"a great number of the troops were killed and wounded"
"The militia hung upon their rear; and many of the regular troops were killed and wounded."
"in which many of the provincials, and more of the regular troops were killed and wounded"
"About two thousand of the British troops were killed ..."
" In this assault about 60 of our troops were killed"
"and great numbers of the American troops were killed or taken ..."

These all come from American books. And they are all from the first half of the nineteenth century! In fact, judging by Ngram, the expression "troops were killed" appears less frequently in twenty-first century books than in early nineteenth century ones. On the other hand, the use of "soldiers were killed" (in those books included at Ngram) increased at about double the rate of "troops were killed" during the 2000s.

This does not cover media use, of course, but it does show that the use of the word "troops" to mean "soldiers", rather than a specific group of soldiers, is nothing new, and while I can see that "collateral damage"really is a euphemism, I can't really see how "troops" would be seen as a euphemism for "soldiers", anymore than "soldiers" is a euphemism for "men".

I wonder if there's any proof Bush asked the US media to use "troops" instead of "soldiers", or whether this is just another of those internet myths. And I also wonder how real this perceived change actually is.

At the NYT, a site search brings up 108 hits for "soldiers were killed in Iraq" as opposed to 56 for "troops were killed in Iraq". At CNN, it's 89 for soldiers, 49 for troops. At Fox News, which might have been expected to be more sympathetic to Bush's alleged request, it's 68 for soldiers as opposed to 36 for troops, and at the New York Post, it's 14 to 10. Hardly overwhelming evidence.

http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=troops+were+killed%2Csoldiers+were+killed&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=17&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Ctroops%20were%20killed%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Csoldiers%20were%20killed%3B%2Cc0

Just to clarify something - not all these verbs are ergative verbs, one test for which is to interpose 'and so' between the transitive version and the intransitive one:

'Little Johnny broke the window, and so the window broke'
'The sun melted the ice, and so the ice melted'
'The government increased taxes, and so taxes increased'

This is obviously not the case with 'translates (as)', 'reads' and 'says' - where something else is happening.

@Jasper - I'm sorry about your name ; I think I also confused you with jayles once - I get a bit muddled with all these Js (That's no excuse, though!).

Incidentally, the whole book is online, illegally I presume, so I won't link to it. I take it you mean Chapter 8 - 'The semantics and grammar of adverbials' - a mere seventy pages or so - I'll try and give it a whirl sometime.

@jayles the unwoven - "Where is your evidence for this? ;=))" - virtually every post. I would suggest that a majority of the few remaining regular posters consider formal grammar 'more correct' than actual spoken Standard English (although I don't include you in this). That is not a criticism, just a statement of the position as I see it. Jasper himself says that that his 'focus is always on the grammar and not so much on spoken language and the idiomaticity of the sentence'. Whereas my focus (and interest in English) is exactly the opposite.

At the risk of being accused of banging on about descriptivism yet again (sorry, Jasper), as far as I'm concerned (and I think as far as many linguists are concerned, including the aforementioned Quirk et al), grammar derives from the language as it is used, not from a canon of old grammar books, many aspects of which, such as their attitudes to preposition stranding and split infinitives, are now largely discredited. I believe that 'grammar' should reflect the language as it is actually used by educated speakers, and I also think we should think more about register and 'appropriateness' than 'correctness' as dictated by the writers of formal grammar.

I may be wrong, but it seems to me that this is currently a minority view on this forum, in contrast to forums such as StackExchange and WordReference, where discussion is based more on usage. Hence my statement.

