In one of his always good salvos against prescriptivism on Language Log, Arnold Zwicky happened to mention me (see Recency). In apparent reference to an editorial policy I had mentioned having against “X times X-er” statements (e.g., 5 times larger, 8 times smaller), as well as to comments by others who were opposed to the usage, he responded, “Yet I’ve never stopped asking, ‘Why don’t you understand the clear meaning of what people are saying?'”
The following was my response, which I think is worth setting forth as a statement of the different pragmatics governing editing and linguistics: Continue reading
Sesquiotica 