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