Who says that the AC has a gripe? It's simple economics, as you point out. The AC has a choice of using an OS with which existing H/W works or use a different OS that offers no apparent advantage but that forces expensive H/W replacement. AFAICS it's a no-brainer.
This is just confirmation that the WTO is a meaningless cabal of
mindless USA bashers with an axe to grind. If you can't live by the rules, don't join the club.
It would make more sense to use some kind of chording configuration, to avoid the need to move your fingers from key to key. In theory, yes, but the public doesn't seem to like the idea. See, for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwriter. And there may be too much prior art to make patent grabs effective.
Well, that won't be what people migrating from any version of MS Word will be missing. Item 2 is the only one that MS Word has. Item 1 you recognise that Word usually doesn't do it right, a bibliography system was introduced into Word 2007 but it's still very limited and doesn't support any of the formats I need to use (I use laTeX and natbib for college work, and I do my work bibliographies manually but I'm exploring zotero), and all the templates that come with Word look seem to be Microsoft formats, not any standard (I roll my own). I admit that it's close to my wishlist for a WP, though -- do I find all that in Abiword?
Curious, then, that in my linguistics course I've spent a *lot* of time studying incremental changes to language (including the ones described in the referenced article -- did you read it?) Did you read it? The very first paragraph says this [snip]
Yes, I did read it. Did you read my posting? What I said in that posting was about dolmant_php's claims and those he was attributing to Dr. Nibley (that language doesn't evolve), not about the original referenced article (with which I generally agree, but which I consider to be largely old news).
I too heard a rude version before I heard Truss's cleaned-up version, but as that meaning of "bush" is still relatively rare in the UK the version I heard depended on an alternative reading of "shoots".
Absolutely, it's very old news except for the introduction of the formula. See, for example, Steven Pinker's "Words and Rules" for an extensive discussion of the phenomenon, and the brain processes that appear to underlie it.
And the trouble with the formula is that it seems to assume that word frequencies remain constant. Vocabulary changes with sociocultural changes. If this article had been written a few hundred years ago would it have predicted the decline in influence of the Church or the decline in farming in England? They have both caused changes in frequency of use of words and in the rate of regularisation of irregular verbs.
Unfortunately, Verbix is down at the moment. Otherwise I might be able to find examples of regular 'to be' for you. I imagine pidgins and/or creoles might be good candidate languages. I suppose "Estis" in Esperanto would be considered cheating?
Actually, written English hasn't changed much since the Middle Ages. It's the pronunciation the one that's changed a lot, and that's why us non-native English speakers are sometimes baffled by the incoherence of the English spelling. The big changes in written English have been in punctuation, particularly the shift from punctuation based on the rhythms of speech to punctuation based on the logical structure of the sentence. Another change in punctuation is the way hyphenated words tend to drift to compound words, which is still going on.
Since we're on the subject, will someone in the know please enlighten me a bit. I often see people write sentences like "It is a big, red, house.", which bug me to no end because in any grammar lessons I've had in my OWN language, you only ever put commas between adjectives in a list like that, not between an adjective and a noun. Is it different in english, or do so many people really just not grasp the function of the comma in that case? Generally, the rules on punctuation in English are not as well defined as those for other features of the language, despite Lynne Truss's protestations (read David Crystal's "The Fight for English" for an excellent response to Truss, from a real linguist). The final comma in your example is a case in point. Some style guides will forbid it, some will mandate it, some will say do either as long as you're consistent, others will say do either as long as you're clear. There isn't a correct answer, which makes for endless tedious arguments in language forums as everybody is convinced that their own way is the One True Way.
Where is the incremental improvement? It is nowhere. The only stuff we have is *fully formed language*. Curious, then, that in my linguistics course I've spent a *lot* of time studying incremental changes to language (including the ones described in the referenced article -- did you read it?), and the internal and external factors that cause them. If somebody claimed that they had another explanation for those changes then it might be worth listening to, but to claim that the changes haven't occurred just shows that you haven't really looked. None of the quotes you provide from Dr. Nibley suggest any such thing -- they refer to written language, and I challenge you to find a serious linguist who doesn't believe that spoken language long precedes written language (and, for what it's worth, there's plenty of evidence for incremental change in written language, too, such as the loss of the letters yogh, eth and thorn and the introduction of g and w in English).
1066 - Norman conquest - Old French would have a massive influence on English. Introduction of lots of Latin roots into English. Actually, no. There's not much Norman French in English. The French in English is largely Parisian French and came in rather later, as a result of fashion rather than invasion (although the earlier Norman invasion did provide a path for the fashion to spread to England).
I do, often. Most recently last Sunday. If I go to a show and like the artist, I usually buy their CD. The shows I go to are mainly local artists, so I have a rather obscure selection of artists in my collection, but it's all stuff that I like and having bought it in that way makes it feel more "personal" to me.
what most people think of as pizza, etc... Well, if the USA can claim Pizza (the deep pan variety, I assume) as part of its tradition, then the UK can claim chicken tikka masala!
