From WM via Language Log

and that article in full.

If you can't afford it, you can read it online at Google Books (link).

Good support, Bob. That's why I was confused when people here say they'd use fewer "correctly" in formal writing. Same goes for splitting infinitives, starting sentences with conjunctions, uses of that and which, etc. It seems anti-intellectual to me to just do it because otherwise those who don't understand grammar as well will look down their nose at you. And I don't buy the excuse that it makes the writing "more clear" or whatever other argument is used.

quote:

Originally posted by Kalleh:
And I don't buy the excuse that it makes the writing "more clear" or whatever other argument is used.

Arnold Zwicky has begun a series of language log posts about "ambiguity" here and here
with a comment from Mark Liberman here , that you might find interesting.

After all that about hopefully, and I must agree with him, some correct it. Before Wordcraft I had no idea there was such controversy in writing, grammar, punctuation, and linguistcs. Thanks for those interesting links, Bob.

I read that link and have a few observations:

1) Meanings change. If you accept that it's OK to use decimate to mean 'destroy a large part of' because the meaning has changed over the years from the original, why do you then hold on to the fact that because Alfred the Great used less, it's more acceptable to you than the 'affected' fewer? I really don't understand what I perceive to be double standards on this: this picking and choosing of which meanings are OK to change after centuries of use, and which apparently should stay the same because of the centuries of use. Indeed, the Zwicky link you mention states that:

"the Old Boy/Newbie distinction rests on the idea of "originalism" (see here) which assumes that the "original" <...> is necessarily the "correct", or at least the "more correct", one."

and yet you're using a 900-year-old text as proof of your preferred usage.

2) Do you distinguish between much and many? Same rules more or fewer(). Do you also think it's affected to say 'there are too many chocolates'*? Again, I don't understand why in one case it's OK to distinguish between countables and uncountables, and in another it's 'affected' to make a similar distinction.

3) The "5 years old or fewer" example is a bit disingenuous because the better constuction I think would be "5 years old or younger". I'd look twice at a sign that used either less or fewer in that instance.


I use fewer when I think it sounds better. I also use less where I think it sounds better. The '9 items or less' one is a case in point - I tend to prefer less in that construction for pretty much the reason it states in the article: I assume it means 'or less than that amount'. But then, I'm a native speaker so I can work out what looks clumsy to me (although even that is subjective). When teaching non-native speakers it's really helpful to teach basic rules and tell them that there are exceptions, rather than try to teach all the exceptions at once without explaining them as such. My Welsh teacher sometimes does this, and I understand far better once I've found out that there's a basic rule which I can follow as a beginner (and put in the exceptions when I'm more used to the language), rather than get confused trying to remember in which circumstances I should use which construction as they appear to be arbitrary.



*Not that there can ever be too many chocolates.

Mark Liberman was just saying that the construction first appears in Alfred, not that it is valid because it does. He also lists some statistics on its current usage. The reason he likes to cite early examples is because many believe, without having looked into it, that these kinds of constructions are of recent coinage.

quote:

Originally posted by Cat:
2) Do you distinguish between much and many? Same rules more or fewer(). Do you also think it's affected to say 'there are too many chocolates'*? Again, I don't understand why in one case it's OK to distinguish between countables and uncountables, and in another it's 'affected' to make a similar distinction.

Because language doesn't always line up nicely. There's no reason why we should expect the count/noncount distinction to work the same across all determiners (much, many, less, fewer).

I was talking about Bob, zmj. Bob's using the article which includes the Alfred quotation to support his own use of less - or at least, that's what I glean from the thread title.

My point remains that just because a particular usage might be a more recent construction, that doesn't make it less valid - which is also the line of argument used to defend the more recent (relatively speaking!) meaning of decimate. Like I said, it smacks of double standards to me if one uses the 'it's been used for centuries' defence for one construction and not for another. Just because fewer might be more recent, it doesn't mean it should have a negative connotation attached to it.

Goofy, no, language doesn't line up nicely: there's an exception to every rule, and a 'however' to every exception. My point is that we humans are all guilty of using certain rules, pieces of evidence etc when it suits us. Not necessarily deliberately, but it happens.

Oh, well, take it up with Bob then. I'll just bow out of it now as the lines of communication seem to have broken down.

quote:

Originally posted by Cat:
Goofy, no, language doesn't line up nicely: there's an exception to every rule, and a 'however' to every exception. My point is that we humans are all guilty of using certain rules, pieces of evidence etc when it suits us. Not necessarily deliberately, but it happens.

