Hans provides an excellent argument against deriving usage rules
from corpora ;-). Rather than a long-winded discussion of grammar,
I'll just point out that 'less' would not be a meaningful substitution
for 'lesser' in any of the cases cited:
> "lesser extent" (402), "lesser degree" (109), "lesser of" (31),
> "lesser mortals" (29), "lesser spotted (eagle/woodpecker etc.)" (25).
"Lesser used languages" strikes me as a typical PC construction,
prompted by the same motivation as 'less-abled,' 'less well-abled'
and so on. My guess is that a less-well-educated writer (see, it's
infectious!) first derived it from the definitely un-PC 'lesser languages.'
I'm all for the sentiment, but as far as this particular phrase goes,
count me in as another cringing native speaker.
Doug Cooper
----- Original Message -----
From: "Hans Lindquist" <hans.lindquist@hum.vxu.se>
> I don't know if native speakers cringe, but this is the established
technical term for this area of study, as can be seen on Google.
>
> Quirk et al 1985 § 7.83c say: "Lesser is sometimes used in comparison to a
lower degree: lesser-known, in the same way as less well-known."
>
> Checking out 2-grams with a frequency of 3 or higher in the BNC through
Bill Fletchers PIE database, one finds "lesser developed" (38 instances) and
"lesser known" (36) plus about 90 other 2-grams with lesser + noun or other
word classes. The most common of those are "lesser extent"
> (402), "lesser degree" (109), "lesser of" (31), "lesser mortals" (29),
"lesser spotted (eagle/woodpecker etc.)" (25).
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Feb 10 2005 - 19:09:15 MET