[riverkid]

Originally Posted by rewboss

No you didn't; which is why attacking the prescriptivist stance was irrelevant to this thread.

Better; "No, you didn't, I'm sorry." "I'm sorry" has some connection to "No, you didn't" as opposed to "which is why attacking the prescriptivist stance was irrelevant to this thread", which doesn't. ;)

After considerable thought I've changed my mind, Rewboss. You actually did take a prescriptivist stance. More on this later.

Originally Posted by rewboss

Here you set up the same straw man: even though nothing about prescriptivism was in your original post or my response to it, you construct an argument based on a flawed understanding of how prescriptivists work, and then attack that argument. You are not actually debating anything I have said; merely conducting a tirade against prescriptivism.

I believe that it would be my perogative to raise what I believe is pertinent. It's always relevant to expose prescriptivism for what it is, a group of charlatans pretending to describe language.

If I have "a flawed understanding of how prescriptivists work", please feel free to explain how they work. I've asked, time and again, for someone, anyone to offer proof for prescriptions offered and they're have been no takers.

Originally Posted by rewboss

However, if I were to go further, I'd venture to say that you haven't actually advanced any reason for these overrides, potential or otherwise; merely that they happen because Swan said that such overrides exist.

With all due respect, Rewboss, do you even read what others write? Read what I said in my opening posting.

I wrote:

"The importance that the present perfect adds ovverides [sic], on very limited occasions, the general reluctance of native speakers, and this is a great reluctance, to mix the present perfect and past time adjuncts."

Originally Posted by rewboss

The theory I have advanced is that speakers modify aspects of their utterances in mid-flow causing constructions which do not adhere to established patterns (or, if you prefer, flout the rules of grammar, which is a prescriptivist way of saying the same thing).

You haven't actually commented on either of those last two points, preferring instead to attack prescriptivism for no apparent reason.

I believe I did comment on that; once again, let me go back and check, ..., ..., yes I did, I called it an assumption on your part. Let me clarify what I meant and add something I started in my first response in this thread.

I guess you actually are/were being a bit prescriptive in this, in that you make the assumption, unwarranted to my mind, that there is any need for a speaker to go back and "correct" the verb phrase.

That is the very mark of prescriptivism. "There must be something wrong with the speaker because that is a rule that simply must not be broken".

A descriptive position would be that there is something, in this case we're calling it an override, that overrides what is the normal condition.

Simply another manner of use for another language situation.