For My Linguistsics Degree, I Did A Project On Why I'm Seeing More People Saying "on Accident" Instead

For my linguistsics degree, I did a project on why I'm seeing more people saying "on accident" instead of "by accident." I looked at almost a million pieces of writing pulled from news sites, blogs, academic articles and television transcripts. I found almost three hundred cases of "on accident" being used. It was a surprisingly even spread across sources. Even more interesting, I organized the hits by date and tracked an upward swing in use as time goes on. This means that the use of "on accident" is increasing over time, and may eventually supplant and drive out the classic usage of "by accident." I like to call this prepositional shift.

Now, looking at my data and looking at the age ranges of the writers or speakers, the majority of them were under the age of thirty. So I interviewed a panel of people, choosing twenty with a spread of about half above thirty, and half below. Those older than thirty years of age felt "strongly" or "very strongly" that "on accident" was wrong in all cases, and that "by accident" was the only correct phrase. However, those younger than thirty were much less rigorous, with more than half feeling "ambivalent" or "less strongly" about which was correct. This demonstrates a generational link in preposition usage.

When presented with options for the definitions of "by" and "on," we also get some interesting data. For by, there are two main definitions according to the Oxford English Dictionary: 1. Identifying the agent performing an action. Or 2. Indicating the means of achieving something. Whereas "on" has many more definitions, the pertinent ones being 1. To indicate the manner of doing something or 2. To indicate active involvement in a condition or status. By the above definitions, either "by accident" or "on accident" is a correct usage of the term. However, native speakers of English could not successfully define either preposition, instead just choosing one, the other, or both as "sounding correct."

The only evidence for a rule-based shift that I could find was a correlation with the paired phrase for the opposite condition "on purpose." While the younger interviewees were ambivalent about the correctness of "on accident," they uniformly rejected the correctness of the suggested phrase "by purpose." So the shift can only be in one direction according the the native ear, towards the preposition "on."

Whether this means that the particular usage of "by" is becoming archaic or the definition of "on" is expanding is a possible subject of further study using a wider range of phrases. But I found the wider acceptance of "on accident" versus "by accident" to be a fascinating look at how prepositions can shift meaning and usage over time.

So now I'm curious, five years from my initial study (and itching to try the Tumblr poll feature):

math help bc i can’t watch ya’ll suffer anymore

I’m in my fourth year of engineering school and I didn’t get here without lots of outside help bc assigned math textbooks are lame and confusing and professors/teachers are more worried about feeling superior to bunch of groggy teenagers than actually teaching.

I have personally used all of these websites without receiving any security warnings from Bitdefender TrafficLight or AdGuard AdBlocker. They are all either completely free or have a free version that isn’t shit.

Wolfram Demonstrations (animated graphics)

Khan Academy (arithmetic through differential equations)

She Loves Math (arithmetic through differential equations)

math24 (calculus & differential equations)

Paul’s Online Math Notes (algebra through differential equations)

MIT OpenCourseWare (calculus through graduate-level mathmatics)

OpenStax Math (precalculus, trigonometry, & calculus)

Wolfram Alpha Examples

Desmos (online calculators)

GeoGebra (online calculators)

SparkNotes Math Study Guides (pre-algebra through calculus)

eMathHelp (calculators, but more specific)

Software for your TI calculator

ticalc (programs for your TI calculator)

Wikibooks Math Department (all the math)

Andy’s Cheat Sheets (calculus)

Cheatography (find free cheat sheets)

Open Access Math Textbooks

Engineer4Free (Calc, DiffyQ, & Linear Algebra tutorials)

Flammable Maths on YouTube (general high school/college level problems and derivations)

3Blue1Brown on Youtube (very, very good for understanding spacial concepts in calculus and beyond)

Vihart on Youtube (explaining math with doodles)

Bonus: Stay hydrated, take vitamin c, study next to a window during the day if possible, and remember not to let people base your worth on your aptitude for math.

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math

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goldieslearning

2 years ago

Seeing foreigners learn my language just overwhelms me with joy, they're studying my language! The one I use to speak! They're translating my culture! Beautiful!

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goldieslearning

2 years ago

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goldieslearning

2 years ago

“If man could be crossed with a cat, it would improve man but deteriorate the cat.”

- mark twain on catboys

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goldieslearning

2 years ago

physicsJ: Voyager 1 approaching Jupiter in 1979, recorded over 25 days. The planet rotates in under 10 hours, so they observed 60 rotations! To make this video they picked only frames which had the Great Red Spot in the same position, allowing us to see Jupiter’s screaming storms and winds.

l NASA Voyager 1 l 1979 l via physicsJ

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goldieslearning

3 years ago

when i pass people on the duolingo leaderboards i hope they know i'm doing it with gleeful malice in my heart. i'm not doing it on accident and i'm not thinking haha yay i'm thinking everybody get fucked this is call of duty to me

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mood

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goldieslearning

3 years ago

It’s okay to be a beginner at the things you are interested in. There is no reason to feel intimidated by people more advanced than you are, because they too were in your place at one point. Keep learning and growing and expanding in whatever it is that you love and let nothing and no one stop you. You don’t have to be at the same stage as someone else. You can just be at your stage and that one is okay too.

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mood

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goldieslearning

3 years ago

So, I just took the LSAT and got a 171. I had less than 3 months to study because I had to undergo surgery, so I had to prepare concise notes which I used to review questions I was getting consistently wrong.

I thought I'd share my notes for free in the hopes that it helps others:

All My Notes for Free

Homepage - All My Notes for Free

Need some help with studying for the LSAT? Click here for free notes that you can use for revision purposes.

I am not done uploading everything- I'm currently working on my application. But I'm uploading on a regular basis. And do not hesitate to reach out if you have any questions.

And good luck with your studies!!

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lsat

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goldieslearning

3 years ago