Ad
related to: mitigate against grammar problems- Grammarly Pro
For writing at work or school.
Unlock advanced features.
- Sign-Up
Create a free account today.
Great writing, simplified.
- Free Plagiarism Checker
Compare text to billions of web
pages and major content databases.
- Grammarly for Business
Make every function more functional
Drive team productivity.
- Grammarly Pro
Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
In the English language, there are grammatical constructions that many native speakers use unquestioningly yet certain writers call incorrect. Differences of usage or opinion may stem from differences between formal and informal speech and other matters of register, differences among dialects (whether regional, class-based, generational, or other), difference between the social norms of spoken ...
Proponents of linguistic nativism suggest that the answer to the "no negative evidence" problem is that language knowledge that cannot be learned is innate. They argue that the language input is not rich enough for children to develop a fully developed grammar from the input alone. This view is referred to as the poverty of the stimulus ...
militate and mitigate. To militate is to fight or exert pressure for something to happen or not to happen; it is typically followed by a preposition. To mitigate is to make something milder, typically something undesirable, and takes no preposition. Standard: The seriousness of your crime was mitigated by the provocation you were under.
This can create problems, as described by Reginald Close: Teachers and textbook writers often invent rules which their students and readers repeat and perpetuate. These rules are usually statements about English usage which the authors imagine to be, as a rule, true. But statements of this kind are extremely difficult to formulate both simply ...
M-W mentions no usage problems, listing the disputed meaning second to its legal sense without comment. OED cites the non-legal noun and verb usages as colloquial and "orig[inally] U.S.". [8] Chambers deems this use "colloquial". [9] alright – An alternative to "all right" that some consider illiterate but others allow.
This pattern is consistent with two grammars. In one grammar, a long vowel bears stress if it is the last segment in the word. This is a rule based on absolute finality. In the other grammar, a long vowel bears stress only if it is the last vowel in the word (i.e., even if it is not the last segment of the word).
When Bad Grammar Happens to Good People: How to Avoid Common Errors in English by Ann Batko; Plain Style by Christopher Lasch; Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage by Merriam-Webster; Usage and Abusage by Eric Partridge; The New Fowler's Modern English Usage by R. W. Burchfield; The King's English by H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler
Stephen J. Dubner described learning of the existence of Muphry's law in the "Freakonomics" section of The New York Times in July 2008. He had accused The Economist of a typo in referring to Cornish pasties being on sale in Mexico, assuming that "pastries" had been intended and being familiar only with the word "pasties" with the meaning of nipple coverings.
Ad
related to: mitigate against grammar problems