Is the grammar wrong?

Question

Quote:

"... when most speakers use a form that our grammar says is incorrect, there is at least a prima facie case that it is the grammar that is wrong, not the speakers."

Prof. R Huddleston.

Do you agree?

YoHf · Accepted Answer

Yes, I agree... I think grammar to be too strict as well...

Anonymous · Answer

YoHfYes, I agree... I think grammar to be too strict as well...

It can be. I guess it depends on whose hands it's in. ;-)

Lusia · Answer

YoHfYes, I agree... I think grammar to be too strict as well...

Gimme a break!! You meant the ENGLISH grammar was too strict? Can you think of any language in this world with more simplified grammar?

I think occasionally the rules fall into disuse, but we should be careful, as the majority does not always equal to reason.

MrPedantic · Answer

AnonymousQuote:

"... when most speakers use a form that our grammar says is incorrect, there is at least a prima facie case that it is the grammar that is wrong, not the speakers."

Prof. R Huddleston.

Do you agree?

Is it possible, I wonder, that Huddleston has also maintained, at some time, elsewhere:

"When a minority of speakers uses a form that the majority says is incorrect, there is at least a prima facie case that the majority may be wrong, not the minority; and that the minority usage may be equally correct."

MrP

Anonymous · Answer

Hi everybody, I'm new around here, I hope we'll cooperate. My English isn't that good, so bear with me. Now, on this matter, I am firmly convinced that there has been a misunderstanding on some part of what "grammar" signifies in Huddleston's sentence. Perhaps he, like many others among the academical figures nowadays, thinks that a "grammar", as in a "transposition of language systems on paper", should be "descriptive" instead of "normative", meaning that it should:

1) consider everything accepted by the native speaker of that very language as "grammatical", that is, grammatically correct, opposed to "agrammatical" (which in turn simply means that a certain sentence "sounds wrong", i.e.: ill-formed, in the listener's ear);

2) give an account of the laws and principles which generate (hence the term "generative" grammar, all and only the expressions which are recognized as "grammatical"

This perspective was first shown by Noam Chomsky.

Now, let me inform you I'm a linguistics student at Ca' Foscari University in Venice. I'd like to know, if possible, who else is/was a scholar in this field among this community, thanks! I'd like to submit some interrogatives/personal theories to you.

subi

Anonymous · Answer

<Can you think of any language in this world with more simplified grammar?>

Simplified? Would you care to try to explain the use of the present perfect? Or maybe how we use modal auxilaries?

;-)

Anonymous · Answer

Maybe, but what's your answer to the first question?

Anonymous · Answer

In The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, Pullum And Huddleston have concentrated on a synchronic description of language. They look at the current state of the language. And yes, they prefer to describe rather than prescribe.

And doesn't a grammar of a language describe the principles or rules governing the form and meaning of words, phrases, clauses and sentences?

MrPedantic · Answer

<And yes, they prefer to describe rather than prescribe.>

That's interesting. I find the introduction to the CGEL fairly prescriptive. It's disguised as "description", of course; but at bottom, it's based on value-judgements.

MrP

Anonymous · Answer

Did you read their description of "descriptive" as they are using the term? It's in the introduction.

Is the grammar wrong?

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