"most of them IS..." or "most of them ARE...&

Liz, as someone pointed out, I invented a humorous concept of hypothetical absolute descriptivism. Maybe the humour was ill-judged or you just missed it!

Travis said: "I am not going to categorically state that "most of them is" is wrong, just because someone's dialect may have it".

I took him as meaning "I am not going to categorically state that "most of them is" is wrong, JUST IN CASE a dialect exists that has it". LOL! LOL!

That is taking absolute descriptivism to an extreme to include situations that MIGHT exist.

I prefer to not make categorical statements about languages, but rather to refer to particular (sets of) varieties or established standards. It is very easy to make blanket statements which happen to not actually apply to *all* dialects of some given language (I'm not going to get into what a "language" really is here) even if they do apply to all the standard varieties of that language.

Well, then, Travis, you misunderstood the question. The questioner did not ask "does every single native speaker of English in the world say either "most of them is" or "most of them are"?", but was inquiring as to which was "correct". If you take the view that there cannot by definition be a correct form - you rule yourself (and themself!!) out of answer the question. Q. E. D.

>>Well, then, Travis, you misunderstood the question. The questioner did not ask "does every single native speaker of English in the world say either "most of them is" or "most of them are"?", but was inquiring as to which was "correct". If you take the view that there cannot by definition be a correct form - you rule yourself (and themself!!) out of answer the question. Q. E. D.<<

From a linguistic standpoint, what is correct is determined by the native speakers of any given variety. However, the usual learner who asks such a question is not looking for an answer from such a standpoint but rather is looking for what the normal usage is in a standard variety of English. And consequently, I gave them such an answer - that it is not correct within any standard variety of English, whether or not it may happen to be correct in some dialect aside.

And really, the "Q. E. D." was unnecessary there. Could you please stop acting so pompous? As much as I detest prescriptivism, I have ran into far more polite prescriptivists than you.

>>From a linguistic standpoint, what is correct is determined by the native speakers of any given variety.<<

No. Language is part of human culture. Human culture reflects a number of social phenomena including division into social classes, the availability of education to those classes, the role of the use of language in identifying people as members of the educated class etc. Language cannot be divorced from the whole panoply of human culture. The question of what is correct is one that arises only in the context of human culture. Cave men may not have worried about which grunt was "correct". So even your use of the word "correct" reflects the fact that language is social and cultural. Within human societies, a standard variety emerges that is viewed, sometimes arbitrarily, as better. But the notion of "correct" relates to that, and not to "any native speakers" as you seem to think.

Long live culture. And down with the anti-culture and its proponents.

>>>>From a linguistic standpoint, what is correct is determined by the native speakers of any given variety.<<

No. Language is part of human culture. Human culture reflects a number of social phenomena including division into social classes, the availability of education to those classes, the role of the use of language in identifying people as members of the educated class etc. Language cannot be divorced from the whole panoply of human culture. The question of what is correct is one that arises only in the context of human culture. Cave men may not have worried about which grunt was "correct". So even your use of the word "correct" reflects the fact that language is social and cultural. Within human societies, a standard variety emerges that is viewed, sometimes arbitrarily, as better. But the notion of "correct" relates to that, and not to "any native speakers" as you seem to think.<<

You forget that what is correct varies from dialect to dialect, rather than there being any universal notion of "correctness", with correctness in any given dialect being determined by the native speakers of that particular dialect. For instance, the form "come with" is perfectly grammatical in my dialect, but is not grammatical in many dialects which have not come into contact with West Germanic languages other than English (such as German in the case of many NAE dialects or Afrikaans in the case of South African English).

Also note that standard varieties are generally very artificial in nature, and what is "correct" in any given standard variety may not correspond to what is grammatical in actual dialects in everyday use, as shown by examples such as "themself" or "come with". Also note that some forms may be declared to be "nonstandard" by some "authorities", so to speak, but may be standard in actual usage in a wide range of dialects, such as the common example of singular they.

>>Long live culture. And down with the anti-culture and its proponents.<<

What the hell do you mean by "anti-culture" anyways?

Travis, if you mean "come with" as an abbreviation for "come with me", it is not correct. Dialects are irrelevant. As correctness only relates to the standard. There is no such thing as correct sub-standard speech. You use the word "standard" to mean "in common usage" rather than "standard" so the rest of your post is just semantics. The anti-culture: it is what you are engaged in.

>>Travis, if you mean "come with" as an abbreviation for "come with me", it is not correct.<<

Actually, it is not an abbreviation, but rather is most likely related to German "mitkommen" (or in the case of South African English, its Afrikaans analogue). In the case of English here, it is but one of a range of similar forms, such as "bring with", "take with", "drive off with", and so on.

>>Dialects are irrelevant. As correctness only relates to the standard. There is no such thing as correct sub-standard speech.<<

There is no "the standard". There are standards, and even then they are not the fixed entities that you may happen to think they are. Just because someone speaks Received Pronunciation today does not mean that they will sound like the Queen did forty years ago. Just because someone speaks something that falls under the very broad umbrella of General American does not mean that they sound at all like Walter Cronkite on the CBS Nightly News.