In the process we forget the mere possession of a book doesn't necessarily mean we're attempting to do what's written in it. We don't forget it, but our legislators choose to ignore it. Under current UK law, possession of material likely to be useful to terrorists is an offence; there is no need for there to be any sort of intent. And the law is written in such a vague way that even possession of a local street map could be considered an offence. Effectively, the law makes everyone a criminal, so the police can arrest whomsoever they wish.
(And Brits are the first to admit that their traditional food is, in fact, quite bland.)
No, the traditional food isn't bland. But because of the limitations on the food available during World War II, the food was bland then. A whole generation grew up expecting food to be like that, and they set the current stereotype of British food. That generation is passing, though, and British food has been getting better, fast, since the early 1980s. Sure, you can still get crap if you want it (although I think that some American fast-food chains are the worst for that -- I won't name names because at least one of them is litigious, but I bet you can guess). The important thing, though, is that there's a choice again.
What would traditional American food be, by the way? I don't know anything about Native American cuisine.
Here in Australia, this is already long the established (APRA v Tolbush [1986]), I'm surprised that it is not already so in the UK. It is long established in the UK, too, which is probably why the company already has a policy of no radios at work. This is a new instance of an old story. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/beds/bucks/herts/4712008.stm for a similar story from February 2006, for example. According to the thread at http://www.startups.co.uk/6678842911226889168/performing-rights-society.html it's been an issue in Chinese food takeaways for at least 30 years.
The prohibition on public performance without royalties is more like if you played a CD in front of a crowd of people and somehow charged them money for this (has this ever happened in the history of recorded music?). DJs do it all the time.
I suspect the internet maps will tend to lag behind the indicators that matter at the moment. A lot of developing countries are held back by the poor transportation infrastructures. Although data movement can be important for an economy, it's probably always going to lag movement of physical goods -- you can't eat bits.
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Who says that the AC has a gripe? It's simple economics, as you point out. The AC has a choice of using an OS with which existing H/W works or use a different OS that offers no apparent advantage but that forces expensive H/W replacement. AFAICS it's a no-brainer.
Well, that won't be what people migrating from any version of MS Word will be missing. Item 2 is the only one that MS Word has. Item 1 you recognise that Word usually doesn't do it right, a bibliography system was introduced into Word 2007 but it's still very limited and doesn't support any of the formats I need to use (I use laTeX and natbib for college work, and I do my work bibliographies manually but I'm exploring zotero), and all the templates that come with Word look seem to be Microsoft formats, not any standard (I roll my own). I admit that it's close to my wishlist for a WP, though -- do I find all that in Abiword?
How about fluent speakers who are not already fluent English speakers?
I too heard a rude version before I heard Truss's cleaned-up version, but as that meaning of "bush" is still relatively rare in the UK the version I heard depended on an alternative reading of "shoots".
Absolutely, it's very old news except for the introduction of the formula. See, for example, Steven Pinker's "Words and Rules" for an extensive discussion of the phenomenon, and the brain processes that appear to underlie it.
And the trouble with the formula is that it seems to assume that word frequencies remain constant. Vocabulary changes with sociocultural changes. If this article had been written a few hundred years ago would it have predicted the decline in influence of the Church or the decline in farming in England? They have both caused changes in frequency of use of words and in the rate of regularisation of irregular verbs.
"Ludge Brudge" in my day. Or "Low brow". But yes, Luffburra is the normal pronunciation.
It was already an old joke when Truss adopted it as the title of her book.
I do, often. Most recently last Sunday. If I go to a show and like the artist, I usually buy their CD. The shows I go to are mainly local artists, so I have a rather obscure selection of artists in my collection, but it's all stuff that I like and having bought it in that way makes it feel more "personal" to me.
That's true enough. Food rationing in the UK didn't end until July 1954.
Yes, we finished paying it off almost a year ago http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/article1264220.ece. But it's a long time since that debt has been so bad that we couldn't afford good food.
No, the traditional food isn't bland. But because of the limitations on the food available during World War II, the food was bland then. A whole generation grew up expecting food to be like that, and they set the current stereotype of British food. That generation is passing, though, and British food has been getting better, fast, since the early 1980s. Sure, you can still get crap if you want it (although I think that some American fast-food chains are the worst for that -- I won't name names because at least one of them is litigious, but I bet you can guess). The important thing, though, is that there's a choice again.
What would traditional American food be, by the way? I don't know anything about Native American cuisine.
I suspect the internet maps will tend to lag behind the indicators that matter at the moment. A lot of developing countries are held back by the poor transportation infrastructures. Although data movement can be important for an economy, it's probably always going to lag movement of physical goods -- you can't eat bits.