Tag: relative adverbs

May 8, 2013

The Reason Why This Is Correct

There’s a long-running debate over whether the construction reason why is acceptable. Critics generally argue that why essentially means reason, so saying reason why is like saying reason twice. Saying something twice is redundant, and redundancy is bad; ergo, reason why is bad. This is really a rather bizarre argument. Reason is a noun; why […]

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Grammar, Usage 31 Replies to “The Reason Why This Is Correct”
December 24, 2012

Relative Pronoun Redux

A couple of weeks ago, Geoff Pullum wrote on Lingua Franca about the that/which rule, which he calls “a rule which will live in infamy”. (For my own previous posts on the subject, see here, here, and here.) He runs through the whole gamut of objections to the rule—that the rule is an invention, that […]

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Descriptivism, Grammar, Prescriptivism, Usage 16 Replies to “Relative Pronoun Redux”
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