A useful quote. For a long time it's been a widespread view that these
proscriptions came out of the 18th c. when in fact there has been a long
tradition of inventing them. Certainly some of them did come from 18th
c. grammarians, like, for example, the prohibition on "ain't". However,
as David Mulroy shows in his War against Grammar, the prohibition
against splitting infinitives is rather more recent, dating back only to
the 1860s. Arnold Zwicky, in a probing piece of grammatical history,
shows that another favorite of prescriptivists, the prohibition against
possessive antecedents, dates back only to the 1940s. This one, by the
way, prohibits sentences like
Mary's book brought her great fame.
since Mary's is possessive. Granted, such structures can be ambiguous,
as in
Mary's mother saw her picture on TV.
and should be avoided in such cases on grounds of style and clarity, but
the structure itself is not the problem; its inappropriate use is. Both
of these rules turn up on standardized tests, and the latter was on the
SAT just a few years ago. Zwicky ended up researching the Possessive
Antecedent Prohibition because a highly prescriptive high school English
teacher in Florida made an issue of it. One of his students had score
very well on the SAT but had missed a question in which a possessive
antecedent was one of the multiple choice answers. The test designers
had intended another choice to be the incorrect sentence. The teacher
threatened to take ETS to court to change the answer and the student's
score. ETS gave in.
Herb
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ronald Sheen
Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2007 8:58 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: The relics of prescriptivism was: Linguists' accusations of
pedantry
In response to Nancy's question (see below), there are many Google sites
which will give you the background to this, Here's an extract from
one:
The prescriptive approach, however, held sway for some two hundred
years. It was based on fixed attitudes, on forms and rules derived from
Latin and on exercises on the correction of sentences. Such exercises
set up many of the shibboleths about usage that still remain (for at
least some people) the essence of 'correct' grammar. The avoidance of
prepositions at the end of sentences (as in 'To whom did he give the
book?' rather than 'Who did he give the book to?') or the use of 'It is
I' rather than 'It is me', or avoidance of the so-called 'split
infinitive' (now immortalised in the Star Trek injunction 'to boldly
go') are all examples of the kinds of usage taught to school pupils for
many generations which still cause anxiety among people anxious to
observe 'correct' grammar.
Most of these prescriptions, and their accompanying rules ('It is wrong
to split infinitives') were based on analogy with Latin, even though
English forms of language patterning are very different from Latin. For
instance, English clearly has more than one word in the infinitive ('to
go') unlike Latin, and therefore one is hardly 'splitting' the
infinitive by introducing a related word. Also 'It is I' is based on the
practice in Latin to have 'nominative' or Subject forms after the verb
'to be', even though English is very largely an uninflected language and
does not normally indicate Objects by means of 'accusative' endings at
all, far less make exceptions for the verb 'to be'. The rule about
avoidance of prepositions at the end of sentences, similarly, derived
from a stylistic tendency in Latin to have verbs at the ends of
sentences.
If, Nancy, having read this, you're thinking, 'Oh my God and I've been
telling my students to say 'It is I' and not 'It is me'., you can take
refuge in Michael Swan's Practical English Usage (p. 403). He writes:
It is possible to use a subject form alone after 'be' (e.g. It is I; It
was he.) but this is extremely formal and is usually considered
over-correct.
Hope this helps.
Ron.
----- Original Message -----
From: Nancy Tuten <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2007 4:07 AM
Subject: Re: The relics of prescriptivism was: Linguists'
accusations of pedantry
Ron,
I recognize "between you and I" as hypercorrection, but I am
missing your point about "It is I." Are you saying that using the
nominative case as a subject complement after a linking verb(in this
case, a "be" verb) is also hypercorrection? Since when? Thanks for
bringing me up to speed.
Nancy
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ronald Sheen
Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2007 10:43 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: The relics of prescriptivism was: Linguists'
accusations of pedantry
Herb's and Dick's apt comments amply show that it is not
linguists who adopt a pedantic approach and this because, among other
things, they are all well aware of the ills brought about by the
prescriptivist movement of the late 18th century and after.
If there is any misplaced pedantry in English language teaching
today, it may well come from those who have not benefited from a history
of the English language course and still think that, for example, the
copula should be followed by the nominative case of pronouns (It is I)
and that one should use 'I' after prepositions in phrases such as
'between you and I'. It's quite remarkable how well-established in many
people's minds have become these relics of prescriptivism. In fact,
I've heard quite a number of contemporary youth's role models use
English in this way in interviews under the misplaced impression that
they are speaking correctly.
