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This question is Not Answered
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Anonymous
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158446
Mon, 14 Nov 05 11:36 AM
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?
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YoHf,
4 yr 8 days ago
Yes, I agree... I think grammar to be too strict as well...
Anonymous,
4 yr 8 days ago
 YoHf wrote: | | Yes, I agree... I think grammar to be too strict as well... |
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It can be. I guess it depends on whose hands it's in. ;-)
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Lusia
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158634
Mon, 14 Nov 05 10:59 PM
| YoHf wrote: | | Yes, I agree... I think grammar to be too strict as well... |
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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.
Joined on
Sat, Nov 5 2005
Polska/Poland
New Member
14
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MrPedantic
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158670
Tue, 15 Nov 05 01:03 AM
| Anonymous wrote: | 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? |
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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
Joined on
Tue, Oct 12 2004
Veteran Member
12,592
...opella forensis / adducit febris...
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Anonymous,
4 yr 8 days ago
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,
4 yr 7 days ago
<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,
4 yr 7 days ago
Maybe, but what's your answer to the first question?
Anonymous,
4 yr 7 days ago
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?
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