Annoying words
Machine writing.
At English Corner this week one of the kids was banging on about clichés. I've been reading an article about the syntax of 的. One thing that I noticed when I was doing my PhD that almost every article written by American academics had the words "instantiate" and "instantiation" which were noticeable because I'd never seen either before. I'm sure I'd used equivalent phrases and still do.
But these words seem to be clichés, part of the mechanistic style which is the hallmark of linguistics papers out of the States. It's as if no one's actually capable of writing anything academic in a style which has a personality. Research students mimic the style and the cycle of dullness continues.
One of the other things I've loathed and continue to loathe is the misuse of transitive verbs like "raise" and "derive". You know, you can use the passive or some equivalent intransitive verb.
It's "rise", an intransitive verb of excellent pedigree.
At English Corner this week one of the kids was banging on about clichés. I've been reading an article about the syntax of 的. One thing that I noticed when I was doing my PhD that almost every article written by American academics had the words "instantiate" and "instantiation" which were noticeable because I'd never seen either before. I'm sure I'd used equivalent phrases and still do.
But these words seem to be clichés, part of the mechanistic style which is the hallmark of linguistics papers out of the States. It's as if no one's actually capable of writing anything academic in a style which has a personality. Research students mimic the style and the cycle of dullness continues.
One of the other things I've loathed and continue to loathe is the misuse of transitive verbs like "raise" and "derive". You know, you can use the passive or some equivalent intransitive verb.
If a determiner does not occur in forms such as (44), then the Demonstrative/Quantifier is forced to raise to the initial D0 position, as in (46)
It's "rise", an intransitive verb of excellent pedigree.
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