Interesting how language can evolve (devolve?) in the face of character limits for online comments. A very memetic fashion, as well.
English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet
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Re: English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet
#12Excellent article, worth the read. Not many comments here, because short attention spans!
I'm not a native speaker. If i add a "of", ("because of short attention spans!") that sounds if it was correct in the past aswell, so I'm confused. For me that seems just leaving out the "of", or is there more?
That's pretty much it. The linguists just gave it a fancy technical name.
I wouldn't worry too much - this is just a fad.
People get bored and do weird things.
Re: English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet
#13Excellent article, worth the read. Not many comments here, because short attention spans!
I'm not a native speaker. If i add a "of", ("because of short attention spans!") that sounds if it was correct in the past aswell, so I'm confused. For me that seems just leaving out the "of", or is there more?
You're exactly right. This is just leaving out the "of". The article interprets this to mean that the word "because" has become a new preposition used in place of the proposition "of". Another interpretation is that "because" retains its grammatical usage but a new sentence structure has become acceptable. I personally interpret it the second way. Each domain has its own grammatical structure.
Re: English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet
#14That seems to dumb down the language, rather than improve or evolve it. > Skipping lunch today because sleep. What is that supposed to mean? You need to take a nap during lunch; you got too much sleep the night before and are groggy, etc. Why not add a few more words to make the sentence understandable (in this case non-ambiguous).
It means sleep was the cause of lunch being missed. No more details are provided or implied. Off the record, one could guess that the speaker didn't want to remark on oversleeping due to the negative connotations, and is instead leaving the answer vague in the hopes of don't-ask-don't-tell. Depending on the audience, this may also be exactly enough information to be unambiguous with the fewest number of words; a friend may have had prior experiences that set the default interpretation and context of mid-day sleep.
TL;DR: Don't mistake dumb for compression.
Re: English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet
#15What's fascinating to me is that, unlike so many other language "changes", this isn't caused by laziness or carelessness. This seems to be a rare case where removing words adds information, rather than removing it: "The talks failed because of politics" means roughly what it says, while "The talks failed because politics" means roughly "The talks failed because of politics, which is the kind of thing that always happ…
Not a linguist, but wouldn't this fall under "pithiness"? I think generic brevity and succinctness would also describe this adequately.
Re: English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet
#16Maybe it's just me, but the "prepositional because" is usually deprecative of the subject. The article details the implications of the prepositional because:
"It conveys focus... It conveys brevity... But it also conveys a certain universality."
People use it when they're busy, drunk, or absent-minded to be self-deprecative. As in:
"Maxed out my credit card because too much beer!"
But people also use it to disparage someone else:
"Uptown a*&%$# voted against prop B because racism."
The article briefly hints at this when it says, "So we get comments like these, with people using 'because' not just to explain, but also to criticize, and sensationalize, and ironize...".
In fact, I'm having a hard time coming up with an example of a "because X" clause that has complimentary implications.
However, it's possible that the implications of this preposition has softened recently and I'm out of the loop. Or maybe I'm just overthinking it.
EDIT: Maybe it's just me but "because bacon" and "because awesome" do not imply that the subject of the sentence is a person with qualities worth aspiring to. Not that bacon isn't awesome.
Re: English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet
#17[deleted]
Re: English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet
#18What's fascinating to me is that, unlike so many other language "changes", this isn't caused by laziness or carelessness. This seems to be a rare case where removing words adds information, rather than removing it: "The talks failed because of politics" means roughly what it says, while "The talks failed because politics" means roughly "The talks failed because of politics, which is the kind of thing that always happ…
The added inference I get is "that's just the way it is."
"Because politics" is like saying "because politics are just crazy like that."
It's a flippant way of saying something is simply absurd. Or an issue is pretty much binary.
Re: English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet
#19Great article, because journalism.
Re: English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet
#20Excellent article, worth the read. Not many comments here, because short attention spans!
I thought this was a good article until I re-read it to cite all the sources.
It cites a single blog post by one linguist and twitter and image macros.
That hardly constitutes linguists. It hardly constitutes linguist. This feature was longer than the original post.