On Nov 21, 2010, at 4:25 PM, Craig Hancock wrote:
> I agree that grammar stops being a science when it becomes narrowly prescriptive.

You have this completely turned around.  Science is "prescriptive."  

Those who try to put prescriptive rules and laws on language are acting as though grammar is a science when it clearly is not.  Why do we belittle them?  Because they don't get it; grammar is not science.  Your insistence that grammar is science, means you believe grammar ought to be completely prescriptive.  If a scientific law only most of the time follows the law, it is pseudoscience.  Science demands complete obedience.

We can rail all we want about how unfair it is that the cute fawn with the damaged foot will be the wolf's target, but the world works without our emotions.  Survival of the fittest doesn't care about anything but their ability to survive.
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