Slide Linguistics Prescriptivism versus Descriptivism

Linguistics
Prescriptivism versus
Descriptivism

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Part I: Grammar
• We are going to talk about properties of grammars
• When we talk about grammar (and language); a
key distinction:
 Prescriptive Grammar
Vs.
 Descriptive Grammar

 Bear in mind from the beginning the idea that any
given “language” has many dialects, etc.; we’ll
return to this theme.

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Prescriptive Grammar
• Rules of “good” or “proper” usage, which
dictate what is “good grammar” and what is
“bad grammar”
Example:
(1) She doesn’t know him.
(2) She don’t know him.
Example (1) is supposed to be “good”, while (2) is
supposed to be “bad”

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Why?
• The basic problem with She don’t know him: it is
not part of standard English. But it is part of some
varieties/dialects of English
• Is there a logic to this judgment? Technically,
what the example shows is the absence of 3rd
person singular agreement -s
• Agreement morphemes on a verb mark who the
subject of the verb is (in some languages…)
• Is the absence of agreement somehow bad or
illogical?

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Agreement…
•

Consider modal verbs like can, would, etc. in
standard English:
Yes: No:
1) I can
I can
2) You can
You can
3) He/she/it can
*He/she/it cans

So absence of agreement is not inherently “bad”. English has very little
agreement compared to some languages, but more than e.g. Swedish or
Chinese, which have no agreement on the verb.

•

There’s nothing inherently better or worse about the
“standard” variant

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Descriptive Grammar
• What native speakers know (tacitly) about their
language. We have to distinguish between different
variants of one language, versus things that are
impossible in all varieties
• Example:
– Grammatical according to style/register, dialect
• I didn’t see anybody.
• I didn’t see nobody.
– Ungrammatical
• *I did anybodyn’t see.
• *See did nobody I not.

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Descriptive Grammar, cont.
• Descriptive grammar is the objective study of

what speakers actually know. It does not presume
to tell them how to use their language (faculty).
• One can objectively study dialects or registers of
a language that are not the ‘standard’ or most
socially accepted variety
• All of these varieties are equally complex as far as
the scientific study of language is concerned
• In order to focus on descriptive grammar later, we
will examine aspects of prescriptive grammar now

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Varieties of Prescriptive
Grammar
• The rules set out by prescriptive grammar
have kind of a mixed character:
– Standard (written) style:
• Use 3rd person -s
• No double negatives; etc.

– Cases in which people differ:
• Who/whom did you see at the park?
• The data are/is interesting.

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Varieties of Prescriptive
Grammar, cont.

– Changes that are resisted by some speakers:
• Between you and I
• Me and John saw that.

– Inventions of so-called experts, or
grammarians
• Don’t split infinitives
• Don’t strand prepositions
• Use I shall and you will

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Attempts to Justify
Prescriptive Grammar
• In asserting the “correctness” of rules like
don’t split infinitives, and so on, prescriptive
grammarians resort to different means; for
instance:
– By decree: X is right because I say so.
– Bogus historical reasoning: English should be like it used to
be
– Specious reasoning based on analogy to other languages:
English should be like Latin
– Dubious logic: The standard form is “more logical” than the
non-standard form

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Historical Reasoning
• Why should English be like it used to be?? All
languages change… Where would we stop?
• Should we say (Chaucer quote):
– He nevere yet no vileynye ne sayde.
he never yet no villainy not said
Roughly: ‘He never used rough language’
– In addition to being almost incomprehensible, it
shows double (triple even) negation, like I didn’t see
nobody; which we’re not supposed to say,
according to the prescriptivists.

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Example: other languages
• E.g. ‘no split infinitives”:
– Ok: to go boldly
– Supposedly bad: to boldly go
– Why? Latin infinitives are one word: e.g. amare ‘to love’.
This couldn’t be split by another word.

• Why make English like Latin? Consider:
– wehLla’-te. This means ‘I’ll have (a rope) there’ in the
language Hupa (related to Navajo, spoken in CA)
– Why not make English look like this? Or any other language
for that matter? Linguistically speaking, this is the same
type of thing; but clearly it doesn’t make sense.

