Making Light:  Mail ::: April 16, 2004, 01:37 AM

Xopher:

  Silly, they MEAN different things, but that doesn't mean one
  is WRONG.

I keep telling myself that, but my INTJJJJJ soul says it couldn't
possibly be.

  And the teacher need not be IN the room to say bring; s/he could be
  anticipating being there when the child arrives.  What matters is
  the deictic center of the action.

Well, faux my pas.  I gotta think on that, but it might have some
bearing on why I was totally convinced the question hinged on whether
the teacher was going to be there to receive the book in room 22.  And
I wrote all that argumentation about losing my integrity over where
the teacher was going to be, and then rewrote it about where the
teacher said it.  The gift of infallibility is more trouble than it's
worth.  Still, thanks for pointing me to the deictic consideration.

Meanwhile, I imagined, "The teacher told Chrissy to bring the book
to room 22."

Chrissy replied, "What the hell game you playing, Teach?  You aren't
in room 22, you aren't going to be in room 22, you're never going
to go near room 22, and if room 22 ever swam into your deictic
center, you'd puke.  So are you being dialectic, or informal, or
lapsilingual, or erroneous, or are you just trying to mess with my
poor prescriptivist mind?"

None of the above--the teacher was supplementing her meager income
by spreading spyware on commission.  Don't cry for me, havoc, just
release the gods of grammer.