Grammar and the Prescriptive Attitude

My apologies, MrP (your post was clear)

That's interesting. Actually, artificial encouragement can be in its own way 'prescriptive.' Creating a chic idea you influence speaker's choices prescribing a particular usage of the infinitive. You may not be successful overnight, but as an increasingly great number of speakers will be adopting your form, one day it will inevitably become a standard form recommended by grammar books. The grammar books, on the other hand, will be then 'descriptive' capturing the linguistic tendencies of the majority of the speakers (I'm lost!)

On the free market you do not always start to manufacture the products
that you think the customers desperately need. Sometimes you produce a commodity and then take pains to make customers believe that it is your product that they need (until they finally buy it.) In the same way, artificial encouragement, if done in a smart and effective way, is an indirect manifestation of the 'prescriptive' approach.

So, perhaps, the development of a language is a constant interaction between prescriptive and descriptive elements, the latter being the result of the former(?) I don't know why, but what comes to my mind now is Hegel's thesis, antithesis and sinthesis.

Let's take some element of language:

1. Since most of the speakers use 1. thesis
it, grammar books describe it as
a standard and correct form
(descriptive approach)

a very chic idea has been created (very influential writer or whatever)

2. A new form is gaining popularity 2. antithesis
among some of the speakers as
a result of e.g. artificial encouragement
Some (writers, politicians, people working
in media) people may be unconsiously
advocate this particular form
(prescriptive approach?)

After some time...


3. The new form has become a standard 3.Synthesis
form and the old form was preserved in
a language but as old-fashioned or
reserved only to some contexts or dialects


After some time..

4. The existing grammatical order is being 4. The above-mentioned synthesis
described in grammar books becomes a thesis
(it describes the language as it is)
(again descriptive approach)


5. and so forth




Is it all probable?
Korin

Ah! The Hegelian idea is very interesting. It seems applicable both to grammatical structures and e.g. catchphrases, clichés, suddenly fashionable formulations, etc.

I wonder how this sounds to you. Let's imagine rule X, which is based upon a misunderstanding of grammar. If a best-selling style guide advocates rule X, and people begin to observe it, there is a dilemma for those people who know that rule X is based upon an error. If you break rule X, at least some readers will notice; and a reader who notices your grammar is no longer paying attention. So you refrain from breaking rule X, or find a paraphrase; but because of that choice, rule X is strengthened. In other words, passive avoidance may help to establish a grammatical structure as effectively as active usage...

Your point about e.g. media people unconsciously advocating particular forms is interesting, too: a copy editor on a moderately popular newspaper with a particular instinct for putting words together could have an audience of 2-3m people a day; if those people read that newspaper for months or years, some at least of them will presumably begin to be influenced by that copy editor's choices, and invisible templates will form.

MrP

I'm sorry to hear that, Korin. Very best of luck with sorting everything out.

MrP