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  • Robert Lowth's A Short Introduction to English Grammar published (8-2-1

    From Ross Clark@21:1/5 to All on Fri Feb 9 12:01:15 2024
    Lowth was both academic and (Anglican) churchman -- both Professor and
    Bishop at various times.
    Father of the English prescriptive tradition. His book was hugely
    influential well into the 19th century. Aimed to do for grammar what
    Johnson had done for the lexicon.
    He probably began the tradition of listing "grammatical errors" to be
    found in the work of "the best authors". Perhaps also the inventor of
    rules such as not ending a sentence with a preposition.

    Crystal mentions a book about Lowth's book:
    Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade, The Bishop's Grammar: Robert Lowth
    and the Rise of Prescriptivism (OUP,2011)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Lowth

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  • From Christian Weisgerber@21:1/5 to Ross Clark on Fri Feb 9 14:17:20 2024
    On 2024-02-08, Ross Clark <[email protected]> wrote:

    He probably began the tradition of listing "grammatical errors" to be
    found in the work of "the best authors". Perhaps also the inventor of
    rules such as not ending a sentence with a preposition.

    Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage (1989) traces this
    "cherished superstition" back to John Dryden a century earlier, but
    lays the more immediate blame on the later trio of Hugh Blair,
    Lindley Murray, and Noah Webster: "So the 19th century began with
    three widely used, standard school texts formidably opposing the
    preposition at the end of the sentence."

    Here's the Lowth quote:

    This is an idiom, which our language is strongly inclined to: it
    prevails in common conversation, and suits very well with the
    familiar style in writing: but the placing of the preposition
    before the relative, is more graceful, as well as more perspicuous;
    and agrees much better with the solemn and elevated style.

    --
    Christian "naddy" Weisgerber [email protected]

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  • From Ross Clark@21:1/5 to Christian Weisgerber on Sat Feb 10 09:44:57 2024
    On 10/02/2024 3:17 a.m., Christian Weisgerber wrote:
    On 2024-02-08, Ross Clark <[email protected]> wrote:

    He probably began the tradition of listing "grammatical errors" to be
    found in the work of "the best authors". Perhaps also the inventor of
    rules such as not ending a sentence with a preposition.

    Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage (1989) traces this
    "cherished superstition" back to John Dryden a century earlier, but
    lays the more immediate blame on the later trio of Hugh Blair,
    Lindley Murray, and Noah Webster: "So the 19th century began with
    three widely used, standard school texts formidably opposing the
    preposition at the end of the sentence."

    Here's the Lowth quote:

    This is an idiom, which our language is strongly inclined to: it
    prevails in common conversation, and suits very well with the
    familiar style in writing: but the placing of the preposition
    before the relative, is more graceful, as well as more perspicuous;
    and agrees much better with the solemn and elevated style.


    Nice. So it's just better style, more "perspicuous" (i.e. doesn't
    separate preposition from its object?), and, of course, more like Latin.

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