Regarding:

"...I side with those linguists who think that the measure of what is correct is what is 'well-formed': what is acceptable to the majority of educated speakers..."

If many of the posts on this site are any indication, then all linguists think that the measure of what is correct is what is acceptable to any identifiable group of speakers, no matter how small.

No, let me change that. All linguists think that there is no such thing as "correct".

I agree, Will. The UK notion of group nouns is completely different from the general notion of uncountable / mass nouns.

I'n not saying it's wrong, but I have never seen eg without the dots and I would never write it that way. As for U.S., I think that in many cases you do not see the dots any more.

@JJMB, "Tense" is often used to represent any combination of tense, aspect, and mood. Furthermore, there is a past, present, and future subjunctive. Still, I'll be happy to cede the point, athough this really isn't relevant to the discussion.

Let me restate as follows:

...Nearly every verb in Engish has a subjunctive construction. The verb "to be" just happens to be perhaps the only one whose subjunctive form is irregular...

To tell you the truth, I'm not sure whether you may agree with my points or not. Regarding:

"...And while most English verbs have at least one distinctly subjunctive verb form (the uninflected base form of the verb in the third person singular..."

That is consistent with my very point. "distinctly subjunctive" and "subjunctive" are not the same thing. Most correct uses of the subjunctive are not distinctly different from the corresponding non-subjunctive form. That doesn't mean that the subjunctive doesn't exist. It is the mood that determines its, er, "subjunctivity".

I agree, defective modals complicate things even further, but I'm not sure whether their defectiveness necessarily breaks from the normal subjunctive paradigm. Even if it does in some cases, so what?

Regarding the complexity of the Wikipedia link, here we do disagree. I think the link provides a very simple, yet relatively complete description of the subjunctive. It's also consistent with every English grammar book that I have ever seen.

Let me make yet another suggestion. Maybe "if I was you..." doesn't really represent the death of the subjunctive. It merely represents the death of a particular construction of the subjunctive. If it has become acceptable (and I'm not saying it hast or hasn't), then "was" simply replaces "were" as the subjunctive form. It wouldn't be the first time in history that a distinct subjunctive form became obsolete.

For what it's worth, I still use it, my young children do, and if it goes away, I'll be sad to see it go.

Interesting to note, the verb, to enamor, means to inspire or inflame with love. All the sources I've examined say that it's usually used in the passive form, as mentioned above.

Now, think about just what that means. If Jack is enamored of/with/by Jill, that means that Jill is the one doing the enamoring. Jill enamors Jack. Jill is inspiring Jack's love. If Jill is enamoring Jack, then doesn't it make sense that Jack is being enamored BY Jill?

I think a case can be made for any of the three, of, with, or by, with varying degrees of popularity.

Without getting into a debate as to whether or not "why" is a complete sentence, I would say that "Why the question?", etc., works as a shortened form, specifically because just plain "Why?" stands on its own.

As for "Have you any idea...", this isn't a shortened form at all. It isn't a shortened form of "Do you have any idea..." in English, you may often form a question by adding a preceding "Do", but in many cases, you may simply swap the subject and the verb. "You are..." becomes "Are you...?" "He will..." becomes "Will he...?" "I have..." becomes "Have I...?" This is the normal way we construct sentences, not some informal shortening.

Even if your prose is in the past tense, not everything the narrator says must be cast that way. For example, in:

"God only knows what John was thinking when he decided to rob the bank."

clearly, God's omniscient understanding of John's incomprehensible motives is ongoing in the present of the narrative, even if John's actions are in the past. Actually, even in non-fiction and common speech, "God only knows" is frequently used to describe past events: "What where you thinking??? God only knows!!!"

This doesn't necessarily apply to every common expression or even other examples of this expression. I would look at each on a case-by-case basis.

I must say, Goofy, Warsaw Will makes an interesting point.

The problem with replacing:

"My writing books proves I am an entrepreneur."

with:

*My composition books proves I am an entrepreneur."

is not that you can't replace the gerund with a noun. The problem is that "writing books" is a gerund phrase; i.e., the entire phrase "writing books" is acting as a noun. You would properly replace the "gerund" with a noun by changing the sentence to:

*My composition proves I am an entrepreneur."

which is clearly just fine.

Of course, don't forget that if you truly can't replace a gerund with a noun, it may very well be that it is a participle and not a gerund at all. Simply ending in -ing doesn't make something a gerund.

@Mediator, while JJMBallentine already touched on this, regarding:

"The verb 'to be' is, I think, the only verb in English that retains a subjunctive, and that subjunctive is 'were' not 'was'."

This is absolutely not true. Every verb in Engish has a subjunctive tense. The verb "to be" just happens to be the only one whose subjunctive form is irregular.

@Willy Wonka and Goofy, regarding:

"If I lived in Paris, I would visit the Eiffel Tower."

Of course this is correct. This isn't a prescriptive vs. descriptive issue. Willy, what you fail to recognize is that the subjunctive IS being used here. The prescriptively correct past subjunctive of "lived" is "lived".

What I think we have here is a general misunderstanding of the full breadth of application of the subjunctive. for all verbs, there are present, past, future, negative, etc. forms of the subjunctive, each with their own rules of construction and application. The subjunctive is not only limited to counterfactual assertions, either. For a quick review, check out the English section of this Wikipedia entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjunctive_mood

There seems to be a bit of a misconception here. Simply being a place doesn't make something a proper noun. It must be a specific, preferably unique place to be considered a proper noun. The city, a playground, the bathroom are all places. None are proper nouns. New Jersey, Disneyworld, etc. are specific places and are proper nouns. As for heaven and hell, I would suggest that it depends on the context.

"Will this evening ever end? I must be in hell." - an abstract state - not a proper noun.

"Lucifer reigns in Hell." - a particular place - proper noun