101–110 of 162 posts
In the sentence above, "because" is followed by an adjective phrase. Prepositions are never followed by adjective phrases, so "prepositional because" is a misnomer for this new construction and does not fully describe its range of uses. I have no suggestions for a better name though...
I've never heard this construction in speech, but maybe I don't hang out with enough nerdy internet types.
See also another relatively recent grammatical innovation in English, the evolution of "slash" into a conjunction: http://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2013/04/24/slash-not... (Someone elsewhere in the thread said the "because" construction was unusual because prepositions evolve more slowly than words of other parts of speech in English; this is true, but conjunctions typically move slowest of all. Such times we…
The privacy issues are obvious, but imagine being able to trace the spread of new language construction as it propagates through a population.
That 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).
I want to say exactly what I mean to say, neither more nor less.
All of the examples are just social media wanking, as far as I can tell, so probably not indicative of any actual shift in how people are using English to tell a story. "Skipping lunch because sleep." OK. Who the fuck cares?
Ultimately, the human brain can error-correct over gross misuse of language; plenty of people speak without using articles, mess up "his" and "her" and "he" or "she", spell the world "you" as "u", choose the wrong word when their are homonyms, or wr173 411 7h31r s3n73n(3s l1|<3 7h15. That doesn't mean it's a good idea to invoke the error correction machinery when the message isn't actually corrupted; it would be pretty fatiguing to read Neal Stephenson in l337 speak. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. Because humans.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is close to being complimentary, but it comes across as more of a compliment to Joss Whedon than the subject. At best, it's a neutral expression of fandom. At worst, it's an admission of fanboy (or fangirl) proclivities. Some sort of context is needed to clarify which one.
I like this Because reasons
* If the cutter asked without giving a reason, they succeeded 60% of the time.
* If the cutter gave a legitimate reason like "I'm late for class", they succeeded 90% of the time.
* If the cutter gave a lame excuse like "I need to make copies", they still succeeded 90% of the time!
So "because reasons" is not necessarily any worse an excuse than any other.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffal...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_linguistic_example_sen...
Because Wikipedia.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure that understanding this is that predicated on cultural familiarity. I'd argue the majority of its meaning comes from the fact that it "breaks the rules in order to be overly brief." The syntax being intentionally wrong, bad, and clumsy coincides with the fact that it's often used to describe absurd things and situations. Clumsy syntax = slightly belligerent rhetoric? I could be wrong, my main idea of a i…
I don't think it's belligerent or simply compressed. AFAICT, it warns the listener that a lot is being left out. It is, in fact, the independent phrase version, using a single noun as the independent phrase. This tells the listener to deduce the rest of the phrase. The verb and object are generally omitted for reasons other than brevity. "I added bacon to my ice cream because bacon" [is the most awesome thing ever] (…
Most popular memes have cross-cultural appeal, and we each add to them.
What'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.
That 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).
Because easy, natural, optional, and precise ambiguity is one of the best features a language meant for people can have. I want to say exactly what I mean to say, neither more nor less.
I'm not yet convinced that this is something one can use and not get laughed at for quite yet. It's fine for informal communications because your readers are probably not too literate, but I fear that this might still confuse an older generation used to more formal grammatical constructions. All of the examples are just social media wanking, as far as I can tell, so probably not indicative of any actual shift in how…
They didn't start out as formal constructions, just pick up any lament about the decline of language from, say, the 19th century.