New column-type thingy

[Jonathon]

Psh. Intransitive verbs are old hat. Even monotransitive and ditransitive verbs aren't cool. You know what is cool? Tritransitive verbs. That's right—verbs with three objects. When I finally get those to catch on, then I'll really be something.

[rivka]

Kudos.  You come off as charming and humble.

Exactly right.

[Jonathon]

Stop! My ears are burning.

[rivka]

They make creams for that.

[pooka]

Buttbuttination is tritransitive.  Patient, instrument, and motive.  Though I guess... that's murder, right?  Doesn't buttbuttination also have political alignment and add the additional element of inoffense?

[Jonathon]

I don't see how it's tritransitive unless you're counting oblique objects, but even then I'm not sure how motive counts. But I meant tritransitive in the sense of having three verbal arguments in addition to a subject.

[Jonathon]

My review of Steven Pinker's newest book, The Sense of Style.

[rivka]

Interesting.

[Annie Subjunctive]

Thanks! I was a little thrown by a few of the questions, especially "greatest contribution to the English language" one. I was like, I'm just this guy, you know.

You totally missed your chance to plug the forums!

[Jonathon]

I've occasionally thought about posting a link to the forum on Arrant Pedantry, since that gets a lot more traffic than my main blog, but I don't know if I want to invite a whole bunch of internet strangers here. New blood may be nice, but it may also be way too disruptive.

[Annie Subjunctive]

I was mostly just calling this your greatest contribution to the English language.

[Jonathon]

Oh, I gotcha. Well, I'll take it.

[Jonathon]

Celtic and the History of the English Language

Warning: it's really freaking long.

[Jonathon]

Did I scare everyone off with that warning? To my surprise, it's one of my most popular posts in months.

[rivka]

Did I scare everyone off with that warning?

In my case, not so much scared off as saved for when I got home.

Very interesting. I was not aware of the claims about Celtic languages having flavored English, but I think you make some very thoughtful points.

(Also, I believe the phrase In Welsh, however, gwneud may have some accidental excess italicization. Darn open/close thingies.)

[Jonathon]

Did I scare everyone off with that warning?

In my case, not so much scared off as saved for when I got home.

Very interesting. I was not aware of the claims about Celtic languages having flavored English, but I think you make some very thoughtful points.

Probably because it's kind of a fringe theory that isn't taken very seriously by most scholars of the history of English. And thanks!

(Also, I believe the phrase In Welsh, however, gwneud may have some accidental excess italicization. Darn open/close thingies.)

Diolch yn fawr.

[Tante Shvester]

It makes me think that the tile distribution and points value must be very different in the Welsh version of Scrabble.

[dkw]

I think your standards for "really freaking long" need to be recalibrated.

[Jonathon]

Well, it's really long compared to my usual posts. But yeah, 2500 words is not really that long.

[Jonathon]

It makes me think that the tile distribution and points value must be very different in the Welsh version of Scrabble.

Yeah. There's no z, q, x, or j, but I think they more than make up for it with all the w's and y's.

[rivka]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrabble_letter_distributions#Welsh

(Reviews on Amazon indicate that the J is an error and advise using it as a blank.)

[Jonathon]

As it says, j is used for words and names borrowed from English, as in the quintessentially Welsh name Jones. So I guess it depends on how much of a purist you want to be.

I wonder why they decide to omit mutated words. They're still words, and it's not like they violate the normal Scrabble rules about capitals, spaces, and punctuation.

[Jonathon]

Another Day, Another Worthless Grammar Quiz

[Jonathon]

Well, that post has certainly drawn a lot of . . . interesting comments.

[rivka]

Indeed.