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Dubious appeals to ‘Logic’
• Is the standard always ‘more logical’? Consider reflexive pronouns like ‘myself’:
Reflexive
Possessive
St. myself my car
yourself your car
himself his car
herself her car
Non-St.
myself my car
yourself your car
hisself his car
herself her car

--> In the non-standard variety, the reflexive form is always the same as the

possessive; this is more systematic than the standard, where this is true in
only three of the four cases above.

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Justification, Continued
• Consider the case of double negation again:
– I didn’t see nobody

• Think of this in the terms above:
– There’s no reason to believe the decree that this is ‘bad’

– Historically this was found in English
– Other languages (e.g. Spanish) have double negation as the
standard
– There’s nothing ‘less logical’ about having double negation
(unless some other languages are entirely illogical, which is not
the case).

• Let’s apply what we’ve learned in an example…

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An Example (for Practice)

Ali G
Comedian

Andy Rooney
Curmudgeon

(ref: HBO, Da Ali G Show; Episode 12, “Realness”);
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Example
• AG: Does you think the media has changed since
you first got in it?
• AR: “Does you think the media has changed?”?
DO you think the media has changed…
• AG: Whatever. Does…

• AR (interrupts): No, it’s English. The English
language would say “Do you think the media has
changed?”, not “Does you think the media has
changed.” <PAUSE, and with exasperation> Yes I
think the media has changed.

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Example, Part II
• AG: So what sorts of things does you think the
media should cover…
• AR <interrupting>: “DO you think the media…”
• AG: Um, yo, DO you think the media… I think
it’s an English/American thing though, isn’t it?
• AR: No no, no no. That’s English. The English
language is very clear. I have fifty books on the
English language if you would like to borrow
one <gestures towards bookcase>

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Keeping Score
1) The Does you think…? Part:
Fact: The dialect of English (a London one) that Ali G is
speaking/imitating does in fact have does with you.
In this way it is an English/American thing. Since it
is a perfectly good language, point to Ali G.
Score:

Ali G 1
Andy Rooney
0

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Keeping Score, II
2) The “…the media has changed…” part.
Fact: Real self-appointed grammar experts should

know that media began life as a plural. So for a
hardcore prescriptivist like Rooney, it should be “…
the media have changed…”.
In any case, -1 to Rooney for choosing what to complain
about arbitrarily. +1 to Ali G for just keeping it real.
Score:
Ali G 2
Andy Rooney -1

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More Dialogue, Same Results
(from later in the interview)
• AG: That’s quite racialist to be honest.
• AR: <scoffs> Oh, racist. “Racist’, not
“racialist”.
• AG: Yo, RACIALIST
Another interesting point

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Scorekeeping III
• Both racist and racialist appear to be used in
England; sometimes in the same text:
– “…Britain has been transformed into a racist society.”
– “…work for anti-racialist organizations…”

(quotes from M.A.E. Dummett, Frege: Philosophy of Language)
So it is a perfectly good word in different varieties of English
(the question of why the two vary is interesting).

Score (Final):
Ali G 3
Andy Rooney

-1

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Interim Conclusions
• The scientific study of language provides
a theory of the structures found in the
descriptive grammar of human language
• Prescriptive grammar has no place in this
enterprise
• Throughout the course, our discussions of
grammar will refer to the descriptive sense

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What this does not mean
• We are not saying that there is no such thing as
unhelpful, uninformative, ambiguous, or difficult
language; e.g.
– Uninformative:
• Q: What have you been doing lately?
• A: Stuff.

– Difficult (for memory reasons)
• The rat the cat the dog bit chased ate the cheese.
– Compare:
» The rat the cat chased ate the cheese; or
» This is the dog that bit the cat that chased the rat that ate the
cheese

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It also doesn’t mean that…
• We are not saying that ‘anything goes’ in any
context. It is also the case that some things are
more appropriate in some contexts than in others:
– E.g. starting a term paper with “inappropriate” words or
phrases
– Telling a friend on the phone that “An acquaintance
with whom I spoke earlier alluded to similar

possibilities at an earlier juncture.”
• But:These are points about (social) acceptability, not
grammaticality in the sense of being derived by one’s
linguistic competence.

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