Yes, I suppose that is what I'm arguing really, although I leapt over that to say that (therefore) there's not a significant distinction between them as modifiers.
How do you decide whether a change is "going back" or not? Clearly Tesco's are being asked to go back, because the "fewer" usage is rarer now than it used to be, and advocates want to reverse that tide. But some people (Quakers etc) still use "thou": in theory, that could be reversed as well if enough people wanted to. At what point of widespreadness or of time passing do you accept that a "misuse" is now accepted and there's no longer any point resisting it?
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-09-05 01:37 pm (UTC)How do you decide whether a change is "going back" or not? Clearly Tesco's are being asked to go back, because the "fewer" usage is rarer now than it used to be, and advocates want to reverse that tide. But some people (Quakers etc) still use "thou": in theory, that could be reversed as well if enough people wanted to. At what point of widespreadness or of time passing do you accept that a "misuse" is now accepted and there's no longer any point resisting it?