...It also confounds vernacular acceptance of a speech act with its validity...
It is valid if enough people use it. Period. There is no grammar court to make judgment. Some dictionaries are liberal towards the changing language, some are conservative, but there really isn't any authority but usage, when you come down to it.
That's the problem pedants will always have with living languages.
Slightly O/T but looking at this from a what does this program try to do. I personally think that we as the DL-North collective need to start to adjust our understanding as to how EQMs/MQMs are viewed in legacy DL world. They IMHO opinion appear to be a form of currency like RDMs were in legacy NW world, and while folks from the DL-North side of the equation, always go on about how we only got EQMs for flying, such was not the case with RDMs, and I can refer to you the plethora of threads where NW made easy RDMs available or just out right gave them to us. MQMs, some may argue flow like H2O in this new program, but we all must remember that RDMs often flowed like H2O in NW's program.
Accordingly, we should probably adjust our understanding of the EQM/MQM in this new program and treat it similar to a "currency" that is earned any number of ways. If we adjust the understanding and the expectation, we can then best analyze how to benefit therefrom. And Y'all know, I am big into "kicking the tires" from time to time.
Safe Travels
Spot on. The first sign that I was off the deep end on my miles obsession was when I assigned a subordinate to log in with my WP# EVERY DAY and play the baggage game when I was traveling during the summer of 2008. NW made free miles easy. DL does the same with MQMs and now I'm a "faux" PM. Different game, different prize, but still rewarding to those that play along.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nfg05
With all the discussion about the thread title I think it's appropriate to state (once again) that the current "OP" adammarcw actually did not choose this title. I believe it was jenniparks who started the thread with this title, and the existence of a double MQM promotion was was in fact confirmed by several DL phone reps during the early days of this thread.
Huh?? How did the OP change?
I do remember jenniparks posting this somewhere.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by GrizShel
Huh?? How did the OP change?
I do remember jenniparks posting this somewhere.
When thread B gets merged with thread A then the OP of thread B is no longer the OP of the two merged threads. If one comes upon a thread for the first time after it has already been subject to a merge then the OP lines are blurred as some references to OP will be for the original poster of thread B and others will be thinking of the OP for thread A.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jazzop
To catch up...
Normally I hate to do this, but since this side argument is the most informative part of the whole asinine thread, I don't feel the least bit guilty.
"Merrium-Webster" gives an inaccurate, revisionist grammar that appears to confound plural nouns with collective nouns. It also confounds vernacular acceptance of a speech act with its validity.
You can say "the data is" and "the data are" 100 times each, and more people will probably look at you askance when you say the latter phrase than when you utter the former (unless you are at a convention of statisticians). All this demonstrates is that there are more ignorant people around you than there are informed people.
What annoys me is not that someone mistakenly used "data" as a singular noun, but actually attempted to correct the proper use of the noun.
No hard feelings intended toward anyone-- honestly. I posted previously in an attempt at nerdy humor.
In the end, though, I'd rather be pedantic than wrong.
Whatever. Excuse me for correcting someone's error. I won't make that mistake again. All I was trying to do was clarify what Jassop was trying to say when he questioned Evan!'s post.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Kwaj boy
Whatever. Excuse me for correcting someone's error. I won't make that mistake again. All I was trying to do was clarify what Jassop was trying to say when he questioned Evan!'s post.
You didn't make a mistake. Obviously using data as a singular or plural is acceptable as I have shown with two resources not just one marginalized one (MW). To one ear one might sound awkward and to another just fine.
It's too bad Jazzop couldn't just admit he learned something new and that I was not revising grammar. But rather he felt the need to be pedantic and not wrong. However he was wrong and therefore not very pedantic. Although he claims it was only "nerdy humor" I don't care much for the use of the word ignorant in his post. Who's ignorant now?
I work in IT and data is used as a singular non-count noun often. I was waiting for information from an IT source so I stand by my usage.
For the record M-W is no more or less liberal with the usage of data as a singular or plural noun than any other resource I have found.
Am I the only one who hopes this promotion doesn't actually go to anyone? I think there have been enough EQM giveaways already from both NW and DL, and wish that the diamond tier were 125k BIS miles, not EQM.
Amen to that! Enough giveaways already. Save the perks for the real BIS flyers...
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Quote:
Originally Posted by anotherATLelite
Indeed. I'm not sure what principles drive M-W, but the OED, for some years now, has been 'descriptive' rather than 'prescriptive'. That is to say, it notes usage and linguistic evolution rather than defining the standards of correct English. Of course, I'm the sort of pedant who holds with the 12th century author, Alan of Lille, who in his 'Anticlaudianus' held bad grammar to be one of the sure signs of degenerate humanity!
Hey, sounds like thread assisted suicide is happening! I hear keys a comin'.
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In this context, what on earth does "valid" mean? Is "like" valid—i.e. socially acceptible—when giving a speech? Probably not, depending on the venue.
But if by "valid" you mean grammatical—even vernacular speech is grammatical because it follows the productive linguistic rules of a given language.
Don't worry everyone, you can still find ways to tell people what to do without taking the meaning of grammar in vain
I should not have used the word "valid", since it refers to formal constructs and makes little sense when referring to a single word. A sentence using "...the data is..." might be invalid, as a logical argument may also be invalid. I was at a loss for a term, but unlike others here, I am perfectly willing to admit my error in usage.
The counterarguments given here all address contextual use of the word. Just about any nonsensical utterance can have meaning in context-- that's where euphemisms come from. It is clear that semantically (which is the largest scope under which a single word-- i.e., "data"-- can be analyzed) the word cannot be singular.
If you need further proof, morphologically (the minimal level of meaning in a language) the word is broken into the morphemes [dat-], meaning "a given" and [-a], meaning plural. To achieve singularity, one replaces the [-a] morpheme with [-um]. Is that what you mean by "productive linguistic rules?"
At the certain risk of adding fuel to this fire, there are different ways in which a word enters a language's lexicon. Patrimonial words have "been there all along" and usually conform to the language's traditional phonetic morphological rules. There are also borrowed words, the category to which "datum/data" belongs. Borrowed words are taken precisely because they express something that the borrowing language lacks. In order to preserve this meaning, the loanword's morphology is also preserved. To ignore this uniqueness or attempt to assimilate it strips the word of its meaning. Can it be done? Sure. Is it done? All the time. I firmly believe, however, that to do so consciously is to live in mauvaise foi (untranslated to preserve meaning ). You are as free to do it as I am free to dislike it.
There is no need to translate. We are all highly cultured international travelers and immediately understood the term -- although I am not quite certain what "bad liver pate" has to do with the discussion at hand.
(It is usually served with hors d'oeuvres, who are, as is obvious, Irv's prostitutes.)
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