Euphonious dichotomies…
…are most often false ones. Stephen Pinker lashes out a little bit at an article in the NYT. That said, he's subtly good on the tacit conventions that underpin language usage and how and why we treat them as rules. Well worth a read.
Why the Rules of Language Are Both Arbitrary and Essential
Nature or nurture. Love it or leave it. If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit. If you didn’t already know that euphonious dichotomies are usually phony dichotomies, you need only check out the latest rou…
I was with him all the way… and then the analogy about driving on the right. That’s not an illustration of “arbitrary”, rather “incorrect”.