Another little inventory (assembled by Tim Moon), this time a very little inventory, on Include All Necessary Words advice discussed on Language Log and this blog. I’ll post soon on the why this inventory is so short, despite the fact that advice along these lines is very common in the manuals.
Arnold Zwicky’s Blog
“Zombie rules I: blame, love, graduate” – January 15, 2009 – Arnold Zwicky
Zombie rules I: blame, love, graduate
Discusses the phrase “graduate from”, as in “Many students graduated from Princeton in June.” A frequent complaint against “graduate from” is that it is missing a “necessary” form of be, and that the correct phrase is “Many students were graduated from Princeton in June.”
New Language Log
“V + P~Ø” – February 13, 2009 – Arnold Zwicky
V + P~Ø
Talks about verbs that can occur (with similar meanings) either with direct objects (the Ø option) or oblique objects (the P option). Says that when usage critics prefer the P option, they usually appeal to explicitness (IANW), disregarding possible meaning differences – such critics would prefer the phrase “I played on the piano for hours” (oblique) over “I played the piano for hours” (direct).
Language Log Classic
“What’s It All About?” – September 11, 2007 – Arnold Zwicky
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004901.html
Discusses the OI! Project. Zwicky notes that appeals to ONW and IANW can be classified as secondary (a usage is deprecated for social reasons, and people bolster these objections with a secondary appeal to ONW or IANW) and primary (appeals to ONW and IANW that lack any evident social basis) and states his hypothesis that secondary appeals to ONW and (especially) IANW outnumber primary appeals.
“(An)arthrous Abbreviations” – September 17, 2007 – Arnold Zwicky
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004923.html
Discusses how how in general, initialisms are arthrous if their full forms are, and anarthrous otherwise (The Initialism Principle) while acronyms are anarthrous, even when the full names they abbreviate are arthrous (The Acronym Principle). Also brings up a general exception to the Initialism Principle in the naming of educational institutions, whose initialisms are generally anarthrous. Zwicky points to these variations as another example of the competition between economy and clarity.
“Whether Either” – December 20, 2007 – Arnold Zwicky
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005242.html
Brings up IANW in a discussion of various puzzles involving whether and either (concessive either, correlative either…either, correlative whether…whether, correlative subjects, bonus WTF coordination). Zwicky gives two example situations where people might omit words because they are needless in the context but “guardians of the standard” insist that you must Include All Necessary Words (non-standard truncated concessive (without or not) – “Whether you like it, you are ‘public figures.’” – and truncated as far as – “As far as your ideas on this subject, I think they’re nonsense.”). Zwicky says that “the guardians’ judgment is in fact based on social critera – who uses the variant, an antipathy to what’s perceived as innovation.”
