Date:  Sun, 16 Nov 1997 23:32:00 -0500
From:  "Jeutonne P. Brewer" <jpbrewer[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]HAMLET.UNCG.EDU>
Subject: Re: double negatives and other prescriptions

On Sun, 16 Nov 1997, Kusujiro Miyoshi wrote:
>  The discussion on double negatives is quite interesting for me in
> that it reminds me the arguments in England in the eighteenth
> century. This discussion seems to be the one being had between
> Priestley and Lowth.

Thanks for mentioning Priestley. He provides a good 18th century
contrast to Lowth later prescriptive popularizing grammarians like
Lindley Murray. Unfortunately, the Lowthian ideas are the ones
that still appear in school grammars.

18th century grammarians like Lowth proclaimed a whole series
of prescriptive statements about English. I remember that Albert
Baugh's history of the language book has/had an interesting list
of these. Offhand, I remember different than/different from in
the list. The 18th century grammarians were also prescriptively
important in imposing generic "he" as "correct."

Jeutonne

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Jeutonne P. Brewer, Associate Professor
Department of English
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Greensboro, NC 27412
email: jpbrewer[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]hamlet.uncg.edu
URL:  http://www.uncg.edu/~jpbrewer
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