-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Peter Adams
Sent: Fri 6/22/2007 6:12 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: pair
I've been poking around in several grammars of English for the past few
weeks--Martha's and Craig's, as well as the Cambridge Grammar, Greenbaum and Quirk,
and Klammer--and I am confused about one point.
Each of them identifies itself as a descriptive, not prescriptive, grammar.
A description of the rules of syntax and morphology of the English language.
But I wonder exactly which versions of the English language "count" for these
grammars? I notice that the corpus used by the Cambridge includes American,
British, Australian, and (oddly) the Wall Street Journal. Does this mean
they did not include the Englishes of South Africa, Nigeria, or Jamaica? Or,
were they a part of the British corpus? And was the language of native
speakers the only one that was included?
The Cambridge grammar admits that it favors written language over spoken.
Is that the situation in most descriptive grammars? The Cambridge says that
the reason for this bias is that the spoken language has many more "errors" in
it. Perhaps they mean such things as false starts, self-corrections,
repetitions, hesitation noises--all of which they mention--but they also include
"dysfluencies." And they continue to point out that speech "contains a higher
number of errors than writing." Of course, what concerns me is this reference
to errors in what purports to be a "descriptive grammar."
And then there's the distinction between formal and informal language. Both
would seem to be English. Are these descriptive grammars describing both?
Does the English of emails count as English?
And what about regionalisms? Here is Baltimore people regular "go down the
ocean" or have a beer "over Jamie's house." Their computers go "up" when I
would say they break "down." And so forth.
What I'm getting at here is trying to understand just how different a
"descriptive grammar" is from a "prescriptive" one.
I understand the philosophical difference, but when I look at the details,
the difference seems more one of degree than kind. If certain versions of
English are not included in the study of "how the English language works," (for
perfectly understandable reasons: because they are used by only a minority, or
because they contain too many errors, or because they're too informal), then
the description of the remaining versions of the language is somewhat
prescriptive.
Granted most grammars that are classified as presecriptive are much more
narrow--they include, I would say, only the English used by educated Americans
when they are using the language carefully--and that's a much more restricted
version of the language than that used as the basis of "descriptive" grammars,
but, and this is my point (or is it my question?), it seems to me that
descriptive grammars are also somewhat prescriptive.
Just a little concrete example of what I mean. In Martha's wonderful text,
she explains that the comparative forms of adjectives are used in the
comparison of two nouns and the superlative, for three or more. And she's right, if
she describing the English of educated Americans when they are using the
language carefully. But many Americans regularly speak and even write sentences
like this:
Of my two sisters, Emily is the tallest.
Am I over interpreting, or isn't this a fairly prescriptive version of a
grammar rule?
Peter Adams
**************************************
See what's free at http://www.aol.com.
To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
|