I confess I do have a thing about 'whom', which is where I think traditional grammar departs most from reality, and I have written a series of posts under the rubric of 'Whom Watch'. My problem with examples like "Whom did you meet last night?", and the far worse "With whom did you eat the pizza?", which comes from a so-called 'grammar infographic' reposted on a couple of ESL sites by teachers who should have known better, is that these are very obviously from contexts where they would be spoken, and unlikely to crop up in formal texts. And in informal spoken language almost nobody would use 'whom' in these contexts (and nowadays it's not so common in books either).

http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Whom+did+you+meet%2CWho+did+you+meet&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2CWhom%20did%20you%20meet%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2CWho%20did%20you%20meet%3B%2Cc0

http://random-idea-english.blogspot.com/2013/12/whom-watch-3-silly-infographic.html

Even back in 1772, in the third edition of 'The Rudiments of English Grammar',polymath Joseph Priestley wrote "As, 'Who is this for?' 'Who should I meet the other day but my old friend' . This form of speaking is so familiar that I question whether grammarians should admit it as an exception to the general rule."

His next bit might be of more interest to Jasper, as it involves the infinitive of 'be' - "Dr Lowth says that grammar requires us to say 'Whom do you think me to be'. But in conversation we always hear 'Who do you think me to be'. "

http://books.google.pl/books?id=mwUUAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA107&img=1&zoom=3&hl=en&sig=ACfU3U2bwCRjaLUXiUIWZZMPm3NT5H3SQA&ci=108%2C850%2C807%2C664&edge=0

@Rdavis202 - 'Cats and dogs' - that surprises me too. It's in lots of EFL course books, but I've always found it a bit artificial, and tell my students we're probably more likely to say something like 'It's bucketing down' (BrE) - although Ngram suggests I'm wrong.

"Obstinancy"is certainly in the OED, at least according to Wiktionary, but is listed as 'rare', and it is not listed in Oxford Online. In fact it is only listed in two of the many online dictionaries searched at 'OneLook'.

Incidentally it is very unlikely Dickens did use it, and especially not in "Oliver Twist" - in the First Edition of 1838, it reads -

"Come; you should know her better than me - wot does it mean ?” “ Obstinacy—woman's obstinacy, I suppose, my dear,” replied the Jew shrugging his shoulders."

http://books.google.pl/books?id=_f5cAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA145&dq=%22obstinacy%22+dickens+oliver+twist&hl=en&sa=X&ei=N8HbU4KHM8SN7QbJhYGgCQ&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22obstinacy%22%20dickens%20oliver%20twist&f=false

Searching 19th century books at Google for "obstinancy" "Dickens" brings up only one result - "and little by little to make common cause on the one subject of Martin Chuzzlewit's obstinancy.". But it's not by Dickens, but by a pair of literary critics, the Littels.

Its use was always infinitesimal compared to that of its n-less cousin and seems to have peaked in the late eighteenth century. So, the word exists,yes, but its use is virtually non-existent.

But, remember this next time you're at pub quiz - skaddoura might be right about buffalo (and also bison). This is from 'The Smooth Guide to Animals and the English Language' - 'A gang, a herd, an obstinancy, a troop of bison' and the same for buffalo (but without 'gang'). This idea is repeated quite a lot round the web, but I can't find any reputable source for this.

"The situation was transformed into something quite different." - this is fine when we know that there was an agent who/which transformed the situation, but situations have a habit of changing under their own steam: here are a few intransitive examples:

"The situation turned nasty"
"The situation improved"
"The situation worsened"
"As the situation darkened on the Northern Plains, Sheridan was pulled away"

Incidentally, Skeeter, I much prefer your first choice of "the sentences should read this way" to "The sentences should run this way". After all, we can say "It says here ..." when nobody is saying anything. And we also say things like "This reads more like an advertisement than a review", so what's wrong with "the sentences should read this way". This is from "All About Grammar", by Rosemary Allen (2007):

"James ran in the house to tell Mum." This should read:

"James ran into the house to tell Mum."

I can't see any problems there. Trust your instinct!

http://random-idea-english.blogspot.com/2011/08/ergative-verbs-what-on-earth-are-they.html

"Now we all know who is the agent that increases taxes" - something not quite right there: "Now we all know who it is that increases taxes, who the agent is"

First, jayles is right that there is a lot of antipathy to the passive from people who really should know better, especially in American writing schools - their reason being that they see it as 'wimpy' and avoiding responsibility. One striking aspect of this criticism, is that many of these critics routinely misidentify the passive. Linguist Geoffrey Pullum has collected many of these examples at Language Log, and I've written about it here (with links to Pullum):

http://random-idea-english.blogspot.com/2011/11/on-misidentifying-passive-and-passive.html.

