This document discusses the difference between prescriptive grammar and descriptive grammar. Prescriptive grammar establishes rules of "good" and "bad" usage, dictating what constitutes proper grammar. However, prescriptive rules are not based on how language is actually used by native speakers. Descriptive grammar objectively studies the linguistic knowledge and patterns used by native speakers, regardless of social perceptions of standardness. The document argues that linguistics should be concerned with descriptive grammar alone and that prescriptive rules have no scientific basis.
2. • We are going to talk about properties of
grammars
• When we talk about grammar (and language);
a key distinction:
Prescriptive Grammar
Vs.
Descriptive Grammar
Bear in mind from the beginning the idea
that any given “language” has many dialects.
3. Prescriptive Grammar
• Rules of “good” or “proper” usage, which
dictate what is “good grammar” and what is
“bad grammar”
Example:
(1)She doesn’t know him.
(2)She don’t know him.
Example (1) is supposed to be “good”, while (2)
is supposed to be “bad”
4. Why?
• The basic problem with She don’t know him: it is not
part of standard English. But it is part of some
varieties/dialects of English
• Is there a logic to this judgment? Technically, what
the example shows is the absence of 3rd person
singular agreement -s
• Agreement morphemes on a verb mark who the
subject of the verb is (in some languages…)
• Is the absence of agreement somehow bad or
illogical?
5. Agreement…
• Consider modal verbs like can, would, etc.
in standard English:
Yes: No:
1) I can I can
2) You can You can
3) He/she/it can *He/she/it cans
So absence of agreement is not inherently “bad”. English has very
little agreement compared to some languages, but more than
e.g. Swedish or Chinese, which have no agreement on the
verb.
• There’s nothing inherently better or worse about the
“standard” variant
6. Descriptive Grammar
• What native speakers know (tacitly) about their
language. We have to distinguish between different
variants of one language, versus things that are
impossible in all varieties
• Example:
– Grammatical according to style/register, dialect
• I didn’t see anybody.
• I didn’t see nobody.
– Ungrammatical
• *I did anybodyn’t see.
• *See did nobody I not.
7. Descriptive Grammar, cont.
• Descriptive grammar is the objective study of what
speakers actually know. It does not presume to tell
them how to use their language (faculty).
• One can objectively study dialects or registers of a
language that are not the ‘standard’ or most socially
accepted variety
• All of these varieties are equally complex as far as
the scientific study of language is concerned
• In order to focus on descriptive grammar later, we will
examine aspects of prescriptive grammar now
8. Varieties of Prescriptive
Grammar
• The rules set out by prescriptive grammar
have kind of a mixed character:
– Standard (written) style:
• Use 3rd person -s
• No double negatives; etc.
– Cases in which people differ:
• Who/whom did you see at the park?
• The data are/is interesting.
9. Varieties of Prescriptive
Grammar, cont.
– Changes that are resisted by some speakers:
• Between you and I
• Me and John saw that.
– Inventions of so-called experts, or grammarians
• Don’t split infinitives
• Don’t strand prepositions
• Use I shall and you will
10. Historical Reasoning
• Why should English be like it used to be? All
languages change… Where would we stop?
• Should we say (Chaucer quote):
– He nevere yet no vileynye ne sayde.
he never yet no villainy not said
Roughly: ‘He never used rough language’
– In addition to being almost incomprehensible, it
shows double (triple even) negation, like I didn’t
see nobody; which we’re not supposed to say,
according to the prescriptivists.
11. Example: other languages
• E.g. ‘no split infinitives”:
– Ok: to go boldly
– Supposedly bad: to boldly go
– Why? Latin infinitives are one word: e.g. amare ‘to love’. This
couldn’t be split by another word.
• Why make English like Latin? Consider:
– wehLla’-te. This means ‘I’ll have (a rope) there’ in the
language Hupa (related to Navajo, spoken in CA)
– Why not make English look like this? Or any other language
for that matter? Linguistically speaking, this is the same type
of thing; but clearly it doesn’t make sense.
12. Dubious appeals to ‘Logic’
• Is the standard always ‘more logical’? Consider reflexive
pronouns like ‘myself’:
Reflexive Possessive
St. myself my car
yourself your car
himself his car
herself her car
Non-St.myself my car
yourself your car
hisself his car
herself her car
--> In the non-standard variety, the reflexive form is always
the same as the possessive; this is more systematic than the
standard, where this is true in only three of the four cases
above.
13. Interim Conclusions
• The scientific study of language provides a
theory of the structures found in the
descriptive grammar of human language
• Prescriptive grammar has no place in this
enterprise
• Throughout the course, our discussions of
grammar will refer to the descriptive sense
14. What this does not mean
• We are not saying that there is no such thing
as unhelpful, uninformative, ambiguous, or
difficult language; e.g.
– Uninformative:
• Q: What have you been doing lately?
• A: Stuff.
– Difficult (for memory reasons)
• The rat the cat the dog bit chased ate the cheese.
– Compare:
» The rat the cat chased ate the cheese; or
» This is the dog that bit the cat that chased the rat that
ate the cheese
15. It also doesn’t mean that…
• We are not saying that ‘anything goes’ in any
context. It is also the case that some things
are more appropriate in some contexts than
in others:
– E.g. starting a term paper with “inappropriate”
words or phrases
– Telling a friend on the phone that “An
acquaintance with whom I spoke earlier alluded to
similar possibilities at an earlier juncture.”
• But:These are points about (social) acceptability, not
grammaticality in the sense of being derived by one’s
linguistic competence.
