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English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet

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Re: English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet

#141

Post by ithkuil »

We are educated to speak well our language (english, german, french, ....) and most western languages require the speaker to be fully specific. The extent of this varies from language to language, for example, in italian it's grammatical and accepted to say "chi sono?" [who am?] while in english it's not, despite the fact that the "am" means only first person singular. Similar rules are governing the use of articles.

However, there are many languages in the world, especially in east Asia, which take this even further and it's perfectly fine for you to omit large parts of discourse. And it's not only because they are implied, but because the lack of specification means something.

IANAL but I think here we are witnessing a similar a similar development. Probably these things happen often in any language, but education tends to punish "bad language" usage whenever it doesn't fit some established grammatical rules. Split infinitives are another example of that.

Re: English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet

#142

Post by jheriko »

i'm always torn about this sort of thing. its clearly a case of adopting common and (previously?) incorrect usage because it has become popular - this is characteristic of many differences between 'us' and 'uk' english.

i'm partly torn because it seems fruitless in this particular case. losing the of is surely an optimisation, but i struggle to see the difference in intent. despite the examples by others in comments and such they all work equally well by using the 'correct' grammar including 'of'.

if this does take off i'm sure it will be recommended against heavily in style guides. i recently opened up a copy of that 'famous' ap style book - the defacto style guide for the us press - and was shocked to see how much of the content about grammar and punctuation is stuff that my generation of brits were taught as 'the rules' from quite an early age. again, i'm not really sure if its good or bad...

on the one hand its not hard to just learn the rules and use them... on the other its more convenient to be lazy. the advantage of the latter is ease of use, but the advantage of the former is consistency and clarity. since we write and speak for other people i am inclined to lean towards the former... but when mistakes are common enough that argument is void and i'm inclined to think the other way.

its certainly an interesting area to say the least... i just hope it never gets so far that 'there' is accepted as an alternate spelling for 'their' or 'they're'. :)

Re: English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet

#144

Post by code_duck »

Semaphor wrote: post #56
code_duck wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is, in the beginning: > It can be followed either by a finite clause (I'm reading this because [I saw it on the web]) or by a prepositional phrase (I'm reading this because [of the web]). Seems to me that you are correct, this 'new usage' is merely the latter usage without 'of'.

The difference is that it changes the meaning.

How exactly does it change the meaning? Either way it simply ascribes a cause.

Re: English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet

#145

Post by epochwolf »

rurounijones wrote: post #94

I have always seen "Because noun" as being a dismissive "Don't think to hard about it; that is just the way it is" reason. Or for a situation where there is no rational explanation. e.g. A: "Why do some people have such a fetich for eating tiger penis" B: "Because china" Am I alone in this?

That's one use of it. Roughly equivalent to the "Aliens" guy meme.

The other meaning is "I don't need to explain why, because it should be obvious". Example: Bacon milkshake, because bacon.

Re: English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet

#146

Post by epochwolf »

Mindless2112 wrote: post #29

On one hand, this doesn't bother me much because it's mostly just a mutation of "because of" which I already avoid using. You can usually rework "because of " into "because " and produce a sentence that, in my experience, better expresses what the speaker actually intends. On the other hand, "because " is extremely inexact: > English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet What about the Internet caused English to ga…

It has a different meaning than because of though. Two examples:

Bacon milkshake because bacon.

Bacon milkshake because of bacon.

The second one doesn't carry the flippant implication of the unquestionable awesomeness of bacon. You don't get to argue the point with the first one. The second one might be up to debate. There's far more to communication that just facts. There's emotional content that gets captured as well.

Re: English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet

#148

Post by SkyMarshal »

vorg wrote: post #137
alex_c wrote: post #10

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…

> This seems to be a rare case where removing words adds information Words aren't being removed, but the word because is being added to a very old speech pattern. "The talks failed because politics" is an expansion of "The talks failed: politics", with a pause between failed and politics , and politics spoken like a new one-word sentence, usually at a slightly different pitch level than The talks failed . It's meanin…

It could also be interpreted as a short form of: "The talks failed because politics happened". Now we're just dropping the obvious verb at the end, because obvious is obvious.

Re: English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet

#149

Post by BackerHopez »

Kids are too cool for grammar, that's how this came about. Adults want to be cool too, so they are copying them.

I find it hilarious how many man hours are wasted by people leaving comments and comments and comments on the Internet, like it matters.

I like to leave comments sometimes, but some people do it like they are getting paid.

Re: English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet

#150

Post by BackerHopez »

lmkg wrote: post #35
alex_c wrote: post #10

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…

I think "idiom" is an apt description. It's a compact phrase that conveys at least two layers of meaning. Most importantly, one of those meanings cannot simply be parsed from the direct syntax & vocabulary that make up the phrase, but relies on the cultural familiarity with the phrase and its common usage. I do wonder, though, how long this secondary meaning will last. Right now the dismissive connotation comes about…

Nothing is conveyed except for the fact that the person leaving the comment is an idiot. Or they are slaves to fashion and are copying the kids.
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