Spellings are made by people. Dictionaries - eventually - reflect popular choices.

Vocabulary is a matter of word-building as well as word-using.

Academics don't normally manage to alter people's way of thinking through their strength of argument.

Texting has added a new dimension to language use, but its long-term impact is negligible. It is not a disaster.

Several of us linguists at that time would record our own kids, just to get some data. There was some literature on it then, but no day-by-day, blow-by-blow examples. I recorded all my children over the years in some shape or form. It's what linguists do. You don't talk to a linguist without having what you say taken down and used in evidence against you at some point in time.

Ever since the arrival of printing - thought to be the invention of the devil because it would put false opinions into people's minds - people have been arguing that new technology would have disastrous consequences for language.

Grammar is what gives sense to language .... sentences make words yield up their meaning. Sentences actively create sense in language. And the business of the study of sentences is grammar.