I'm confused. You said Again, I don't understand why in one case it's OK to distinguish between countables and uncountables, and in another it's 'affected' to make a similar distinction.

And I was trying to explain that the distribution of less/fewer is different to that of much/many. They don't follow the same rules. We find less people, but not *much people. Some people find something like 10 items or fewer affected. If you don't, that's fine, but many people prefer to use less.

I was taking it up with Bob, zmj .

goofy, I'll try to explain. I knowthat less/fewer is different from much/many. You're concentrating on the semantics of one example I gave rather than looking at my main point, which I have described twice already. I used that example just to show that sometimes when we are used to something, the alternative sounds wrong, even if we use something else with similar rules. It relates to the social conditioning suggestion I made in the 'anyways' thread. The two cases don't need to match exactly to give an idea of what I was trying to say.

If you don't like the example, ignore it. I'm interested in comments regarding my main point, rather than those pulling apart a less-than-perfect example I gave, which appears to be just trying to undermine my argument.

I was perhaps a bit misleading in my titling of the thread. I wasn't trying to use the article to support my argument that "less""is "right". I was trying to say that it's an old construction. I didn't mean to imply that all constructions from hundreds of years ago are still valid in modern English. What I meant to illustrate was that we should be wary of rejecting a construction as a modern innovation because frequently, as with "less" and gender neutral "they" the constructions aren't modern. They are just claimed to be modern by people who wish to dismiss them or believed to be modern by people who haven't checked.

Anyone rejecting "less" with countable nouns because it's a modern invention is ignoring the history.

(That of course isn't saying that modern constructions are less valid or that old constructions are less valid. It isn't commenting at all on the validity of the construction, simply on the validity of the argument.)

Now if someone wishes to reject it for other reasons - even for, "it sounds wrong to me" - then that's another matter.

Perhaps because of where I live I hear "less" with countables far more than I ever hear "fewer". Cat, as a you live a hop, skip and jump away from me you must know that this is true. You need only stroll down to the shops to verify it.

Now, I know there's an argument that because a lot of people do it, that doesn't make it right. It does however, in my opinion, make it right for our dialect. The dialect of the area in which all my students live. I therefore teach both words, teach the conventional distinction AND tell them that they are unlikely to hear "fewer" on the street and that they will sound odd if they use it.

Another way of arguing about particular constructions - often seen in the imply/infer - discussions, is that they preserve a distinction of meaning that would otherwise be lost. Clearly that isn't the case with less/fewer though because under the conventional "rule" there is no usage overlap where there could be confusion. It's a case of "use less in this case and fewer in this case" to have precisely the same meaning.

In this area, "fewer" is extremely uncommon. Usually when i hear it , it doesn't just sound affected, it is genuinely affected because the speaker is saying it with an emphasis and a knowing nod and a wink that says "OK, I know that this is not the word I'd normally use but it is the 'grammatical' one, isn't it?"

Now, you are actually one of the few people I know that uses "fewer" in speech without that kind of emphasis, but the very fact that I've noticed that you use it means that it's a construction that goes against what I would normally hear.

I maintain my contention that it usually sounds affected.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: BobHale,

Fair enough, Bob - thanks for clarifying .

I know it's true that in our area we hear 'less' used more often - I mentioned on the 'anyways' thread that I was brought up around it. It's just become my personal preference over the years to sometimes use one and sometimes the other, depending on what I feel sounds better to me in that particular context. Sometimes I use 'less' even when I wouldn't normally if I'm feeling lazy because it's quicker to say .

quote:

Now, you are actually one of the few people I know that uses "fewer" in speech without that kind of emphasis, but the very fact that I've noticed that you use it means that it's a construction that goes against what I would normally hear.

Well, I say fewer with countable nouns, as I had indicated at the beginning of this discussion. I can't say that I feel it sounds "affected," but I also realize that either "less" or "fewer" is correct.

quote:

The reason he likes to cite early examples is because many believe, without having looked into it, that these kinds of constructions are of recent coinage.

This is a good point, z. Oftentimes prescriptivists claim that the use of "less" is something that has recently developed because of lack of attention to writing skills, the Internet, texting, etc. That's obviously not the case.