

Ill-founded arguments about grammar - kafkaesque
http://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/arguments/

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antiterra
Oddly enough, past usage is one of the best arguments against prescriptivist
proclamations of right and wrong. We find that the "aks" pronunciation of ask
has an unbroken lineage and usage from African American Vernacular English to
Southern American English to Old English. Nouns can be verbed all kinds of
ways and often have been if you check the OED. Being aware and in control of
your verbal 'appearance' is useful, particularly in formal situations.
However, smugly deriding the grammar or spelling of someone who has
communicated with practical clarity is a despicable and misguided sport.

~~~
abraininavat
The phrase "verbal appearance" is genius and really summarizes my feelings on
grammar. One shouldn't dismiss a person because of his appearance, but one
would be wise to consider that he's more likely to be taken seriously if his
appearance is up to par. The idea applies just as well to grammar.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Only if you take "appearance is up to par" to mean "fitting in with the crowd"
or else you are swapping objective judgements on grammar for objective
judgments on clothes and grooming, and begging the question.

~~~
mpyne
Inasmuch as the crowd you choose to fit into can correlate with other
behaviors it may be perfectly reasonable to make objective biases based on
appearance (verbal or otherwise).

When push comes to shove and you need to actually decide what your assumption
is, you're going to assume something, it may at least have the best possible
shot at being accurate.

Even Jeff Foxworthy would often joke that he wouldn't want to be operated on
by someone who talks like he does.

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tmoertel
One point that most grammar discussions seem to miss is that grammar is a
_model_ of how people communicate, not the real thing. When a construction is
labeled "ungrammatical," then, it could be, as the prescriptivists would have
us believe, that the construction is indeed poor at communicating the intended
meaning and side-tones. But it could also be that the construction is
perfectly effective and the model has simply failed to capture that aspect of
reality.

A large part of rhetoric, for example, is breaking grammar for effect.

~~~
yarianluis
So if breaking grammar provides certain effects, wouldn't the standardization
of such constructs into canon grammar diminish the effect?

~~~
tmoertel
_I came, I saw, I conquered._

Those words are powerful, but not because they form a comma splice. That is,
their power does _not_ derive from failing the model's rules. Rather, the
model's rules fail to capture that those words are powerful. (Or even
allowed.)

Again, grammar is a _model_. A model that people _don't actually use_ to
communicate with one another. Nobody hears words and constructs a parse tree
to figure out what they mean. So what's encoded in the model (or not) has
little effect on the effect that the words actually have.

Change the model all you want. Nobody will hear any differently.

EDIT: P.S. When I wrote that rhetoric was "breaking grammar for effect," I
didn't mean to imply that the effect of rhetoric came from breaking grammar.
Rather, I meant that the focus in rhetoric is on the effect and, because
grammar fails to admit many effective phrasings, rhetoric necessarily "breaks
grammar" from the outset.

~~~
devindotcom
But would "Came I saw, conquered I I" have made as much of an impression?
Deviating from a ruleset is different from failing to adhere to it at all.

~~~
tmoertel
My claim wasn't that there was no rhyme or reason to human communication but
rather that grammar does not capture that rhyme and reason, just a small part
of it.

That is, there is no "rule set" in reality. Nevertheless, you can create a
rule set that describes _some_ of reality. Just don't start thinking it's the
real thing.

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TillE
How does descriptivism deal with people who are just plain wrong? To pick one
example among many, a recent trend I've noticed is people who use "equivocate"
when they really mean "equate". Should they be corrected, or should we simply
accept that because a lot of people are doing it and we can understand from
context what they really mean, it's now an appropriate usage? Where exactly is
that line drawn?

~~~
lmm
If they're understood, they're not wrong. If they're causing confusion (and
you can understand them only because the rest of the sentence makes it clear -
you would understand just as well if they had said "foo" rather than "equate")
then that's worth questioning. The way we use many words now (condone and
fulsome spring immediately to mind) would have reasonably been described as
"plain wrong" twenty years ago.

