Date: Sun, 3 Dec 1995 13:06:19 -0500

From: Benjamin Barrett Gogaku[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]GNN.COM

Subject: Re: So fun



Date: Thu, 30 Nov 1995 22:26:42 EST

From: Larry Horn LHORN[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]yalevm.ycc.yale.edu



Someone else may be en route to saying this better or with more evidence

and

citations, but there's a clear age dialect at work here. 'fun' is

definitely

an adjective for those under a certain age. for my kids (now 13 and 11), A

can be funner than B, and C can be the funnest. As Bolinger, Paul, Breal

et

al would predict, these are quite distinct from 'funnier', 'funniest', so

there's no logical argument against this particular zero-derivation--except

that in OUR day, back when nouns were nouns, goddammit, 'fun' was a noun

and

proud OF it.



P.S. I am 29 and seem to fall right in the middle. While there are many

people who insist on retaining stringent rules regarding which words must

only be used as such-and-such parts of speech, in my vocabulary, damn and

ALL of its derivatives retain the letter "n." Mming an "n" is absolutely

out!:)



in fun, yoroshiku

Benjamin Barrett