Surprises in data
What’s wrong with this sentence? (source)
The people we meet on the other star system are humans who were collected from Earth a hundred thousand years ago, and hence are virtually identical with us.
Many people would correct ‘identical with us’ to ‘identical to us’. Some people would argue that ‘identical with’ is not merely unconventional, but wrong for good reasons.
From Language Log, this is an example of linguistic change in process
Until relatively recently, “identical with” was overwhelmingly the standard way to write. Now it isn’t. That’s not surprising. What’s surprising is that we mostly don’t notice the change, and often don’t notice how arbitrary these standards are.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »
Yes, indeed, language standards are arbitrary and ever changing, albeit fairly gradually in most instances.
Unlike standards in most other fields, say, sports (3 pt goal?), ethics, morality, law, and so on. Only with respect to language is it regarded as unfair to expect to know and live up to them.
11 years ago