Prescriptivism Must Die!

@mgrammar

Psycholinguist, and the guy who used to write Motivated Grammar. He/him. Erstwhile blogger: Prosecute ICE and send Homan to the Hague.

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Prescriptivism Must Die!@mgrammar· 14d

We are being led by the focus group of children from The Simpsons. "I can only trust a 100% effective treatment with no side-effects" is real "So, you want a realistic, down-to-earth show... that's completely off-the-wall and swarming with magic robots?" territory.

Screenshot from the Simpsons of a panel of children on the left-hand side, looking at a kindly older man on the right. Behind them is a one-way mirror and a sign that says "Audience Research". The image is from the episode the "itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show".

Prescriptivism Must Die!@mgrammar· 14d

I'm just so damn tired of these lying nihilists. They believe in nothing other than swinging their fists around hoping to hit someone. Two years ago, he was mad because he had a family member who had long Covid. Now he's mad that the government tried to prevent Covid.

Snippet from the Kansas City Star:

At a committee hearing, he announced that his family had been affected by the scourge of “long COVID,” a condition that can persist for months or years after contracting the virus. “This is personal for me,” he said. “One of my loved ones is one of those 16 million people who suffer from Long COVID, incapacitated for some two years.” The condition, Marshall said, is like mononucleosis “that never goes away.”

Read more at: https://www.kansascity.com/opinion/readers-opinion/guest-commentary/article284591385.html#storylink=cpy

Prescriptivism Must Die!@mgrammar· 15d

It's all this dril post on steroids: AI may lie to kill a woman and her child to keep deportation numbers up, but it helps a lot of people write emails no one wants to read, so it's actually really good.

Dril tweet from 2014: drunk driving may kill a lot of people, but it also helps a lot of people get to work on time, so, it;s impossible to say if its bad or not,

Prescriptivism Must Die!@mgrammar· 15d

The AI world is Kafka's nightmare. UK govt: Our CFIN document says this woman will be safe if deported. Judge: I can't find this document, does it exist? Govt: Yes, it's in this archive. J: No it isn't G: Oh, here it is. J: This isn't the right document G: Well, it says it's okay J: No it doesn't!

Snippet from a Guardian article ( https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jul/28/home-office-used-ai-hallucinated-information-to-refuse-asylum-claim-judge-suggests ):

But the document could not be found, although its existence was relied upon by a judge who rejected her appeal against the Home Office’s refusal decision in an immigration court known as the first-tier tribunal.

The woman lodged a further appeal to a more senior court, the upper tribunal, where another judge raised concerns about the unlocated document. In a decision on 14 July, the judge said: “It appears that no such CPIN has ever existed.”

Prescriptivism Must Die!@mgrammar· 22d

People who consider themselves the elites fall for this flattery so easily. Ah, the poor, the uneducated could never understand the word "oligarchy", let alone the concept. We must push our most regressive views because the lower classes will understand that.

Text snippet from the corrosive Atlantic article rehabilitating Richard Hanania for being hateable but also right about everything. It reads: "Hanania’s theory of populism implies that this won’t actually win back the working class. That’s because “Oligarchy is the problem” is itself an elite belief, as the use of a word like oligarchy suggests."

Prescriptivism Must Die!@mgrammar· Jul 5

(B) Chait says the DSA benefits from shrinking the Democratic Party's power because they'll have more power within it. But this is true of anyone within a party; get the people who disagree to leave, and you get more power within the party.

Prescriptivism Must Die!@mgrammar· Jul 5

A) You quoted Chait saying that the DSA thinks they'd benefit from Republicans gaining power because they got more interest and attention under Trump I than under Biden. Let's say that's true; it sounds reasonable to me.

Prescriptivism Must Die!@mgrammar· Jul 5

I think this is an unfair argument. Couldn't we say the same of Tom Nichols? Online interest in him grew during Republican rule, and didn't just stagnate but shrunk under Biden. And obviously, the smaller he makes the Democrats, the more power he'll have, too. trends.google.com/trends/explo...

A Google Trends screenshot of search interest in Tom Nichols from 2004 to 2026. Negligible interest in him until a slight rise in 2015, then a big peak near the end of Trump's first term. Dropping interest under Biden, a second peak in 2024, and now sliding toward irrelevance.

Prescriptivism Must Die!@mgrammar· Jun 30

Here is the relevant paragraph of Harlan's dissent, and you can the whole decision here: www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt... The "dignity and glory of American citizenship", to Harlan, is that it carries "universal civil freedom in this country" and "the rights of those who had been in slavery".

