Post AcvJgY3PoxfSItf5Ie by incrediblemelk@aus.social
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 (DIR) Post #AcvJgY3PoxfSItf5Ie by incrediblemelk@aus.social
       2023-12-18T03:13:49Z
       
       0 likes, 1 repeats
       
       I'd love to know if there's any #linguistics research about the colloquially expanded usage of 'where'so it floats free of its material, locative meaning and starts to mean 'regarding which' or even 'when'so rather than a physical space, it denotes a conceptual space, i.e. a situation or scenarioas seen in the 'Friends' episode naming format "The One Where…"it is impossible to google this, but basically in everyday speech I'm noticing people using 'where' as a catchall adverbI do it too, e.g. "I had a good day where I managed to get my work done"As an editor I still strongly feel that you express yourself more clearly and precisely if you allow words to have distinct meanings, or at least distinct contextual appropriateness…"I had a good day when I managed to get my work done"but this has a more refined meaning focusing on time:"the day _on which_ I got work done was a good day"rather than the productivity itself:"getting my work done that day was a good situation"I'm wondering if I need to be less prescriptivist about 'where' and recognise the semantic nuances of its descriptive usageI don't want to pedantically force all usages of 'where' into spatial/locative senses and so crush its range of figurative sensesgod, why can't I just edit stuff rather than breaking my brain obsessing over language like thisAt times like these I feel neurodivergent in a disability sense, like other people's brains can just intuitively propel them through their work while I feel dragged down by my compulsion to understand the history, rationale and mechanisms of every tiny aspect of my work before I can even begin it#grammar #EnglishGrammar #editing #copyediting