There is a certain irony in all this for there are employers who
may still think that these precriptivist relics are correct English and,
therefore, look askance at prospective employees when they use 'me'
correctly in the above examples or fail to obey the incorrect stricture
to never split an infinitive
Ron Sheen
----- Original Message -----
From: Veit, Richard <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2007 1:51 PM
Subject: Re: Linguists' accusations of pedantry
Like Herb, I have been waiting before responding to
Edmond's provocative post, and I'll add a few observations to Herb's
thoughtful response.
I am both a linguist and a writing teacher, and I see no
conflict between the two. In both roles I am eager for my students to
master the conventions of standard English. Yes, I want them to know
distinctions between "affect" and "effect" and between "lie" and "lay."
These are standard, useful distinctions, and literate speakers/writers
make them. In both roles, I am also aware that all languages change over
time and that change is determined by the usage of speakers/writers of
the language and is not legislated by experts. For example, it is clear
that "whom" is now rarely used even by educated speakers/writers, except
immediately following a preposition. The loss of "whom" is almost
certainly inevitable and irreversible; neither does this signify decay,
nor is to be regretted. It is a typical instance of language change.
Like Herb, I know of no linguists who scorn writing
teachers for teaching standard conventions. On the other hand, I observe
(in both roles) that some usages that have often been proscribed in
schools have no relation to the actual usage of literate speakers and
writers ("Never begin a sentence with a conjunction" "Never split an
infinitive" "Never end a sentence with a preposition"), and I tell my
students they can be safely ignored.
It is the role of linguists to describe, not prescribe,
language. If there is one distinction between my roles as linguist and
writing teacher, I suppose it is that as a writing teacher I am free to
make private subjective judgments about writing quality that I might not
make purely as a linguist.
Dick Veit
________________________________
Richard Veit
Department of English
University of North Carolina Wilmington
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of STAHLKE, HERBERT F
Sent: Sunday, September 23, 2007 12:03 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Linguists' accusations of pedantry
Ed,
I read your interesting posting yesterday and decided to
give it a day
and then reread it. I'm trying to understand what has
spurred your
remarks so that I can get a better grasp on your
argument.
You make the point that English speakers are dropping
such lexical
contrasts and sensuous/sensual, etc. As a linguist I
have to declare
that I haven't read denunciations from my colleagues of
teachers who
insist on teaching these contrasts. Rather, much of it
strikes me as an
important part of vocabulary building, a task that goes
on well beyond
the BA. I would correct in the writing of my students
many misusages of
the sort you list. While it is a truism that language
changes and there
is little we can do about it, it also remains true that
there is a
variant of English, call it standard if you will, that
we expect
educated people to be able to read, write, and speak, at
least in
appropriate social contexts.
I don't think all of these contrastive pairs have the
same status. The
"lie/lay" contrast is a contrast in transitivity. Since
the transitive
meaning ("lay") becomes clear as soon as the
reader/hearer comes upon a
direct object, the redundant marking of transitivity
means that the
distinction between lie/lay/lain(laid) and lay/laid/laid
carries less
functional load and so is at risk of the forces of
language change. The
fact that in Modern English the strong past participle
"lain" has
already been replaced by the weak past participle "laid"
indicates that
this change has been in progress for some time. In
contrast, the
difference between the adjectives "disinterested" and
"uninterested" is
not one that is redundantly marked in the structure of
the sentence, and
so I expect careful users of English to make the
distinction when it
needs to be made. I don't know of an academic linguist
who ignores the
conventions of Standard English in his or her own
writing or in that of
their students (and I used "their" intentionally, since
it goes back
about 400 years in this usage).
You don't give a citation for your second quote below,
"Educational
resistance to particular changes is futile," so I'm not
sure what the
writer meant. Is "particular" used in a generic sense
"any particular"
or in a specific sense ("certain specified changes").
If the former,
the writer is clearly wrong. My use of "his or her"
above reflects a
socially driven change in usage. Many of us continue to
use "refute"
and "deny" to express the relevant distinction without
having overtly
been taught it. Even though I recognize the
inexorableness of language
change, there are changes I resist and correct when I
see them. I
personally can't abide "hone in on" for "home in on", a
usage that goes
back only to the mid-20th c.