The thirteenth amendment does not permit the withholding or the deprivation of any right necessarily inhering in freedom. It not only struck down the institution of slavery as previously existing in the United States, but it prevents the imposition of any burdens or disabilities that constitute badges of slavery or servitude. It decreed universal civil freedom in this country. This court has so adjudged. But, that amendment having been found inadequate to the protection of the rights of those who had been in slavery, it was followed by the fourteenth amendment, which added greatly to the dignity and glory of American citizenship, and to the security of personal liberty, by declaring that 'all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside,' and that 'no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.' These two amendments, if enforced according to their true intent and meaning, will protect all the civil rights that pertain to freedom and citizenship. Finally, and to the end that no citizen should be denied, on account of his race, the privilege of participating in the political control of his country, it was declared by the fifteenth amendment that 'the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude.'

Prescriptivism Must Die!@mgrammar· Jun 25

I ended up reading her article, because I had to know what her alternative to the fool-hearted cynics' explanation was. Here ya go:

On policy, the 2024 Manifesto was strong on high-level ambitious language but weaker on the mechanisms of delivery.

Electorally, this was a masterstroke, allowing much hope to be projected onto Starmer and what each voter believed he might be offering. As a blueprint for government though it was too woolly to give definition to a project – an approach to leadership that Starmer outright rejected anyway.

Prescriptivism Must Die!@mgrammar· Jun 22

I thought so too, but I looked it up on Google Books Ngram Viewer and it doesn't really appear in books until 1990: books.google.com/ngrams/graph...

Google Books Ngram viewer graph on "trash talk". It's basically at zero before 1990, then steadily rises through the 2010s before levelling off.

Prescriptivism Must Die!@mgrammar· Jun 12

Saw this Youtube comment this morning and it's driving me nuts with its vagueness. If I were in charge, I would simply not do the bad things, and instead do the good things.

A Youtube comment with 38 upvotes, and liked by the video poster. It says: "This is where our money should go to help our fellow Americans who have lost so much not the things it shouldn't go to."

Prescriptivism Must Die!@mgrammar· May 22

An advertisement. A view out of an airplane window with a beautiful shoreline below. Text overlay reads: "I have seen so many extraordinary things that nothing seems extraordinary to me" An ad for Voltaire.

Another ad. View out of an airplane window with overlaid text: "Come! Your presence will either give me life or kill me with pleasure. VoltAire"

Prescriptivism Must Die!@mgrammar· May 22

A picture of a sunset and clouds outside an airplane window. Text over the image reads: "All men are by nature free; you have therefore an undoubted liberty to depart whenever you please, but will have many and great difficulties to encounter in passing the frontiers." An ad for Voltaire.

Prescriptivism Must Die!@mgrammar· May 20

Was feeling down about myself and the world so I cheered myself up by pulling the waffle iron out of storage and making myself a waffle ice cream sandwich. Not my best work, but waffles and ice cream are quite forgiving.

Waffles on a white plate. On the left is a waffle ice cream sandwich, with a bite taken out of it. On the right is plain piece of waffle. A book is in the bokeh in the background.

Prescriptivism Must Die!@mgrammar· May 17

As an aside from my last post about searching the web for "pronoun police" stories, Google's suggested searches are a bit strange anymore:

Three suggested searches after I searched for "pronoun police":
* shadow the hedgehog radical left speedrunning
* shadow the hedgehog petersonian
* knuckles is in your walls

Prescriptivism Must Die!@mgrammar· May 17

The word "woman" was not nearly abolished, even in political feminist writing. And maybe you'd say, "Be reasonable, that's obviously just hyperbole." But the claim I highlighted, that women are INSULTINGLY being called "vaginated persons" is just completely imaginary. Here's my Google search for it:

A Google search for "vaginated persons" reveals only three hits. One is the essay I'm quoting, one is a blogpost talking about a misogynistic director and uses "women" in the same sentence as "vaginated persons", and the third is claiming that "Woketards" say it.

Prescriptivism Must Die!@mgrammar· May 17

Ugh. Thanks to Barney Frank, I started looking back at people complaining about "pronoun police" over time. And the thing I'm struck by is that they just LIE. Check out this complaint from 2020:

Screenshot of a paragraph of an essay. It reads:
In all this, political feminism has largely sold out the rights of women, as it often does. Accepting that biological males are real "women," just because they say so, has even resulted in the near abolition of the word "woman." Mothers are "birthing persons." Biological women are, insultingly, "vaginated persons." So feminism, which began by urging women to dress and act like men, now has succeeded in replacing women with men as "women," while voiding the use of the word for real women. This might be thought to expose the actual misogyny of feminism, already suspected by Christina Hoff Sommers. Women who object to all this, like J.K. Rowling, are accused of the (comical) political crime of "transphobia." That Rowling was previously a reliable leftist is forgotten.
[The sentence "Biological women are, insultingly, 'vaginated persons.'" is highlighted.]

