Why are you

Art is supposed to make you feel something. That something can be political, but certainly doesn’t have to be.

Unless this is one of those “literally everything is political” arguments, in which case the shit I took this morning is political too.

“All y’all” is actually a really interesting linguistic object. It draws a grammaticalized contrast between a 2nd person plural exclusive and a 2nd person plural inclusive, which isn’t really a thing in English elsewhere, even back in Old English when it had more complex morphology.

That is to say, “y’all” is a second person plural, and it basically means “you guys”, or “y’inz” if you’re from that part of Pennsylvania. It picks out a specific group of people that you’re talking directly to.

But, what if I’m talking to a crowd, and I want to draw a distinction between some people among them that I’ve already addressed, versus the group in its entirety, which I would now like to address?

This is where “all y’all” comes in. It essentially specifies that everyone is being addressed, and not just a specific subset of that group.

So you’ll get examples like “Y’all (usually with a pointing motion) need to rethink your design, but all y’all need to listen better”.

@fletcher_bosom@lemmy.world likely intended “all y’all” to have a specifically inclusive meaning here for a few different types of groups that could be distinguished among the readers of their comment. Basically, “not just y’all (the linguists in the group who are irked by their prescriptiveness), but all y’all (everyone else as well, including those who aren’t irked), are lucky that they have one foot in the grave”.

“All y’all” was necessary here because if they’d just said “y’all” it could easily have been misinterpreted as just the educated linguists being lucky, and they wanted to emphasize that their comment wasn’t being snide toward educated people, but rather self-deprecating. “All y’all” accomplishes that perfectly (for those who have it in their grammars).

“All y’all” is one of my favorite constructions in (dialectal) English, though it is hilariously ironic, and kinda demonstrative of my general point, to see such a non-standard feature in a comment arguing in favor of prescriptive grammar rules!

(Also, if you think “all y’all” is weird, wait 'til you see singular y’all!)

First of all, thanks for the response! I love talking about this stuff, and will do so every chance I get!

using “weary” to mean “wary” is just wrong usage. Like saying “it would be hoo of you” instead of “it would behoove you.” It’s just bone-apple-tea seen in the wild.

Language as a system is inherently a constant, mass negotiation among its users. Its relationship to meaning is (with a tiny number of exceptions) completely arbitrary, which means that if speakers unconsciously agree to use “it would bee hoo of you” to mean “it would behoove you”, then that is literally the correct usage. Merriam-Webster agrees with me - language is defined by usage, not by an obsolete code of speakers priviledged enough to have access to the secret knowledge of “correct grammar”.

There is an argument that using “weary” in this way is still marginal, and so is still ungrammatical for most speakers (myself included), but it’s definitely widespread enough for a linguist to consider it correct for many younger speakers (even if it irks me to admit it).

If it’s in a context where it can be gently corrected without patronizing, it should be.

This depends on your perspective, I suppose. Few people actually understand how language works, and even fewer are willing to be non-discriminatory in practice, which means that, unfortunately, using a word that others perceive as “incorrect”, even when they’re wrong about that (which is pretty much always, including here), can have negative social consequences.

For this reason, and this reason alone, I can support the idea of gentle correction.

However, if by some miracle humans become less tribalistic, and start treating language descriptively and objectively, then there will no longer be a reason to “correct”, because we will have realized that there was nothing to correct in the first place.

(Note that this obviously excludes children and second language learners - they do produce ungrammatical sentences, but this is categorically different than saying “weary” instead of “wary”.)

Any attempt by phd candidates to retrofit an explanation for it is just “explaining away” and reflects more the overly-permissiveness of modern academia and the hesitancy (especially in humanities fields where subjectivity is like water to a fish) to make firm corrections, especially in cases where cultural relativity might be argued.

I was a (non-tenured) professor of linguistics for almost a decade, not just a PhD candidate.

Also, this isn’t “explaining away”. Linguists have known that this is how language works since at least the late 1800s, and especially by the time of de Saussure’s “Course in General Linguistics” in the early 1910s, so I’m not sure where you’re getting “the permissiveness of modern academia”.

Language is a system built on usage, and it’s been known that that was the case for the majority of the time that we’ve been studying it scientifically. See Merriam-Webster’s article above - this is a fact that is universally accepted not only by linguists, but also by lexicographers. Merriam-Webster does have a disambiguation page on “weary vs. wary”, but I can guarantee you than within a decade they will have updated their definition to reflect usage.

I mean sure, language evolves and theoretically a dialect could emerge in which words that previously meant some things could take on completely different meanings. But if we accept that as the official “correct” stance in the field of linguistics, then the field of linguistics itself loses relevancy. Because if nothing can be wrong, then nothing can be correct either.