I do take exception to your claim that language
undergoes decay. I take
decay to mean irreversible entropy. Signals undergo
decay, as do all
other physical objects. Words change, but when
complexity is lost in
one area of a language, complex normally increases in
another. The
history of English illustrates this nicely. Old English
had a rich
system of case endings, six cases, on nouns, adjectives,
and
determiners. That system virtually disappeared in
Middle English
because of normal, regular sound changes and some
resulting analogical
changes. One might say that case marking decayed during
this period,
but what actually happened is that the relationships and
meanings marked
by case endings in Old English came to be marked by word
order and
prepositions in Middle and Modern English. The
complexity shifted from
morphology to syntax and lexis. Languages have a
necessary level of
complexity since they are a product of the complexity of
human
cognition, but that complexity can show up in very
different ways from
language to language. The deny/refute distinction may
well be one that
colloquial usage doesn't generally need and so is not
made. However,
more formal English does find it necessary to make the
distinction, and
so learners are obligated to learn the distinction if
they don't already
know it. That's not so much a matter of language change
or decay as of
difference in register.
I do agree with you rather strongly that Standard
English has very
strong social class implications, many of them
deleterious to those who
don't master that particular dialect. A huge part of
our educational
system is devoted to maintaining these class
differences.
I hope I haven't misread you.
Herb
It is exceedingly common to find academic linguists who
pour scorn on
teachers' attempts to correct students who confuse
words, saying that it
is
pedantic to try and stem the inevitable onrush of
language change. For
example, they have in their sights anyone who would
point out to their
students the semantic difference between such pairs as
'refute' and
'deny',
'sensuous' and 'sensual', 'uninterested' and
'disinterested'. Another
pair
is the transitive verb 'lay' and the intransitive 'lie'
-- over here in
England it used to be comparatively rare to hear someone
say 'Lay on the
bed' or I've been laying here half an hour', instead of
'Lie on the bed'
or
'I've been lying here half an hour', but it is becoming
increasingly
common
(I notice, for example, that Americans say 'the lay of
the land' and not
'the lie of the land').
Some linguists, however, are straying from the
scientific compound. A
scientist should be examining the changes happening in
the corpus of
words,
regardless of their causes. Even a sociolinguist,
interested in those
causes, does not take sides. It is not for the
linguists to lay down
rules
about what should or should not be preserved. If
educators in some
society
find that it aids community feeling to inculcate a
'standard' speech and
are
concerned to produce the results they intend, that is
just one of the
historical factors that a linguist would have to
acknowledge, not a
feature
that he or she should be condemning out of hand as
'pedantic'. They
have a
tendency to move from a statement like 'Change in
language is a normal
process' (David Crystal, 'How Language Works, 2006, p.
483) which is
undeniable, to 'Educational resistance to particular
changes is futile',
for
it might be perfectly 'normal' in a society to resist
such changes.
They
say that one should not be using a word such as 'decay'
of a language:
no,
not at the level of scientific inquiry, but yes, if one
considers that,
say,
the distinction between 'refute' and 'deny' is valuable.
The continual
use
of 'refute' (which means to set out a would-be
conclusive, carefully
argued
disproof of something) for 'deny' (which is merely to
contradict
something
someone has said) might lead to a double loss -- the
simultaneous
disappearance of the useful word 'deny' and of the
meaning of 'refute',
for
which there is no adequate synonym. Confusion of the
two indicates
someone
who can have had no training of any kind in the rhetoric
of argument,
surely
a necessity in a democracy. Would it not be an instance
of decay if
that
should come about?
I detect a neo-romantic ideology at work here: its
dream is of a
childhood
innocence as a delicate fruit the bloom of which must
not be touched.
There
is also a mistaken class element that reads the attempt
to teach
standard
English as elitist, interfering with the natural
dialects of the
working-class. I have found many students of
working-class background
who
readily outstrip their middle-class schoolfellows in
learning about
language, and end up being able to move from dialect to
Standard English
and
back again without any loss of local colour in their
pronunciation.
Among
their peers, of course, there are many who obstinately
distort their
speech
to signal conformity with and loyalty to 'us' rather
than 'them'. Is
that
determination to be blessed as irresistible because it
is 'normal'?
Edmond Wright
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