Funnily enough, I've also written about ergative verbs on my blog, and I gave this example of one, which is where the object of a transitive can also be used as the subject of the same verb used intransitively:

"Little Johnny broke the window when playing with his ball." - transitive active
"The window was broken when little Johnny was playing with his ball." -transitive passive
"The window broke when little Johnny was playing with his ball."- intransitive use

Naturally, the window didn't break of its own accord, but I think most of us would accept the third variation as being OK. Of course children use this as a way of trying to avoid blame - "Mummy! My toy broke!" Most ergative verbs are related to cooking - "the pasta was simmering away", changes of state - "the door opened", general movement and the movement of vehicles - "the plane circled overhead".

I notice that under the heading "Verbs expressing change" I've included a section on "Beginning and ending, increasing and decreasing", including such verbs as "begin, finish, decrease, grow, fade" - "The sun had faded the colours / The colours had faded in the sun."

Ngram graphs would suggest be true that the intransitive use of some of these verbs has increasing in the last forty years or so:

http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=translates+as&year_start=1900&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Ctranslates%20as%3B%2Cc0

It seems to me that this intransitive use is more common with some of these verbs than others, and I can see no reason to object to the intransitive use with "increase", for example. And I would argue, that this is really more about transitive vs intransitive use, than active vs passive. Take, for example:

"The government have increased taxes again!"
"Taxes have been increased again!"
"Taxes have increased again"

Now we all know who is the agent that increases taxes, and so a passive example is very unlikely to mention the agent - so I can't see any great improvement in using the passive here. But perhaps that's because I'm so used to teaching students that "increase" and "decrease" can be both transitive and intransitive.

Although the growth in the use of "translates as" seems fairly recent, it seems perfectly idiomatic to me, and this use is listed in Oxford Online. It goes back at least a century: this is from 1911 - "In the second volume of the historical annals of Korea is found a reference to rain gauges which translates as follows: "In the 24th year ..."

The lack of any mention in either Fowler (3rd ed) or MWDEU would suggest that this has not been considered problematic by commentators. I would also suggest that your passive example - "That is translated as 'Beware Greeks bearing gifts.'" sounds as though it has been translated like this on a particular occasion, by a particular translator, not simply that that is its meaning in English.

I agree that the "situation transformed" example sounds a bit odd at first, and at a cursory glance at Google Books I can't find any examples of this use much before 1980. But Oxford Online has this example:

"a wry cynicism rapidly transforms into an overwhelming sense of sourness" - I don't suppose cynicism has volition either. The definition given here being "Undergo a marked change".

(Incidentally, I don't think volition has a lot to do with it - "It was an event that would transform my life.". Events don't have volition either. And even when chrysalises transform into butterflies, I don't suppose there's much volition involved there either. The question for me, is whether a verb that is normally used transitively sounds natural when used intransitively.)

I doubt there would be any objection to “The situation changed into something quite different.” , so I can't really see any logical reason why transform shouldn't be used in a similar way.

@Jason - I must confess I hadn't read your final concessionary paragraph until now. So sorry about that.

@Skeeter Lewis - I sort of gathered after I posted - sorry. And I agree with you that both sides should take a step back. I was rather taken aback by Jason's 'I don't care' and 'spout off ESL' comments, and went into defensive mode.

@Jason - concession where concession is due. I have discovered that there is indeed a school of thought amongst linguists that 'wh' words in simple interrogatives function as complements, and so I now accept your position there (although I don't think that's the case with 'wh' relative pronouns - but I won't insist on that). I also got a bit confused between 'subject-operator inversion' (the phrase you used) and subject-auxiliary inversion (the term we normally use).

If by Quirk et al, you are talking about 'The Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language', I take my hat off to you - it's enormous)