Prescriptivism and Descriptivism

1. Prescriptivism and Descriptivism September 19, 2012

2. Evolution Wrap • Note: survival of the “fittest” • = that which fits in best in its environment, survives… • Not necessarily that which is strongest, fastest, etc. • Ex: cockroaches in a nuclear holocaust. • Or: mammals after the extinction of the dinosaurs. • Adaptibility is what matters. • Some of the distinctive features of language--creativity, displacement, etc.--enable human beings to: • communicate information about different environments • develop solutions to new problems • adapt to new situations

3. Moving On • So far, we’ve learned: • Language is biological • Everyone learns a language as they grow up… • but no one teaches it to them. • The main points to cover today: • All forms of language are very complex. • And rule-based. (=systematic) • Part of learning a language involves learning these rules (the grammar). • For native speakers, the rules are in their heads!

4. The Rules? • Since kids are not taught the rules of their native language explicitly… • they have to figure out the rules on their own. • Our goal, as linguists, is to figure out what they’ve figured out. • (which is not always easy) • One basic tool we have: grammaticality judgments • Native speakers of a language have a sense of whether or not particular strings of sounds and words are acceptable expressions in their language. • plab, forch, *fmort, *ptud

5. Grammaticality Judgments • Examples at the sentence level: • Grammatical: People in Calgary are friendly. • Ungrammatical: *Calgary in friendly people are. • How do you feel about these? • Winter is a very cold time of year. • Sad people sing the often blues. • Green eggs like I and ham. • Each Nutch in a Nitch knows that some other Nutch would like to move into his Nitch very much. • One important point: sentences can be grammatical without meaning anything.

6. The Origins of Grammar • Another important (technical) distinction: • A grammatical sentence is one that can be generated by the linguistic rules inside of a native speaker’s head. • An ungrammatical sentence cannot. • Note: a sentence is not ungrammatical simply because it has been ruled “bad” by decree. • So. How do you feel about these? • The Enterprise’s mission is to boldly go where no man has gone before. • Who do you trust? • Mick can’t get no satisfaction.

7. Standards • The rules of “grammar” that we learn in English class first emerged in London in the 17th and 18th centuries. • Note: Latin used to be the language that all educated people had to learn. • Latin’s supremacy was being challenged by English… • So the educated classes decided to incorporate the rules of Latin into “educated” English grammar. • Examples: • don’t split infinitives • don’t end a sentence with a preposition • no double negatives

8. Prescriptive vs. Descriptive • Prescriptive grammar = • Arbitrary rules imposed upon a language by someone (or some group of people) who thinks they ought to be adhered to. • Descriptive grammar = • Linguists’ description of the rules of grammar inside of native speakers’ heads. • Designed to account for native speaker intuitions about grammaticality judgments. • Descriptive = natural grammar • Prescriptive = artificial grammar

9. The Problems with Prescription • There are problems with applying Latin rules to English grammar. • The rules are not organic. • Note: English is not Latin. • So: native speakers can get confused about how to apply them. • Language is constantly changing… • So the (arbitrary) standards can also change. • Prescriptive rules don’t capture most of the grammatical patterns actually exhibited by language. • Most importantly: prescriptive rules are not scientific.

10. Problem #1: Confusion • A prescriptive rule: don’t end a sentence with a preposition. • A prescriptive fix: • Natural: That’s the house we lived in. • “Fixed”: That’s the house in which we lived. • How well does this work? • Paul McCartney: “…and in this ever-changing world in which we live in…” • Winston Churchill: “This is the sort of English up with which I will not put!”

11. Hypercorrection • Another problem: speakers can sometimes correct forms that aren’t (prescriptively) wrong to begin with. • This is known as hypercorrection. • One example: the case of conjoined pronouns. • Pronouns in English have two forms: • Subject: I, he, she, we, they • Object: me, him, her, us, them • The object pronouns appear in the following frames: • Bob annoys me. (*Bob annoys I.) • Karen wants to come with us. (*with we.)

12. Unforeseen Consequences • Conjoined pronouns: • Bob and I, Karen and you, etc. • A prescriptive rule: for conjoined pronouns, use the form that ought to be used when the pronoun stands on its own. • Examples: • Good: John and I went to the movies. • (Because: I went to the movies.) • However: • “Bad”: John and me went to the movies. • “Bad”: Me and John went to the movies. • (Because: *Me went to the movies.)

