>Sorry to get pedantic...
>
>Ben
>
>  
>
Don't apologise, it's good to be a pedant.  Here's my contribution....

The root of the word is VIR which is latin for man (in the sense of 
male, not human in general which is HOMO). Derived from that word is 
VIRTUS which refers to the defining attributes of a man.  By 
transference the word VIRTUS came to be used in Latin for any good or 
beneficial attribute of any animal and then any thing.  The word became 
VIRTU (later spelled differently) in English and a Latin-like derivative 
VIRTUALIS was coined, later anglicized to VIRTUAL.  The -AL suffix means 
'relating to' and so in the most general use VIRTUAL means 'related to 
good attributes', distinct from VIRTUOUS which means 'possessing good 
attributes'.

Latin based words that are imported to English via intellectuals tend to 
be applied within a specific field of thought and therefore narrow in 
meaning and so VIRTUAL came to mean 'having the attribute(s) of the 
thing, without actually being the thing'.  Hence 'virtual image' meaning 
the image of a physical object appearing in empty space, created by 
optics. 

Personally I think subsequent variant uses of the word have devalued it 
because its use has become ambiguous.  Probably the earliest devaluation 
is the use that means 'almost' e.g "he is a virtual recluse".  Here it 
means 'having almost all the attributes of the thing'.  The important 
distinction between attributes and existence has been lost.  Wrongly 
applied to a VLE this has a mildly negative connotation - the web site 
is almost as good as a learning environment but not quite.

At it's most extreme is the definition that means "mediated by 
electronic communication systems".  This no longer refers to the 
qualities or physical existence of the thing itself but refers now to 
the means by which a person accesses the thing.  This is an especially 
pointless use of the word because there is plenty of vocabulary which is 
already adequate for the job and it is a faddish use which I think will 
disappear.  (English dictionaries record current usage whether is is 
good or bad so just because you find this in a dictionary doesn't make 
it good English, just de facto English.)

Environment derives from the French verb virer, to turn.  Environ is a 
verb that means to surround and so environment means the surrounding 
area.  Environment was originally used to describe physical surroundings 
but by metaphorical extension can now also be used to describe a set of 
circumstances that people find themselves in and in the IT world a set 
of related services that are provided to an individual or group via 
software.  (Metaphorical extension is the process whereby new abstract 
nouns are created from concrete nouns via metaphor.) It is important to 
note that there are a number of diverse uses of the abstract noun which 
can become confused if used out of context.

I would suggest that the web sites that are the subject of this 
discussion group not only have the attributes of environments but 
actually do exist in the full meaning of the abstract noun.  We may want 
to qualify the word 'environment' to indicate that we are not talking 
about a) the physical surroundings of the learner or b) the 
circumstances of the learner such as parental support, funding, 
distractions at home etc.  Personally I would prefer to qualify with 
'on-line', 'Internet', 'electronic', 'computer' etc since these are 
unambiguous, non-faddish and widely understood. 

It is not a good idea in my opinion to use virtual to indicate that the 
following noun is an abstract noun derived from a concrete noun by 
metaphorical extension.

Jon Pedant

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