alQpr

Toronto Star reporter Lesley Ciarula Taylor took issue with the idea of a language test for immigrants, citing a silly question about whether standard-of-living should be said to increase or to rise, but blogger Brett disputes the source of the question. Arnold Zwicky clearly doesn’t understand how to evaluate sources. The question was reported in print in a newspaper with professional writers and editors, so it must be real. That the denial comes in a mere “blog” makes it inherently less credible. If Zwicky had taken the trouble to read the real book ‘Cult of the Amateur’ written by Andrew Keen he would have understood this and could have joined happily in the chorus of dismay about the silly test question.
Continue reading →

Columnist Jan Freeman defends the habit, common in some regions, of using the past participle in place of the gerund or infinitive phrase – ie saying “t’lawn needs cut” rather than “the lawn needs to be cut”.

The main issue here is that the past participle is an adjective and the problem with using an adjective as a noun is that we seem to have a built in syntax checker that works independent of semantics. So if in “I work fed” the adjective applies to the subject, then it should also do so in “I need fed”, which therefore means that after being fed I apparently still need something else!

… of course the fact that in English the gerund (noun) has the same form as the present participle (adjective) also needs fixing – and if Jack was hungry when he got to the top of the beanstalk he would be as leery of saying “I need eating” as of “I need eaten”. I do like eating though….

But it should be clear by now that I don’t need confused since I already am!