And as for the word "sub-standard", that has no place here whatsoever with respect to usage by native English-speakers.

>>You use the word "standard" to mean "in common usage" rather than "standard" so the rest of your post is just semantics.<<

Note that in that case I was using it as an adjective, as in saying that something is "standard", rather than as a noun, as in "a standard". What I was saying was that the use of singular they is effectively part of everyday spoken usage in dialects that effectively fall under General American (which is not very clear-cut in nature) even if no "authority" has said that it is part of such.

>>The anti-culture: it is what you are engaged in.<<

Only if you define "culture" as being the elitist bullshit you think it is.

Dave Lee Travis,

I have explained that language is social and cultural and for social and cultural reasons a standard develops where certain usages although spoken by native speakers are deemed sub-standard (we can have a debate on the hyphen later).

There is no singular they in the English of careful speakers. That is the point.

Hey, David...then we were right in calling you a prescriptivist. So you aren't just extracting the Michael? :-)

<<Dialects are irrelevant.>>

How so? There are more people in the English-speaking world who speak in different "non-standard" dialects than those who speak some kind of (mostly artificial) standard. Even the vast majority of those who speak Standard English do not speak it natively, as they use a regional dialect natively.
If English is your mother tongue, do you speak purely Standard English? Do you speak it natively?

<<Long live culture. And down with the anti-culture and its proponents.>>
<<What the hell do you mean by "anti-culture" anyways?>>
<<The anti-culture: it is what you are engaged in.>>

That's not a qualified answer.
Besides, what about educated people who use their native dialect when chatting with their relatives / friends? Or what about poems written in dialects?

"Standard" doesn't mean "better". It's just more appropriate in certain contexts (especially formal speech / writing). It's (rather arbitrarily) based upon consensus. I know you are discussing mainly grammar here, but as an example, standard British pronunciation is based on educated southern English speech. So, if it happened to be Cockney, you would advocate that one as vehemently as you do it now. Now you would certainly say that it's a non-standard uneducated variety (,which is true, nevertheless, not in the pejorative sense) and anti-culture (,which definitely isn't true).

Regional dialects and artificial standards have nothing to do with culture and intelligence.

Sorry, the above post was mine.

Read Jane Austen and you will know you are reading beautiful English and will want to copy her.

>>Besides, what about educated people who use their native dialect when chatting with their relatives / friends? Or what about poems written in dialects?<<

I think you underestimate the usage of dialect here. At least here, dialect is not something that is just used for at home or in poetry, but rather is simply how people here speak in general, be it at home or in the office or whereever. There is no real opposition of "dialect" versus "standard", but rather just gradations in register within said dialect, ranging from the very informal to the very formal.

Even very formal registers, though, are not just the standard, as they still have the same underlying phonology, even if there is much less reduction, cliticization, and elision occurring than in more informal registers. If anything, the primary non-phonological differences between registers are vocabulary , usage, and the presence/absence of more conservative forms. At the same time, there is no line at which "dialect" ends and "standard" begins, as while more "dialectal" forms may be avoided in more markedly formal usage, "dialectal" usages like "you guys" and "come with" are still common in semiformal speech.

At the same time, there are still forms that are more strictly limited to informal speech, such as the use of "by" as a general locative pronoun do not show up as much as in informal speech. But mind you that most speech counts as informal speech, including at work, so such informal forms may still be very commonly encountered in contexts where in other languages one might expect more formal usage (such as in German).

<<Read Jane Austen and you will know you are reading beautiful English and will want to copy her.>>

This post wasn't written by me. Some troll used my name or the troll happened to have the same name as mine.

<<I think you underestimate the usage of dialect here. At least here, dialect is not something that is just used for at home or in poetry, but rather is simply how people here speak in general, be it at home or in the office or whereever. There is no real opposition of "dialect" versus "standard", but rather just gradations in register within said dialect, ranging from the very informal to the very formal.>>

No, I don't underestimate the usage of dialects at all. I know that there is a fine line between dialectal and standard usage. Besides, you can speak fairly standard English by using a particular dialect, especially on the level of pronunciation. When you code-switch it's usually not the pronunciation that you change but rather the grammatical constructions unless you speak a dialect which is socially stigmatised because of its pronunciation, too, like Cockney, Brummie etc.

Here I just wanted to show David (who claims that using dialects makes you "anti-culture (sic!)) that even really educated people DO use dialects of low social status (as there are dialects which are not really welcomed at workplace, in the office, at school etc., to say the least). However, just because these varieties are socially stigmatised it doesn't mean they are "worse" than or inferior to other varieties. They are as valid as others since they have they own rules which are as difficult to master as those of the so-called "standard" varieties. (To those who say that any kind of "non-standard" dialect is "lazy" and "sloppy" English. Mxsmanic is not around, thank God. :-))

So, this is what I wanted to say. Sorry for having been unclear in my previous post. I didn't have much time to elaborate on that.