Language Module

An actual quote from a blog about language:

The fact that “one of the only” is a common phrase, found everywhere, does not make it acceptable English.

So what, one wonders, would make anything “acceptable English” for these people? Is there any mechanism for making something “acceptable English” OTHER than the fact that it “is a common phrase, found everywhere?”

Alright, granted, if you split the bits apart, then it doesn’t make semantic sense for “one of” to be used with “only,” since “only” is only semantically compatible with single units, and “one of” implies plurality. I get it. But neither does “kick the bucket” have anything obvious to do with death, and yet I’m in the habit of parsing it that way rather than in its potential literal meaning. I could rattle off hundreds of similar examples, but why bother? Anyone with even a passing knowledge of Linguistics is aware of chunking, aware of idioms, and bloody well aware that native speaker intuitions are the measure of grammaticality in any language, not dusty semantics books about “the way things ought to be.”

Now, I’m not as dedicated an anti-prescriptivist as most linguists. I can see the case for lamenting a particular form if it destroys or blurs distinctions previously present in the language. One of my personal pet peeves on this score is the modern habit of using “utilize” as though it meant “use + I’m intelligent,” which it doesn’t, or didn’t used to. And I can see the case for lamenting use of a particular form if it is in some way deceptive, designed to cause false associations. Like calling socialists “liberals” when they stand for the opposite of relaxing controls on an economy. But in each of these cases the reason I am sympathetic to presciptivists is because there is something to be gained in the space of semantic coverage by listening to them.

I simply can’t see what is to be gained by picking nits about “one of the only.” It’s a chunk. An idiom. We know what it means without having to open the hood and tinker with the bits. There is no semantic distinction that’s being blurred, and the standard-use meaning of “only” is not under any threat. Indeed, it is ironically partily the contrast with “one of the only” that sees to this. If I say “I’m the only one who passed,” then it’s clear to you to that no one else but me passed the test in some part because I didn’t say (but potentially could have said) “I’m one of the only ones who passed.”

One could argue, if one were excessively silly, that “one of the only ones” imposes a cognitive burden because of a garden path effect whereby the listener must go back and reparse. (And I’m equally sure there’s a researcher with access to an fMRI gadget and too much government money willing to take colored pictures in red and blue of your brain and pronounce you CORRECT.) But this burden can’t be terribly large. Indeed, I’ve never been in the presence of any ambiguity caused by “one of the only.” It’s more the kind of thing that Gallagher would pick at for a cheap laugh. (You know, Mr. “we park on a driveway and drive on a parkway! It’s messed up!” Yuk yuk.)

So this is unintentional self-parody of the first order. Awesome.