‘On Language’ 3/1: Is e-English ‘evolving grammar’?
The vocabulary of e-English doesn’t bust grammar mold
‘On Language‘
Chicago Tribune
March 1, 2006
By Nathan Bierma
temp.link/perm.preview
Computer-speak is not just a dialect or vocabulary—it has grammatical principles all its own. That’s the claim in the current issue of English Today made by Angela P. Cheater, who teaches sociology and English at Macao Polytechnic Institute on the peninsula of Macao, a special administrative region of China.
“When teaching the course `English for Information Technology,’” Cheater writes, “I have been asked grammatical questions about e-applications to which there are, at best, only speculative answers.” So Cheater started looking into the grammar of what she calls “e-English,” especially the ways words change their part of speech in technological language.
But Cheater’s suggestion that the grammar of e-English is new or different doesn’t hold up. In fact, for each of her categories of the ways words are formed in e-English, I found an example from regular English.
- Making nouns out of prepositions: Cheater says she had never heard a preposition used to make a noun until she came across the words “aboutness” and “non-aboutness,” which refer to the relevance of a document to a search query.
This is unusual but not restricted to e-English. As Cheater notes, the word “aboutness” originated in philosophy. Meanwhile, a report at the website of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) refers to “a customary economy with complete ‘belowness’ and a command economy with complete ‘aboveness.’”
...
Nathan,
I enjoy reading this blog. I have been using the rss feed to follow it. About a month or more ago a change was made so that the rss feed does not contain any content. Instead, “{summary}” appears as the text for each entry. I would have sent an email but did not see any contact information here.
Posted by CJ Costello on 03/08 at 01:14 PMOh dear, sorry about that! Let me alert the tech team here at Calvin. Thanks! N
Posted by Nathan on 03/09 at 01:19 PM
Next entry: dewater
Previous entry: Greek text of Aristophanes' Lysistrata added to Project Gutenberg