When someone from Britain speaks, Americans hear a "British accent"...

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Fri, 07 Oct 2005 09:01:21 +0100, Steve Holden wrote:

> and yes, I split that infinitive just to 
> annoy any pedants who may be reading

*Real* pedants will know that English is not Latin, does not follow the
grammatical rules of Latin, and that just because split infinitives are
impossible -- not forbidden, impossible -- in Latin is no reason to forbid
them in English.

The linguist Steven Pinker calls the sort of people who claim split
infinitives are bad English "language mavens", and he doesn't mean it as
a compliment. See, for example, chapter 12 in his book "The Language
Instinct".


[snip]
> "Some village in Texas is missing their idiot".
> 
> Several people defended this, saying that a village could use the plural 
> possessive "their". 

"Several people" being the idiots missed by the villages? :-)

> I personally found it odd (and essentially 
> non-grammatical) not because either the singular or plural forms should 
> be mandated but because this one manages to mix them up. So
> 
> "Some village in Texas are missing their idiot"
> 
> would be better (though it sounds like the kind of thing only the idiot 
> alluded to would say), 

Absolutely. "Some villages" would work, but not village singular.

> while my preferred choice would be
> 
> "Some village in Texas is missing its idiot".

Yes, that's the puppy.

I think where the people are getting confused is that it is (arguably)
acceptable to use "their" in place of "his or her", as in:

"Should the purchaser lose their warranty card..."

Some of the more conservative grammarians argue against that construction,
many accept it in informal speech or writing but not formal, and a few
(like myself!) argue that it is time to get with the 21st century and just
accept it even in formal language. If it was good enough for Willie
Shakespeare, it is good enough for me.


-- 
Steven.