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the study of linguistics (which is understandable, since it’s unfortunately not a commonly understood field among laypeople). Linguistics is the study of the human capacity to produce a system that we call language. The only thing we care about is accurately describing the nature of that system and how it exists in the mind of a speaker.

We have no interest in what people think is “right” or “wrong”, because these value judgments are subjective and do not in any way reflect linguistic reality - we only care about the nature of the system itself as it is actually spoken by humans, and this has always been the case.

However, we do make a distinction between utterances that are grammatical and those that are ungrammatical. This is defined, of course, by usage, and it is naturally consistent and rule-governed in all languages/dialects, both standard and nonstandard. A grammatical utterance is one that would be unconsciously produced by the linguistic apparatus of a native speaker of a language, and an ungrammatical utterance is one that would not be produced by that system.

In fact, linguistically defined, if it takes conscious effort for you to not split infinitives or end sentences with prepositions, then speaking “correctly” is actually ungrammatical!

Words will lose their meanings over time and it will become impossible to communicate across cultural barriers. You can already see this phenomenon if you pay attention to words that have taken on euphemistic meanings, especially in the contexts of intergenerational communication, which I would argue is a form of cultural barrier. For instance, “pussy” still means “cat” to many people of a certain age. That’s an extreme example, but that sort of thing can create miscommunications. Especially when it comes to more obscure innuendos or newer ones that aren’t as widely familiar to people.

Since the dawn of recorded history old curmudgeons who have seen their language change around them have decried how the youth are destroying language, how it will devolve into meaningless grunts and how we will lose all ability to communicate. This seems to be a human universal, from the ancient Greeks to the ancient Japanese.

However, after literally thousands of years of this “devolution”, we still haven’t seen this happen.

Why? Is it because we have righteous grammar warriors who fight the good fight of enforcing archaic and arbitrary restrictions?

Nope. It’s because all dialects, etc., still have self-organizing, well-defined rules of about the same general complexity. There is no “devolution” because language is an innate, universal human behavior that follows specific types of rules and general patterns. That is, linguistic systems’ interactive and negotiative nature means that they naturally self-correct - they don’t need anyone to do it for them.

As for the idea that English will splinter into unintelligible dialects, this is again countered by the facts of language usage. It’s currently valuable and important to English speakers across the world that they be able to communicate successfully with each other, and as long as this pressure exists, they will continue to be able to do so.

Once again, this isn’t because there’s a universal English police enforcing outdated rules like not splitting infinitives - it’s because the (incredibly large) speech community benefits from continuing to communicate, and so they will naturally, because that’s how humans are programmed.

To do so, of course, “English” defined broadly has already had a sort of lingua franca version of itself develop naturally, and each English-speaking place in the world already has their own variation of this organic “standard”, and yet they’re all still able to communicate among each other simply because it is necessary that they do so. Once again, this is not because of internet grammar Nazis, but because that’s literally how language works.

As for your example of intergenerational miscommunication, this will inevitably occur anyway due to language change. Miscommunication and ambiguity is inherent to language and cannot be legislated away, because, again, it’s inherent to the system.

Instead, when there is (inevitably) a miscommunication, the solution is quite simple. It’s the same solution older generations and younger generations have been using since the dawn of humankind: both speakers can simply explain what they meant, or define new terminology, and communication can proceed just as well as it did previously.

The whole basis of language is a mutual understanding of represented meanings. If we lose that consensus, then language itself begins to break down and become no longer an effective basis for communication.

This is correct, but as long as speakers are in communication with each other, this cannot happen, because that’s the nature of language. Language is communication, and its systemic nature is defined by that communication. This means that as long as communication continues to happen between the groups, their language will continue to be understandable.

Now, it is of course the case that if all communication suddenly ceased for a few hundred years, then yes, the two groups of speakers would likely lose the ability to communicate with each other. But in our modern world of super interconnectivity, that’s incredibly unlikely to happen among the vast majority of English speakers.

Carried to extremes, we find ourselves returning to meaningless/inarticulate grunts (not that we’re likely to reach that extreme, especially not within the lifetime of anyone living today; but it’s about the trajectory).

As explained above (and as demonstrated by thousands of years of human history), this trajectory does not exist, because that’s not how language works.

I hope this has been understandable and informative. I’m busy for the next four or so hours, but let me know if there’s anything that doesn’t make sense, or anything you’d like more detailed explanation of, and I’ll be happy to respond.

Again, I love talking about this stuff and will answer literally any question about linguistics that you’ll let me! :)

They use it to mean “concerned” or “wary”. Like, “I’m kinda interested in the new Star Wars Galactic Racer game, but I’m weary that it’ll have some sort of AAA bullshit that will ruin my experience.” There are tons of grammar articles like this one from Merriam-Webster (https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/weary-vs-wary-difference-usage) clarifying the two because of how common this has become in recent years.

