Nadina Cehan

The study sets out to investigate the ‘plupluperfect’ structure, which is a relatively rare nonstandard feature found in counterfactual conditionals. It looks into this construction’s geographical spread using available corpora. As the study unfolds, the strengths and weaknesses of the method come to the fore, as well as the limits of this kind of empirical linguistic analyses.

In The King’s English: A Guide to Modern Usage, Kingsley Amis identified H. W. Fowler as his great predecessor. Amis revealed himself as a soldier in the army of prescriptivists, voices that settle ‘modern linguistic problems’ while proudly parading as non-linguists. The book exposed Amis’s acrimonious dispute with descriptive linguists, while the writer delivered his very own brand of linguistics to his readers. This paper looks at the success of Amis’s book and its similarities with Fowler’s. It also emphasizes the continuity and popularity of usage handbooks while presenting some of their chief characteristics as exemplified by Amis’s work.

The paper briefly looks at two nonstandard conditional constructions, if [Su] had have [pp] and if [Su] would have [pp], which present anomalous components. Various works mentioning them have been analysed, leading to the conclusion that the forms have not been treated seriously or exhaustively. Following a small study which tries to establish their spread in the language, the paper concludes that some questions remain unanswered, such as whether the constructions can be characterised according to their geographical spread, their exact vernacular status, and to what extent they may coexist alongside the standard form in a person’s idiolect.

The paper looks at the nonstandard, so called ‘plupluperfect’, construction If [Subject] had have [past particple]. Based on inquiries in WebCorp and the BNC and COCA, the paper shows the relative incidence of this construction in the available corpora. The investigation concludes that the construction is more likely to be found in Internet texts and communications. This prompts a brief discussion on the general nature of Internet language and its main characteristics. Moreover, taking into consideration the morpho-syntactic make-up of the construction, certain theories about its occurrence are presented. It is also noted that the construction is by no means new, having been attested centuries ago. Thus, the paper tries to tie in history with present-day trends in language and linguistics.

The formal approach to conditionals, treating them in a decontextualized manner, has been the most developed. The present paper shows how problematic this approach can be when conditionals are studied in context. One large class of conditionals could be termed ‘interactional’, and includes formulaic if-clauses of politeness, conditionals which soften the message, speech-act conditionals emphasizing the relevance of some information given beforehand, and paratactic conditionals making promises or issuing threats. It is to this eclectic class that the ‘drama queen’ conditional is added. Recently discovered, this conditional does not deal with either truth or hypotheticality, but with the human emotions of the people who face their reality and compare it with their own past. Not unlike the conditionals that relay the message “It’s absurd!”, the ‘drama queen’ conditionals convey the message “It’s unimaginable!”.

School lore has it that young learners acquire foreign languages easily by playing computer games. In an attempt to investigate this claim, a study was conducted involving 228 lower and upper secondary school Romanian students. The investigation probed for age and gender differences in the students' attitudes towards learning English from computer games, as well as for specific instances of language learning. The language remembered from playing reveals which game elements and properties appear most conducive to language learning. The frequency of a word or phrase, its bearing in the logic of the game, and the game capacity to present contextualized language, simultaneously seen and heard, are important factors. Nevertheless, there is ample evidence of significant limitations. The analysis shows strengths and weaknesses that may be relevant for foreign language learning game design.

The paper looks at the nonstandard, so called 'plupluperfect', construction If [Subject] had have [past participle]. Based on inquieries in WebCorp and the BNC and COCA, the paper shows the relative incidence of this construction in the available corpora. The investigation concludes that the construction is more likely to be found in Internet texts and communications. This prompts a brief discussion on the general nature of Internet language and its main characteristics. Moreover, taking into consideration the morpho-syntactic make-up of the construction, certain theories about its occurrence are presented. It is also noted that the construction is by no means new, having been attested centuries ago. Thus, the paper tries to tie in history with present-day trends in language and linguistics.

School lore has it that young learners acquire foreign languages easily by playing computer games. In an attempt to investigate this claim, a study was conducted involving 228 lower and upper secondary school Romanian students. The investigation probed for age and gender differences in the students' attitudes towards learning English from computer games, as well as for specific instances of language learning. The language remembered from playing reveals which game elements and properties appear most conducive to language learning. The frequency of a word or phrase, its bearing in the logic of the game, and the game capacity to present contextualized language, simultaneously seen and heard, are important factors. Nevertheless, there is ample evidence of significant limitations. The analysis shows strengths and weaknesses that may be relevant for foreign language learning game design.

"Language has immutable rules to be followed. It must be used as it should." Prescriptivists insist on informing the insecure public of how to speak and write correctly and judiciously. The correctness issue and a binary, either right or wrong, perspective on forms and meaning lie at the centre of the prescriptivist argument. In addition, a strong relationship between languge and thought is posited to the extent that grammar is claimed to organize the mind, while correct language is presumed to be the overt expression of correct thinking. Prescriptivism plays a pivotal role in the maintenance of the standard language by rejecting variation and change. This paper argues that Robert Lowth and Isabela Nedelcu, two scholars belonging to centuries and cultures very much apart, contribute to the same prescriptivist discourse community, as they are shown to support the same ideology. The two share fundamentally the same prescriptivist ideas, attitudes and arguments.

In The King's English: A Guide to Modern Usage, Kingsley Amis identified H. W. Fowler as his great predecessor. Amis revealed himself as a soldier in the army of prescriptivists, voices that settle 'modern linguistic problems' while proudly parading as non-linguists. The book exposed Amis's acrimonious dispute with descriptive linguists, while the writer delivered his very own brand of linguistics to his readers. This paper looks at the success of Amis's book and its similarities with Fowler's. It also emphasizes the continuity and popularity of usage handbooks while presenting some of their chief characteristics as exemplified by Amis's work.

School lore has it that young learners acquire foreign languages easily by playing computer games. In an attempt to investigate this claim, a study was conducted involving 228 lower and upper secondary school Romanian students. The investigation probed for age and gender differences in the students’ attitudes towards learning English from computer games, as well as for specific instances of language learning. The language remembered from playing reveals which game elements and properties appear most conducive to language learning. The frequency of a word or phrase, its bearing in the logic of the game, and the game capacity to present contextualized language, simultaneously seen and heard, are important factors. Nevertheless, there is ample evidence of significant limitations. The analysis shows strengths and weaknesses that may be relevant for foreign language learning game design.