Gwynne’s Grammar: The Ultimate Introduction to Grammar and the Writing of Good English? by n. m. gwynne ?knopf, 288 pages, $19.95 One of the first axioms of the field of linguistics is that the rules of usage in any language at any time are wholly conventional. Proper grammar and style have . . . . Continue Reading »
A friend and I are arguing over the word traditionalist as applied to Catholics. He criticizes “traditionalists” but means only the “cranks,” he insists: No “sane person” would call himself a Catholic traditionalist; only cranks do that. When he writes “traditionalist,” my friend has in mind a careful definition that excludes the likes of Cardinal Burke and Pope Emeritus Benedict, but the word in general circulation has a broader range than that, and many gentle souls get caught in its net. Continue Reading »
We don’t take puns seriously, but the ancients did. Continue Reading »
Good old words like “spillan” and “dispersh” used to adorn the English language. Continue Reading »
I thank Headmaster Crowe for that gracious introduction. And I thank Professor Owen Anderson of Arizona State University for introducing me to the headmaster, and to the wonderful venture of the Great Hearts Academies, which are doing such good in the world, one teacher, one student, one person at a time. One person at a time, I think, is really the only way to do any good in the world, for human beings are individual persons in communities, not statistics in a collective or parts in a machine. So on this happy day, as the students of the class of 2014 celebrate a milestone achievement with their families, their friends, and their teachers, I come to congratulate you, to wish you well, and to address each of you as a person who has received the good turn of a fine education, and who should feel a responsibility to repay the debt of that education by living well as a person, mindful of the personhood, the individuality, and the good of others around you, in the various communities through which your life will take you. Continue Reading »
Ethical dilemmas in foreign languages. Continue Reading »
In Who’s Afraid of Relativism?, his recent brief for Christian pragmatism as a philosophy of contingency and creaturehood, James KA Smith summarizes a wonderful little analogy from Wittgenstein: “Language [is] a city. While referentialist theories of meaning might recognize . . . . Continue Reading »
One of the most amusing contributions to the early modern debate on the origins of language came from Francis Mercury van Helmont. Like many others, he insisted that Noah spoke Hebrew, but his way of defending and explication that was uniquely his own.In his 1667 Very Short delination of the Natural . . . . Continue Reading »
Why do so many bad guys and sinister places have names using the syllable “mor”? James Harbeck mentionsMoriarty, Voldemort, Mordor, and Piers Morgan, though he ultimately dismisses the last.The answer that immediately occurs is etymological: mor- is linked to death in Romance . . . . Continue Reading »
In Genesis the goodness of creation requires what I have called a logic of otherness , in which dualities that could become divisions or antagonisms are united for the good. The basic structure of this logic is: (1) first one, then the other, (2) the one for the good of the other, and (3) the one . . . . Continue Reading »
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