I’ll edit my previous comment to make what I mean clearer.

I think it’s perfectly fine to have personal preferences. That’s only human. I, for example, get driven up the wall by the new usage of “weary” to mean “wary” or “leery” (which are also the two words that got blended to form this new “weary” form). As in, “I want to be excited about the new Star Wars Galactic Racer game, but I’m weary that it’ll have some AAA bullshit that will ruin my experience.”

The important things are to remember 1) that these preferences are subjective, not objective, and 2) to make sure that we don’t treat people differently or look down on them because of the way they speak (or write).

Edited for clarity

“Him and his group” is grammatical here for some dialects of American English (and maybe others too).

One common explanation for this phenomenon is the linguistic idea of “default case”, but first we have to explain the idea of “case”.

Personal pronouns in English change form depending on where they are in the sentence; the first-person personal pronoun, for example, is “I” when it appears in (or “is licensed by”) subject position, and is “me” everywhere else. This difference based on syntactic (word) position is one example of a widespread crosslinguistic phenomenon we call “case”. We usually say that “I” is “Nominative” case, and “me” is either “accusative” or “oblique” case.

Anyway, “default case” is the idea that each language picks a case to appear in positions that aren’t licensed by specific syntactic positions.

In Modern English (but not older English!) the default case appears to be the accusative/oblique. This is why, in English, the answer to the question “Who wants ice cream?” is “Me!” and not “I!”

In Spanish, however, where the default case is Nominative, the answer is “Yo”, not “mí”.

The fact that default case has switched from Nominative to Accusative in English has had a number of effects over the years. Answering the phone, for example, has gone from the archaic “This is she” to the more modern “this is her”.

Copular/“be”-verb sentences like these are weird cross-linguistically anyway, and in this example the pronoun does not appear in a canonical subject position, which makes it much more likely to be affected/governed by default case. So, in older English we saw Nominative “this is she”, but in Present Day English we often get Accusative/Oblique “this is her” in many dialects.

Another place where case is famously wonky is with conjunctions, especially “and”. It seems that when a noun stands by itself, it always gets the expected case for that position (which, of course, is exactly what we would expect to happen), but when multiple nouns are joined by a conjunction in the same position, it’s common for default case to be assigned instead, which has led to the idea that “case-assigning positions” (in this case subject position) “can’t see down into the conjunction”.

This leads to interesting case alternations like “I went to the store”, but with a conjunction, “Me and him went to the store.”

And this is exactly what we see here. In these dialects we get the expected Nominative case when the noun appears by itself, but we instead get default case when the conjunction blocks case assignment (or feature agreement, or however your preferred theory of syntax deals with case).

Interestingly, as a result of the pedantry seen in your comment and, more importantly, displayed by English teachers for at least the past hundred years, we’ve seen a series of interesting, unexpected results.

First was simple hypercorrection. After being corrected so long for saying “me and him” in subject position, the chastised speakers began changing “me and him” to “he and I” everywhere, not just in subject position.

This has led to sentences like “Jane went to the store with he and I” (where “him and me” is usually prescriptively considered “correct”) becoming incredibly common in many dialects of American English.

Even further, and more interesting to me, however, is that this seems to have started becoming a marker of politeness, or even professional jargon.

For example, when writing work emails, I have to consciously make myself write a sentence like “Jane went to the store with him and me”, because not using “he and I” feels unprofessional somehow, even though it’s prescriptively “correct”.

A similar example of corporate pronoun jargon weirdness under a conjunction can be seen in the use of “myself” instead of “me”. For example, in a formal business meeting a person giving a presentation might say something like “If you have any questions, you can direct them either to Jane or myself”, when according to prescriptive grammar rules “me” would be “correct” here.

Anyway, language is fun and weird, and its only constant is that it is always changing!

More powerful handhelds can also upscale and handle heavier graphical tweaks. Honestly, except for the actual 3D effect itself the experience for me has just been better in general on an emulation handheld.

Also, in my experience setting up an emulation handheld was easier than setting up a hacked 3DS.

Yeah, the clickbait title is leaving out a pretty key piece of info. I thought he was excommunicated because he caused a stink, but no, it’s because he broke the rules by joining another denomination.

I mean, it’s still a stupid rule, but it seems that his excommunication wasn’t retaliatory or malicious.

“Cash Rules Everything Around Me” for anyone else who, like me, had no idea what the title acronym stood for.

Virginia’s not even a state! It’s a Commonwealth.

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She gave him a dollar!

Same. I wake up multiple times per night when my dog sleeps touching me. Hopefully being in the same bed is enough for the benefits.

Absolutely. If my washing machine can handle a full load of pissy cloth diapers every night, it should definitely be able to handle one sheet with dog piss on it.