Prescriptive and Descriptive Grammar PDF

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Apuntes prescriptive and descriptive grammar...

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Prescriptive and Descriptive Grammar Cullen, C.(2001). Prescriptive and descriptive grammar. In Concise Encyclopedia of Sociolinguistics. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.aut.ac.nz/login?qurl=http%3A%2F %2Fsearch.credoreference.com.ezproxy.aut.ac.nz%2Fcontent%2Fentry%2Festsocioling %2Fprescriptive_and_descriptive_grammar%2F0

Linguistics involves both the writing of grammars and the specification of rules. Therefore it is important to distinguish between the descriptive grammars that linguists are interested in and the prescriptive grammars and grammar rules that people may be more familiar with. Many linguistics courses and elementary textbooks such as Fromkin and Rodman (1997) and Lyons (1981) present the distinction early on so that the nonprescriptive nature of linguistic rules can then be assumed. Linguists write rules and grammars to provide detailed and accurate descriptions of the knowledge that speakers have of their language. Linguists' rules are statements about what people do in the language, not regulations for what they should do. In this sense, the linguist's use of the word ‘rule’ is rather like the scientist's use of the word ‘law.’ The Law of Gravity does not say that objects should/must/ought to fall to the ground, but that objects do fall to the ground. As it happens, much of the time, the linguists' descriptive rules do not conflict with any prescriptive conventions. For instance, when a linguist says that an English Noun Phrase can be made up of a Determiner (such as ‘the’) followed by an adjective (such as ‘red’ or ‘big’) followed by a noun (such as ‘bus’ or ‘book’), the description is both accurate—a good reflection of the knowledge of native speakers of the language—and inoffensive. Even the most opinionated prescriptivist will accept that all of the following phrases are grammatical in English: ‘the big bus, the big book, the red bus, the red book.’ But in other situations there may be a difference between descriptive output—rules that show the regular patterns of sentences in a language—and prescriptive conventions. In such cases, it is particularly important to realize that the linguist's interest is in description rather than prescription. For instance, in most dialects of English a normal and grammatical response to the question ‘Who's that?’ would be ‘It's me,’ and a ‘descriptive’ rule could be written by the linguist for the structure of ‘It's me.’ However, a common ‘prescriptive’ rule would say that ‘It's me’ is bad English (or ungrammatical, in a popular sense) and should be disallowed. The rule would further prescribe that the correct way in which to answer the question ‘Who's that?’ is to say ‘It's I.’ Prescriptive rules are sometimes taught to people in school, sometimes passed on by other speakers, and sometimes found in writers' manuals containing recommendations for clear expression or correct usage. The origins of prescriptive rules vary: some are based on misleading analogies between the grammar of, for example, English and the grammar of some other (often Classical) language or languages. The prescriptive rule forbidding the sentence ‘It's me,’ for instance, could be justified by the prescriptivist saying that copula ‘is’ should be followed by a nominative form, not by an accusative form such as ‘me,’ on analogy with a rule of Latin. No such rule seems to be genuinely operational in early twenty-firstcentury English.

Some prescriptive rules are rationalized on logical grounds. A common prescriptive rule forbids double negation, which linguists recognize as a grammatical structure in many dialects, and gives logic as the grounds for the prohibition. ‘I didn't do nothing’ would be described by a linguist's rule if it was grammatical in the variety being studied. It would be rejected by the prescriptivist, who would say that ‘I didn't do nothing’ could only be used to mean ‘I did something’ because ‘two negatives make a positive.’ Now, it is true that in logic two negatives make a positive, but it is not true in most varieties of English that ‘I didn't do nothing’ has always to mean ‘I did something.’ A linguistic description of English will be based on speakers' knowledge of their language, not on the knowledge of logicians. The descriptive rules that linguists produce reveal how language is, not just how—because of logic or analogy—it has been agreed it should be. Because the linguists' rules reflect speakers' knowledge, they will vary from the description of one regional or social variety to another. For instance, there will need to be a rule for some varieties of English that describes sequences of modal verbs, as in the sentence ‘My daughter may can do that.’ For other varieties, sequences of modals do not occur and the descriptive rule will be different. Similarly, ‘ain't’ will be the grammatical negative occurring in sentences like ‘I ain't going home this week’ in some varieties of English, while ‘I'm not’ will be the grammatical form in other varieties. Having descriptive rules provides recognition of the linguistic equality of all varieties: their shared regularity, their equivalence in patterning. The investigation of social factors which make some varieties better received or more widespread than others is a separate endeavor. See also: Standardization; Standard English and Education Policy; Verbal Hygiene.  Fromkin, V; Rodman, R 1997 An Introduction to Language, 6th edn. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York.  Lyons, J 1981 Language and Linguistics: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK....