Grammarian Silliness
Dean
I see that something called "National Grammar Day" is coming up, and (via Instapundit) I found this delightful rant by a linguist on why grammarians are all wet. I agree with every word of it.
Grammarians know nothing of importance about the English language. They are worse than useless, they are actually destructive, ruining perfectly good communications and promoting an artificial language that does not exist, has never existed, and will never exist, and which they themselves don't even speak.
Until the world's English departments get together and learn what the linguists have learned over the last 100 years about the actual English language and its many variations, they'll continue to make students of all ages miserable while contributing very little toward the goal of clear writing and speaking.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Splitting an infinitive.
- More On the Grammarian Madness
- Grammarian Silliness
Ain't that the truth...
Grammar is, at its base, rules to ease communication. If variation from the rules doesn't actually impede communication, then there's nothing much to sweat. When it does, though, the the lack of grammar becomes noticeable, disruptive, and sometimes just plain annoying.
I know what you mean if you say, 'She gave it to her and I'. But I also know who was dozing during that particular grammar class. If you dozed off during a class on basic communication, I can't help but wonder what other classes you found too boring.
John: Heh, you think so but you're mistaken. I disregard grammarian rules with abandon.
A good book to read on this is "The Language Instinct" by linguist Stephen Pinker. But there are others as well. Suffice it to say, language is a natural inborn trait of humans, and your average 8 year old child, without being taught, has a much better grasp of it than most grammarians do.
That's only not the more funniest thing you've ever said but, and don't let this kinda thing go to your head too fast and all, one of the outright most insightful.
Not only did I sleep through several grammar classes, but I also dozed off in a sociology class one time (I know, I know, it's hard to believe ain't it?). But the advantage was I woke up speaking Swahili and for a week everybody called me The Great White Hope and would lay gourds of water buffalo intestines at my feet.
Then I really woke up drunk on the toilet and realized the whole thing had been a silly dream. Of course in real life I would have never gone near a sociology class.
To throw out that foundation opens the door to moral relativism because words are more than just sounds. They are ideas. And if we cannot come to an agreement upon what words mean how can we come to an agreement upon what ideas mean? At that point concepts such a morality cease to be transcendently meaningful because what is moral is as subjective as language.
The evolution of language is the evolution of ideas and ideas alter the course of human history. Such a powerful force is best used when focused with precision.
Interesting. I have never heard such a claim made.
The difference between learning to walk and learning to communicate verbally are hardly comparable. A child raised by a family that only moves about my rolling on the floor will still learn to walk once the necessary motor and spacial relations capacities develop as a normal part of the maturation process. A child raised in environment sans verbal communication is unlikely to develop verbal skills beyond crying and laughter and assorted variations on those themes. Furthermore, the capacity to develop basic verbal skills is lost fairly early in life if those skills are never exercised.
Grammarians are annoying, yes, but grammar is essential in maintaining a centrally accepted mode of verbal and written communication. One may deliberately eschew the accepted grammatical norms, but if they wish to be understood they will still pay homage to those norms even as they purport to flout them with glee.
There was a similar movement with respect to French. It was more successful.
If you don't believe me, look it up.
On the other hand, we do really need some agreed upon rule for double negatives. Computer people like me take them to be positives, whereas people who grew up with them take them to be negatives. Clearly, they're wrong, so we need to squash the bastards. :)
Of course, this in no way invalidates the benefits of having some agreed upon linguistic structure upon which we build our assorted comments, insults, insights and occasional puns.
I am absolutely positively against what Chris is probably not implying. But I could reverse myself with the proper preventive.
Yeah, I dated a gal like that once. She wasn't much for Greek either. Or French come to think of it. If it was foreign as a matter of fact I couldn't talk her into it. But then again she was from Liverpool, so I reckon that had something to do with it.
STUDENT: Is it all right if Jimmy and me go to recess now?
TEACHER: You mean Jimmy and I.
STUDENT: Is it okay if Jimmy and I go to recess now?
TEACHER: You may.
"LESSON" LEARNED: "I" always follows "and." Thus people say things like "between you and I" and "they had a nice gift for my wife and I." This sort of thing makes me cringe, but mainly because it is a great example of a non-rule coming into widespread use. People would talk better naturally if they hadn't had the "rule" imposed on them.
Still, Dean, I think your rant is more than a little overwrought. The situation now is that youth have been freed from the shackles you denounce. My sister teaches 7th grade and reports that there is now no reference to grammar whatsoever in what passes for English education. This is throwing the baby out with the bath.
People can, in fact, learn grammar as easily as they learn to walk. What they will learn is the usage common to the people around them. But maybe we want to do more than walk. Maybe we need to learn to dance or play football. This requires learning from others who have developed effective techniques for doing those things. And, yes, it involves a certain adherence to "rules" and the possibility of being "wrong." On the upside, it allows for the development of completely new techniques that a truly gifted practitioner might pass on to subsequent generations of students.
There is bound to be an element of arbitrariness in grammar, just as there is in spelling. Chaucer would sometimes spell the same word three or four different ways on the same page. But I don't think we'd want to throw the idea of "correct" spelling out altogether, even if it is arbitrary.
Anyway, arbitrariness is not the core of grammar, and enforcing a lot of pedantic rules shouldn't be the point. The inner workings of language are fascinating. The key is really understanding the logic and structure of it. It's half science and half art. It's a shame that it has been so mis-taught over the years that it elicits this kind of hostility.
grammar.
Time is short, but when modern people start dismissing something all educated people before them thought critical I pause.
Can't study the issue, but here is what immediately comes to mind. Modern English sentences are far less complex than those of generations prior. And I suspect that as TV man progresses to exclusively one clause sentences, he will find using commas increasingly useless.
Sorta like how 'Newspeak' works. But with Newspeak, they sought to harm thought by degrading
the language. We may harm the language through degradation of thought.
However, in this society (and probably every other, although I can't say I've made an exhaustive study of it or anything) there are dialects spoken by the well-educated/privileged and it's a good idea to learn to write and speak that way from a social point of view. From a linguist's point of view, there's no reason to prefer "I haven't got any money" to "I don't got no money"; both are perfectly clear in meaning and both are valid statements within some dialect of English. Neither one is wrong in any absolute way. The difference is purely social, but it's a big difference. If one wants to be taken seriously in some contexts, one had better use the first version; in other contexts, the second. Someone using the second version probably knows the context in which to use it (in vernacular speech in his home culture) but may need to be taught the second version to use when communicating with society at large.
David Foster Wallace has a terrific essay about this in _Consider the Lobster_.
However, I am pretty much of a "Grammar Goddess." I ALWAYS correct my daughter when she uses the "me and ____" phrase. It's like biting down on aluminum foil to me, as does the use of some but not all prepositions at the end of a sentence, i.e., "Where do you want to me at." The "where" takes care of the "at."
Proper grammar also ensures the correct verb tense. Which word would be correct in the following? "Evaluation of rest and stress images reveal/reveals no evidence of...." I have a doctor who uses the wrong one all of the time.
And, that's another thing. People are "who," and things are "that."
You never should have gotten me started.....
And something similar happens when I’m speaking on the phone with folks in other countries. Over time, they learn the common slang and sloppy grammar that we all fall into, but for people just starting out, it can be a struggle. So when I’m hiring folks, the ability to use good grammar (when necessary) is at the top of my list of requirements. It’s not because I’m a stickler or a snob. It’s because it is crucial for efficient communication.
A good command of grammar has been key to my success in my career. I can get articles and papers published any time I desire, because I make life easy for editors.
I wonder how Martin feels about this topic. I bet his current job would be a whole lot easier if everyone spoke “proper” English.
I would agree with Elizabeth in that I think learning a formal standardized English is a very good idea. I just think the grammarians go completely the wrong way about getting anyone there, and cause much havok as a result.
As for the rest: tell you what, I'll link an excellent essay on this from an MIT professor of linguistics. Should be grist for the mill.
English screams out for a second person plural pronoun. That's why I consider y'all and youse (sp?) proper grammar.
Nothing -- nothing -- would make my current job a whole lot easier.
My general belief here is simple: language happens. I used to write on this topic a lot, but I decided it was pointless to even discuss it. Most of the viewpoints expressed here have a lot of validity, contradictory though they may be; and in the end, none of the discussion really matters, because it won't change the fundamental truth: language happens. That's all that really matters.
You disagree with what?
That your degree is in psycholinguistics, or are you just disagreeing in general?
And should somebody with a disagreement in psycholinguistics be degreed like that?
I had a ball with all of college, but not necessarily the standard learning part, and most of college was actually for me too. So I both respectfully disagree and don't. But that's nobody else's fault. So all in all I guess I get what I meant by that. And you too.
Course I went to four different legal universities, and a few I won't mention by way of contrast, so I was bound to eventually find a good professor. Or at least a few good books.
The secret to my edjumacashions was simplicity themselves.