13. Unforeseen Consequences • In the objective case: • Good: Larry was talking to John and me. • (Because: Larry was talking to me.) • However, you often hear people say: • “Bad”: Larry was talking to John and I. • Or Bill Clinton: “Give Al Gore and I a chance to bring America back.” • What’s going on here? • People have interpreted the rule as: • “and me” is bad; “and I” is good (regardless of case)

14. Problem #2: Shifting Standards • “Ain’t” is prescriptively bad. • “Ain’t ain’t a word, because it ain’t in the dictionary.” • However, “ain’t” used to be popular among the British upper class (about 100 years ago). • Another example: runnin’ vs. running, walkin’ vs. walking • And yet another: double negation (or multiple negation) • From Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (late 14th century): • He nevere yet no villeynye ne sayde. • Translation: He never yet no villany not said. • From Greg Schiano, professional football coach (last week): “I don’t know that that’s not something that’s not done in the National Football League.”

15. Double Negatives • Prescriptivists currently frown upon double negatives. • The argument against them is based on logic: • The negation of a negation is a positive. • Q: Why would a native speaker of a language say the exact opposite of what they mean? • (and why are listeners never be confused by the meaning of a double negative?) • A: There’s more going on in double negatives than it at first appears. • Q: How would a prescriptivist fix the following sentence? • I can’t get no satisfaction.

16. Problem #3: Missing Patterns • Prescriptivist rules do a poor job of accounting for many of the patterns we find in natural language. • Here’s one prescriptive rule which misses a consistent pattern: • “Incorrect”: I feel bad (about the accident). • “Correct”: I feel badly (about the accident). • Why? The verb “feel” should be modified by an adverb (“badly”), not an adjective (“bad”). • But is bad/badly modifying the verb or the subject of the sentence?

17. Different Standards • Rules for a standard form of a language… • Normally describe the variety of language used by the group in power. • Other forms of the language are non-standard. • And are often identified with social, regional or ethnic groups. • Linguists have discovered that all forms of language (standard or not) are rule-based and orderly. •  Non-standard forms of the language are not simply mistake-ridden versions of the standard form. •  There is no linguistic reason to consider one variety of language superior to another.

18. Quick Write:Appalachian English • Appalachian English is a variety of English traditionally spoken in the Appalachian mountains. • Developed (and maintained) unique features due to isolation from outside communities. • One interesting feature: • a-prefixing…

19. AAVE • Another variety of English that has (traditionally) been low on the prestige scale is African-American Vernacular English (AAVE). • a.k.a. Black Vernacular English (BVE), Ebonics • Predominantly spoken by African-Americans • but not all African-Americans… • and some others, as well. • AAVE has a variety of interesting features... • some familiar: multiple negation, ain’t as an auxiliary • others are less familiar…

20. AAVE Verbs • Verb conjugation: third personal singular verbs lack an [-s] marker. • Ex: He look, it do, she have • “Paradigm leveling” • = making a set of related forms more uniform • (similar to “he don’t”/”she don’t”) • Under certain conditions, the verb “to be” can be deleted. • Ex: you so crazy, she workin’, he lucky • In the same conditions, “to be” can be contracted in standard English: • You’re so crazy, she’s working, he’s lucky…

21. AAVE: Habitual Be • AAVE also has a form of “to be” that standard English does not. • “habitual” be • Habitual be expresses something that the subject does on a regular basis. • Examples: • He be working at Tim Horton’s. • She be late. (= She is usually late.) • She late. (= She’s late (right now).) • Do you be tired? (=Are you often tired?)

22. Descriptive Benefits • Language tends to operate in patterns, even if they are: • non-standard • pathological • Descriptive linguistics enables us to understand how those patterns work. • Even if you want to change the world, you’re better off understanding how it works to begin with. • History of economics analogy.

23. To Be Fair • Standards are useful because they provide a single form of the language to teach to non-native speakers. • They help establish uniformity in the written language. • They can help clear up confusions. • for instance: supposably • They also help to distinguish those who have mastered the arbitrary rules from those who haven’t. • (for better or worse) • Otherwise: • They are not useful for (scientific) linguistic analysis.