Change as it happens

I remember all too well a conversation I had with someone my senior by 10 years over a grammatical issue.  Her training was through an English degree.  Mine was from linguistics.  The topic was over the phrase than me,  as in the sentence, He had a bigger ice cream cone than me.

Her position was that the phrase was not grammatically correct.  That's because the phrase is an elliptical clause.  The word than is a coordinating conjunction followed by the subject of a verb, but the verb is implied.  In the sentence above, the elliptical clause is than I (had).  So, the sentence should have been spoken as He had a bigger ice cream cone than I.

My position was that the phrase was grammatically correct.  That's because the phrase contains two words and there is no ellipsis.  The word than is a preposition, so it is followed by the object case pronoun me.  Thus, the sentence in paragraph one is correct, He had a bigger ice cream cone than me.

The conversation happened about 15 years ago.  At the time, the woman I was engaged in conversation with responded to my position, probably sarcastically, maybe graciously, "Well, others are not as  malleable as you."  That's not true any more.  Dictionary.com presents the argument in a usage note even though it retains the notion of the traditional elliptical clause as the explanation for its occurrence in the officially listed definition.

The general rule is that the language has changed from a rule if a threshold of 75% has been reached for a use different from the traditional rule.  I can't even remember the last time I heard than I other than from an English teacher.  That means the threshold rule should apply.  I'm thinking the usage percentage of than me is more on the order of 95% acceptance as grammatically correct by American English speakers.

Dictionary.com should have already switched from presenting the argument in a usage note to putting the traditional explanation in a derivational note and including the current use in the definition.

Language is slow to change, generally, but once it has changed the only thing slower to change is the number of die-hards who won't change.  And, although this blog is about language change, there is a principle here that applies across disciplinary lines from language behavior to human behavior.  We're expected to change as we grow older.  We grow in knowledge, so our experience informs our behavior.  I find myself having little tolerance for adults over the age of 35 who have adopted wholesale what they were taught as children.  Not only are rules to bring you (like a tutor) to a fuller understanding of life's principles, the world changes so that the rules we learned don't apply so much to a different world.

Long live those who pay attention to change as it happens and to change as experience informs them.