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This list comprises widespread modern beliefs about English language usage that are documented by a reliable source to be myths or misconceptions. With no authoritative language academy, guidance on English language usage can come from many sources. This can create problems as described by Reginald Close: Teachers and textbook writers often invent rules which their students and readers repeat and perpetuate. These rules are usually statements about English usage which the authors imagine to be, ''as a rule'', true. But statements of this kind are extremely difficult to formulate both simply and accurately. They are rarely altogether true; often only partially true; sometimes contradicted by usage itself. Sometimes the contrary to them is also true.〔Close 1964. n.p. (Front matter.) In a footnote to this text, Close also points to ''English as a Foreign Language'' by R. A. Close (George Allen and Unwin, London, 1962).〕 Perceived usage and grammar violations elicit visceral reactions in many people. For example, respondents to a 1986 BBC poll were asked to submit "the three points of grammatical usage they most disliked". Participants stated that their noted points " 'made their blood boil', 'gave a pain to their ear', 'made them shudder', and 'appalled' them".〔Jenny Cheshire, "Myth 14: Double Negatives are Illogical" in Bauer and Trudgill 1998. pp. 113–114.〕 But not all commonly held usage violations are errors; many are only perceived as such.〔Close 1964. n.p. (Front matter.)〕 ==Sources== Though there are a variety of reasons misconceptions about correct language usage can arise, there are a few especially common ones with English. Perhaps the most significant source of these misconceptions has to do the pseudo-scholarship of the early modern period. During the late Renaissance and early modern periods the vernacular languages of Western Europe gradually replaced Latin as a literary language in many contexts. As part of this process scholars in Europe borrowed a great deal of Latin vocabulary into their languages. England's history was even more complex in that, because of the Norman conquest, English borrowed heavily from both Norman French and Latin. The tendency among language scholars in England was to use Latin and French concepts of grammar and language as the basis for defining and prescribing English. Because French had for so long been seen as the language of the nobility, there was a tendency to see cases where English-language usage differed from French (and/or Latin) as ignorance on the part of English speakers. For example, in Germanic languages like English many words that can be used as prepositions (e.g. "Are you going ''with'' me?") can also be used as special verb modifiers (e.g. "Whom are you going ''with''?"). French (like Latin for the most part) does not have these particle words, so using a preposition in any context except as a preposition was seen as wrong (e.g. ending a sentence with a ''preposition''). Similarly, because in French and Latin infinitives are a single word (as opposed to two in English), placing an adverb in the middle of an infinitive phrase was seen as incorrect. Many other misconceptions arise from over-application of advice that is beneficial in some cases but not all. For example, overuse of passive voice in writing can cause a passage to sound weak and, in some cases, less clear. But it does not follow, and is not true, that the passive voice is wrong or inferior in all cases. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Common English usage misconceptions」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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