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Watta' place!  I don't even hafta toot my own horn!

A few more edits to Kirsey and Melayne visiting Master Threkesrom.  I do hope these are the last for a while.

Amy, I might have gotten the bit about the curtsy right.  To answer a point from your review, the Academy was born in the wreckage of the great Sundering.  It was assembled from world-fragments, and some of those were recyled rather roughly.  (That doesn't mean your concerns are invalid.  Heheheh, you wanted clooz.)

Meanwhile, I have some changes to B1 in mind that might send Glaselle to Pazot and Lifpynth in Book 2.  I mean to get her out, and a small, disconcerting trip might be a good start.

Some reviews tonight.  (Amy, don't you wish you had something out there for me to review ... ?)  After that I'll see again if I can get things fitting around Erevain.

Very well.  Let's leave aside the French Academy, which is only an example.  Let us focus on prescriptivist and descriptivist.

My understanding is that a descriptivist grammarian seeks to find the patterns that we use in organizing and arranging words, including but not limited to such categories as parts of speech, inflection (declension/conjugation) of word forms, and such organization of utterances as phrase and sentence.   (And I acknowledge that these categories may not properly apply to the languages of China, and perhaps other places.  By this definition, a descriptivist studying those languages may need other categories.)

My understanding is that a prescriptivist grammarian, working from some blend of knowledge of the language as it is spoken by a broad range of individuals and his own preferences, judgement, and prejudices, provides instruction in the use of the language.  In chosing to advocate some constructions over others, the prescriptivist is taking the role of arbiter of the language.

Note that I have tried to leave aside questions of whether a description or prescription favors some groups of people over others, or some types of ideas over others.  I acknowledge that these are valid questions, but not useful in determining the meaning of these two words, and the antithesis that they appear to represent.  I hold that arguing the purpose of the acts and practices requires having words that describe the acts and practices, and that to have those words we need to have substantial agreement on their meanings.  (Since you and I can only share mentation through words, our agreement can never be perfect, only good enough to communicate and good enough to improve.)

Now, by your definitions, in what way does the foregoing err?  In what way is it not even wrong?

Some edits to B2Ch33.  Some of them address Amy's comments; some do not.  All add w$rds.

Hence, saith I, it is stage-setting, and not full-blossom narrative.

If it were not aimed at an age group, what would its genre be?  Is it a coming-of-age story?

I've done a cursory check.  Depending on the source, the curtsey (spelling varies) may be accompanied by a bowing of the head, or the head bow is considered part of the basic movement.  So the head bow isn't wrong, but it may be an ancillary obeisance.  And since Melayne was taught it as a child, in case she had to face royalty, I expect she would have been taught it with the head bow.

In ballet, the bow extends to the shoulders, with the arms bending toward each other.  (But this isn't ballet.)

Oh, channeling Bimmy: There's an ad running on WFAN (NYC's original sports radio) for a plumbing supply house: "Are you suffering from frozen nipples?  From your nipples to your ballcocks ...."

(Oops, wrong thread.  Well, let it be.)

Hmm.  So what I though was a category error report was instead a rejection of my use of the word in attempting to explore the boundaries you attach to its proper use?

Even with that, I'm going to have to go a long way to follow you.  First, words often attach to multiple concepts.  Somewhere (I'm trying to recall where) C. S. Lewis gives a range of different meanings attached to the word 'romantic'.  (Falling in love is not among those meanings.)

Your position seems to me to be something like a form/content distinction, in that misuse of the content denies that the form is that form.  It is (as I now see it) as if a process-server carrying a writ that is improperly issued is no longer a process-server.

You haven't read Acts?  Read it.  It's a whopping good story.  There are a few chapters near the beginning that read too slowly, but after that it's a roller-coaster.  And there's a romance involved--ROMANCE--and lots of hard-to-spot clues.  Primo stuff, and not typical fantasy.

Charles_F_Bell, I would like to understand what you mean but you seem to regard every question I ask as a category error, and your attempts to take me past the difficulty seem to lead me back to the same difficulty.  I would like to understand what you believe here, but my efforts seem fruitless and more frustrating to you than to me.  You've set your beliefs out, but I can't do you the consideration and give you the respect  of considering them!

I suspect that I would agree completely with about a tenth of what you say, and partly with another half.  Regardless, it would be satisfying to achieve what I've been told is called stasis (hard-long 'a'):  agreement on what the issues are, what our respective beliefs are, and where they diverge.  That doesn't seem to be possible now, and I count it a loss.

In short, I don't understand, I don't now expect to understand, I thank you for trying, and I hope that this statement is useful for you, if only to know why I've stopped bothering you on this topic.

Oh, feck!

So you use the term in that sentence to mean not a particular instance of 'anti-concept' but the anti-concept as a category?

Do you then regard prescriptivist grammar as a product of Progressivism?  If so, I think you are mistaken.  The warhorse example, the non-splitability of the infinitive, is held originate in applying the grammar of classical languages (and especially Latin) to English.  But the classical education, involving medieval and classical Latin as well as Hellenic Greek and old Hebrew, was shunned and dis--valued (sorry, can't find the word just now) by the Progressive movement, so it seems unlikely that the atomic infinitive is as recent a development as Progressivism.