Author Archive
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Posted by John Williams on October 22, 2012
According to Wikipedia, publically is an example of morphemic pleonasm. A pleonasm is normally understood as an utterance that contains one or more redundant elements that do not contribute to the meaning. (There, I just did one!) Common examples are true fact, Great Britain, or choose deliberately. A morpheme is part of a word that [...]
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Posted by John Williams on October 15, 2012
Recently, while proofreading an internal document, I was taken to task by a colleague for correcting the spelling of ‘publically’ to ‘publicly’: Speaking radicly for the moment, but probably both logicly and statisticly soundly (though tragicly for traditionalists, I know), I think publically is a better spelling. In a sense, we each had a point. [...]
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Posted by John Williams on July 30, 2012
We have seen in previous posts (in part 1 and part 2) that the real world tends to be defined and conceived in opposition to other concepts – such as academic life, childhood, or the online world. Here are a couple of more general examples from the ukWaC corpus, in which the real world is [...]
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Posted by John Williams on July 09, 2012
Last week we saw how, according to the ukWaC corpus, UK universities appear to be preoccupied with the ‘real world’ and the challenge of preparing their students to enter it. This contrast with the world of academia is one of the oppositions through which the ‘real world’ acquires definition. There is apparently a gap between [...]
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Posted by John Williams on June 25, 2012
John Williams, our new guest blogger, worked as a lexicographer for COBUILD and later for Macmillan. He is currently a lecturer in English Language and Linguistics at the University of Portsmouth and is particularly interested in lexicography and language study as cultural and social practices. _____________ Last month I participated in a conference at the [...]
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