Instead of ever really using textbooks I just looked up the authors that the textbooks referred to and instead of going to most classes I either went to lectures or just went to the library and read the original sources that the textbooks commented on. Or sometimes I just checked the original sources out for a month and read them at my leisure, like at the National Parks, or out in the woods, at my dorm, at the lab, on drill, while on patrol, or so forth. It's amazing what you can learn from the original discoverer of an idea or a thing, and how very hard it is to screw up what the original author said without the benefit of a third party interpreter. Especially a textbook writer.
Then on exams and in my essay books instead of quoting the professors or the textbooks I'd just quote the original sources from memory. That impressed quite a few professors and so I occasionally got to skip classes or made perfect grades on my theory or term papers. I had a few professors ask me, "have you actually read the original book of X?" To which I replied
"'Yeah, I read everything by Jung or Chun Tzu in the library, or yeah I read the Principia, or Einstein's actual papers.' I figured that made more sense than going to class to hear what you said necessarily, or especially bothering with that textbook crap."
A few of them laughed out loud when I said that and told me to keep that our little secret, but I reckon I screwed that up, didn't I? After a while I began asking most of my professors had they ever read the seminal original texts of what they were teaching, to which many admitted they had not. The exception to that general rule was in my religion, philosophy, and literature classes, though I was always very suspect of most of my literature professors. Cause they talked like they was reading from Cliffnotes, or like somebody who had just read the Wasteland for the first time and couldn't quite figure out the underlying implications. Anywho, and my advice is subject to personal opinion of course, is, if you ever go to college then skip the regular learning and instead concentrate on your education. Which means study the folks worth studying and then spend the rest of your time at far more productive pursuits. But then again you can do that without benefit of ivy, frat-boy vomit, and backed-up dorm toilets. Just go to the library, get some good books, and pretend you're skipping class. It has pretty much the same effect at a whole lot less cost.
Of course I couldn't pull that same kinda routine with Latin, or Greek, or German. To learn a language well you gotta learn real talking and real talking you can't get outta some book. Trust me.
Yes, and it's also all that really matters.
But I think Martin is on to one of his brilliant points Jay.
And it gives me an idea too.
And maybe more than that.
Sorta like a whole set of related ideas on a curve.
Kevin D: You would really like Language Instinct. Pinker's studies suggest that (as Chomsky noted) brains are hard-wired for some sorts of grammar, things like tenses and plurals. But just which grammar is learned depends on the social environment in which a child is raised. English grammar is similar enough to French grammar for most purposes. But it's vastly different from, say, Semitic or Sinic grammar. Many overlapping fields, of course, like the fact of plurals, but just how they're made varies widely.
Many oriental languages will make a plural by simply putting the number intended before or after the noun being modified. And English only has a few 'dual' forms, unlike Arabic.
;)
It is, I think, more of a social class indicator than anything else. Of course, I could be wrong.
Or what Elizabeth said - and I may still be wrong, but not her.
Winston Churchill joke. (IIRC)
Through training, starting at home, we learn that 'I' and 'me' are different, that 'I' is not 'you' or 'he, she, it, or they'. We're generally hard-wired to get things like doer and done-upon, and the basic prepositions. Exceptions have to be learned, though, as well as the rationalizations (i.e., 'rules of grammar') that have been created to explain why we do as we do.
English--as apparently most other languages--has simplified over time. We've very few cases for nouns and, arguably, only two pure tenses. At one time, English was even more inflected than Latin (a more developed language at that time), with upwards of a dozen different case endings. Some modern languages have retained a plethora of cases, notoriously Finnish, but also including Polish and Portuguese.
I and me are different?
Me no think I aren't.
Well, which ain't it? I'm getting confused.
I got done upon one time.
But it wasn't really a hard wire.
They just beat the soles of my feet real good with some kinda stick octagonal til I cried a little. But I don't talk about that in public anymore.
Such things simply are not done, old man! Imagine not polishing the soles of your boots! Simply uncouth, don't you agree?
And when caught it suddenly breaks loose from the keepers and skitters and slides across the slick floor, staying out of the firm grasp of the grammarian.
Truly, the grammarian provides the boundaries that a tongue should be in, temporally but temporary, for the speakers free it from the dusty confines and send it out to gambole under the sun of life. We would all be lesser but for the efforts of the keepers to preserve a continuity so that each generation can read the records of their predecessors, but the language must be free to make sense of all about it.
And if it never changed, why, what fun the grammarians would miss!
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.