And Rosta said:
> The difference, though, is that students will actually encounter
> pied=piping when they encounter high register language, but they won't
> encounter -st preps.
Well, now wait a minute.
This thread started with you saying, "How is it that I frequently
encounter the words (or allostems) WHILST and AMONGST in student essays,
but nowhere else?"
I thought you were just being hyperbolous. If you *really* don't encounter
-st particles *anywhere* but in student essays, then maybe you just need
to get out more often. ;)
That ubiquitous bane of statistical linguistics, google.com, provides us
with the following possibly irrelevant casuistry:
AMID 11.0 mhits (71%)
AMIDST 4.51 mhits (29%)
---------------------
15.51 mhits
AMONG 238 mhits (93%)
AMONGST 17.8 mhits (7%)
---------------------
255.8 mhits
WHILE 410 mhits (97%)
WHILST 14.3 mhits (3%)
---------------------
424.3 mhits
So now you would have a prima facie need to explain why AMONGST is twice
as frequent a choice against AMONG than WHILST is against WHILE, and why
AMIDST represents such an enormously greater proportion with respect to
AMID than either of the other two.
-- Mark
Mark P. Line
Polymathix
San Antonio, TX
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