun by grammarians out of whole cloth. And we're aware that nobody but purists will take them seriously. But people want to believe that wherever there are differences there must be distinctions, even if we're sometimes making them up as we go along.
—Geoffrey Nunberg, American linguist, The Way We Talk Now, 2001
Posted on June 1, 2000 at 6:04 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
"Avoid splitting infinitives." That's the one rule that is likely to survive when all the rest of grammar has withered away. ... Most of the best grammarians have recognized the split-infinitive rule for the flimflam that it is. H. W. Fowler described people who followed the rule as "bogey-haunted creatures ... Whose aversion springs not from instinctive good taste, but from tame acceptance of the opinion of others."
—Geoffrey Nunberg, American linguist, The Way We Talk Now, 2001
Posted on September 6, 2000 at 9:39 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
I'm not comfortable with the style of criticism that calls attention to the language only to deplore it. If you think you're smarter than the language, you're liable not to attend to what it's saying.
—Geoffrey Nunberg, American linguist, The Way We Talk Now, 2001
Posted on August 31, 1998 at 11:38 PM
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