Proficiency alongside "poverty".

[metal56]

Yes, yes, all those are in the conversational register, aren't they? So, what do they "prove"?

Here are the results from a search of Time magazine from 1920s to the 2000s:

Searched: place where

1920s 63
1930s 89
1940s 141
1950s 176
1960s 177
1970s 125
1980s 121
1990s 196
2000s 152

I guess, your personal conclusion on that result would be that writers have become less sophisticated over the decades, right? And, where does that result leave your style guides?

Try a similar search for "time when".

http://corpus.byu.edu/time/

Do you agree with is?

No tautology.

This is the place where I live.
This is the home where I live.

Tautology.

This is my home where I live.

[fluffyhamster]

Yes, iff most of the adult native speaking population have a linguistic aptitude (if not formal linguists), know what relative adverbs are, have done a bit (if not thorough) research in that area, and know what they are saying.

Not really? To me, an expert native user is someone who can give you the information below, when you ask questions about why they use relative adverbs in some situations but not in others:

My questions to an adult native speaker and the replies:


M56: Which would you commonly use and why?

1.the day on which we met was...
2. the day when we met was...
3. the day we met was...
4. the place at which we met was...
5. the place where we met was...
6. the place we met was...

Native speaker: 3 and 5

M56: Interesting. Could you say why you choose not to use the relative adverb "when" in 3 but then you use the relative adverb "where" in 5?

Native speaker: Not really, no. I know it's rather illogical. Those are just the two forms that I am most likely to say in everyday conversation. I might use the other forms in some contexts.

Something to do with 'the day we met' sounding clearly (to me) that I met another person on that day, rather than us both meeting the day.

Whereas 'the place we met' sounds (to me) as though we met a place. Which is odd as that's not something I'd ever say. Perhaps 'day' sounds very abstract and not something you could meet, whereas 'place' is a more solid 'thing/object', and you can meet some of those, so I resist just saying 'the place we met'.

.....................

To me, that is an expert user. I'm betting that if most nonnative speakers were asked the same questions, they'd probably give their reason for certain usage as "because the grammr and style books told me to" or "because sophisticated writers and other experts do it that way".

To me, the native speaker above demonstrates more expertise than any so called sophisticated writer or style guide.

Quite why informants have to be so dogmatic I don't know. Would it kill this 'expert' to admit to 6 being a possibility also - I mean, how can people be so sure as to how they do or don't speak? And the "reasoning" behind it ultimately doesn't hold much water, either.

Dug this out:
http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewtopic.php?t=4910