Prescriptivism Must Die!@mgrammar· May 17

Maybe this sounds like nitpicking and waste a beautiful Saturday evening; I always worry that analyzing chatbots is a little like Homer arguing with the parrot. But carefully analyzing AI language is a surprisingly good way to probe its biases.

Image from the Simpsons of Homer, Marge, and Maggie inside a mall, looking at a parrot. Marge says "Look, Homer, there's that bird you like to argue with." Homer goes over to the parrot and argues with it, with the bird just blinking at him, because it can't understand what he's talking about and just repeats English-like sounds.

Prescriptivism Must Die!@mgrammar· May 17

I'm doing a bit of psycholinguistic testing with LLM-based chatbots, looking into their underlying biases and the ways they have been trained to account for known biases. I got a wrong but interesting response from one prompt:

This is a screenshot from a conversation with Microsoft Copilot. The conversation is transcribed below.
MY QUESTION:
Please complete the following sentence as naturally and grammatically as you can:
John handed Bill a chart. He ______

COPILOT RESPONSE:
Most natural completion:
John handed Bill a chart. He looked it over carefully.

That keeps the pronoun He ambiguous in a natural, conversational way — either John or Bill could be the one examining the chart, which mirrors how English often works in real dialogue.

Prescriptivism Must Die!@mgrammar· May 8

The whole "everything is AI now, and it should be" coupled with the fact that half of US universities are currently unable to operate due to Canvas having been hacked is fraying some of the last strands of my sanity. So here's a picture of a San Diego sunset that cheers me up, and maybe you too.

A multi-colored sunset, with pink clouds and a layer of golden light near the bottom. Silhouettes of palm trees connect the sky to the ground.

Prescriptivism Must Die!@mgrammar· May 8

In an angry frustrated mood this morning so here's a goofy picture of our cat to cheer me up, and maybe to cheer you up as well.

A black and white cat with big, wide open eyes and a goofy look on her face. She's staring straight up at something off screen that she seems to find completely fascinating.

Prescriptivism Must Die!@mgrammar· Apr 23

Looked up the -maxx suffix on Wiktionary and I found it charming that it was in this category:

English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European word *méǵh₂s

Prescriptivism Must Die!@mgrammar· Apr 2

It's just a twenty-year cycle, over and over again, a little worse each time. We have defeated our one true nemesis: Ira_. No need for follow-up questions!

George W Bush giving a thumbs-up with a somewhat sad expression on his face. He's standing at a podium on an aircraft carrier with a huge "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" banner behind him. He won the next election, by the way. We have always been happy to be lied to by our leaders.

Prescriptivism Must Die!@mgrammar· Mar 11

But I was previously told by Noah that leftists are mostly jealous downwardly-mobile rich kids. And look, he even had terrible statistics from a racist to justify his position! How could he have been wrong then?

Tweet from Noah Smith: "Leftists are often downwardly mobile children of successful parents, who use leftism to try to force their way into the elite they believe to be their birthright." Citing a tweet with linear correlations to near-categorical data, because he is a statistical moron.

Prescriptivism Must Die!@mgrammar· Mar 9

It calls to mind this classic for me:

Tweet from @johnpodesta.
Hillary's strategy to defeat Isis:
✓Defeat Isis in Syria & Iraq
✓Disrupt & dismantle terrorist infrastructure
✓Harden our defenses

Prescriptivism Must Die!@mgrammar· Mar 4

There's a band named "Fcukers" (with the u & c intentionally swapped). They were recently on the Tonight Show and their name was still censored, even though it isn't technically obscene. Thought that was kinda cool.

Prescriptivism Must Die!@mgrammar· Jan 30

me, pictured giving myself a hernia as I hold in my laughter, knowing my friend is about to say "woke"

Prescriptivism Must Die!@mgrammar· Jan 22

OJ Simpson's book "IF I DID IT", whose cover distastefully hides the "IF" inside the "I" so it seems to just say "I DID IT".

Prescriptivism Must Die!@mgrammar· Jan 21

I've been reading up on endangered languages, and I'm fascinated by this story about the death of the Arikapú language. The language is still alive, in that there are two people who know it. But they don't live near each other, so no one currently speaks it. pib.socioambiental.org/en/Povo:Arik...