My pal zim posts on this bit of linguistic archaeology. Me? I’m skeptical. I suspect that this is a bit of fellow friend Rufus Blooter’s observation that a lot of science reporting is pants. In this case, basic issues are left underexamined, e.g. when the researchers report that “stick” is an English word that’s likely to atrophy and die on (relatively) short order, do they mean the noun or the verb? They’re two quite different things. And there’s little sense in the BBC piece that underlies zim’s post about whether the researchers take into account the fact that while English is an Indo-European language, it’s no longer spoken exclusively in European (or Subcontinental) confines. Which is to say, it’s North American and global and hence quite likely evolving … differently.
Sat, 090307
For? Four? Vier? Fer?
I am likewise skeptical of their prediction that “bad” will go away soon. No doubt as long as there is one bad motherfucker left on the planet, “bad” will have its rightful place in the lexicon.