On 3/18/2012 2:46, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
On Sat, 17 Mar 2012 21:23:45 +0100, Kiuhnm wrote:
On 3/16/2012 14:03, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
A one line routine is still a routine. There is nothing ungrammatical
about "If you can: take the bus.", although it is non-idiomatic
English.
In another post you wrote
"Sorry, I was talking about the other sort, the ones who apply the
grammatical rules used by people in real life. You know the ones:
linguists."
Then how do you know that there's nothing ungrammatical about "If you
can: take the bus" if people don't use it?
Who says it is ungrammatical?
You did.
You're not a prescriptivist, thus you're probably a descriptivist.
Beeing a descriptivist, you must agree on the fact that
"If ...: do this"
is ungrammatical, because nobody says that.
On the other hand, a prescriptivist might accept that.
BTW, I asked a few teachers of English whether "If ...: do this" is
correct or not and they, surprisingly, said "no".
Kiuhnm
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