~~~
devindotcom
Well, given context, they could use any word at all, even the opposite of the
correct one, and could be understood. The problem is that it seems foolish to
allow that the person is correct in using the incorrect word, or that the word
in question now means the same as the correct word. Effectiveness is a
continuum, too - would they have communicated more effectively by using the
correct word? Then that word is preferable, though not necessary to impart the
meaning in the greater context.

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zeteo
If neither usage (#1) nor logic (#2) are acceptable authorities, then language
becomes an arbitrary construct subject to everyone's whims. As the author
promptly proceeds to show with his unsupported assertion that " _different
than_ is perfectly fine".

~~~
jmj42
But language _is_ an arbitrary construct subject wholly to societal agreement.
That's why language evolves over time, why different dialects of a given
language develop, etc.

 __Edit: Spelling __

~~~
zeteo
Web standards were also initially an arbitrary social construct. That doesn't
mean we want them to change every year according to the latest popular
fancies.

~~~
jamesaguilar
Yet they do. Browser vendors are implementing new extensions all the time, and
arguably for better reasons than people changing the language.

------
devindotcom
While I agree with some of his ideas (despite being something of a
prescriptivist when it comes to my own writing), they're not exactly "ill-
founded" as much as "the author disagrees with them."

"language is not a logical system" -_communication_ is not a logical system,
but language is.

~~~
shadowfox
> "language is not a logical system" -_communication_ is not a logical system,
> but language is.

Care to explain this?

From most NLP classes I have taken and work I have done, I have always
understood that languages are logical only in a very loose sense of that word.
It is pretty hard to express grammar systems in formal logic for most
practical human languages as far as I know.

Maybe I am missing something?

~~~
devindotcom
Language is systematic communication, and while it's imperfect, it has basic
logical underpinnings. The fact that some sentences and words work and others
don't is proof enough of that. It's arbitrary, yes, like any artificial
system, but it's a system nevertheless. Deviations from the system as we
understand it ("effective" but not "right," as suggested above) help further
define it. This is all just my personal ideas about it, though, not like I've
made a study of it my whole life.

~~~
nollidge
> it has basic logical underpinnings

I'm not sure what you mean. More specifically, what logical underpinnings does
language have that communication doesn't? For me, communication is the
transfer of ideas from one brain to another, and I would define language as
the means of doing so. So you can't have one without the other.

~~~
devindotcom
Spoken and written language are one means of communicating ideas. I can
communicate anger with my fist or love with a kiss (or vice versa). The subset
of communication we call language is a systematization by which we can
communicate specific ideas using a specific, mutually agreed-upon method. The
method must be logical in its formation because otherwise it can't be sure it
is understood by both parties.

~~~
nollidge
But I don't see a kiss as not-language: it's body language. It still requires
agreement between the parties on what it means, and it doesn't require any
logic to be understood - just a common psychological framework plus similar
cultural experiences. And same with the raised fist.

> The method must be logical in its formation because otherwise it can't be
> sure it is understood by both parties.

Again I don't know what you mean by "logical". Logic is universal and absolute
and doesn't change. But while languages each have an internal consistency,
they're all very different from each other, and each of them evolves quite
drastically given enough time.

How could language have ever developed if it needed to be logical for it to be
understood? Seems to me all you need is a bit of empathy and some dexterous
body parts (fingers/arms, vocal cords/tongue) to build a real language
starting from pointing and gesturing and grunting, none of which is at all
systematic.

Over time, I think modern languages developed that internal consistency
because their users needed to express more and more complicated ideas. If the
idea I'm conveying to you has lots of actors and actions and nuanced imagery
in it, things have to be orderly and highly patterned-based or else I know
that you will not understand. So we all mutually agreed on an arbitrary system
for these things.

------
edmond_dantes
Stephen Fry's discussion on language and grammar pedants
(<https://youtube.com/watch?v=J7E-aoXLZGY>).

