Grammar/Vocabulary ??? - Page 6

Mike Frezon · 05-14-2008, 09:58 PM

I think of grammarians as the keepers of the flame.

Most people know the rules to a certain extent and follow them as much as they desire. Some more, some less. So, the grammarians are around to keep things (read: deviant language behavior) in check...to avoid that chaos I referenced earlier.

I don't think that all "strict grammarians" in the world could prevent the evolution of grammar. It is a work-in-progress. Always has been, always will be. Like fashion. The rules change. But there always needs to be someone there to enforce them...to remind others of the "right way"...to keep things in line to avoid the inevitable breakdown that would occur in their absence.

Above all else, grammar is fun. It is a challenge to use words with as much care and respect as possible. It is a challenge that inspires. To those who don't agree, there is sloppiness of words and punctuation and expression of thought. And that's okay, for them. It is all a matter of degree--as it is for most things in life.

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BrianW · 05-15-2008, 07:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by KurtEP

It's a matter of definition, like many arguments. A strict grammarian will allow no deviation, hence there will be no evolution in the language.

This just isn't true. Strict grammarians come and go, but languages live for centuries or millini... millenni... milen... thousands of years. The rules grammarians seek to enforce are only the rules for today, a snapshot of the language at a very specific point in time. Strictly adhering to today's rules doesn't preclude change in the future. It only standardizes today's rules so that a broader group of people can have access to effective communication.

That's a very good thing.

Jeff Gatie · 05-15-2008, 09:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BrianW

This just isn't true. Strict grammarians come and go, but languages live for centuries or millini... millenni... milen... thousands of years. The rules grammarians seek to enforce are only the rules for today, a snapshot of the language at a very specific point in time. Strictly adhering to today's rules doesn't preclude change in the future. It only standardizes today's rules so that a broader group of people can have access to effective communication.

That's a very good thing.

Exactly. It's not as if the Oxford Dictionary and the Little Brown Handbook are only on edition number one, and the fact there will be more editions to come in the future does not mean you can just ignore the current ones.

Bob McLaughlin · 05-15-2008, 09:46 AM

We just won free tickets to a local children's festival. The title of the email: "YOUR A WINNER".

Mike Frezon · 05-15-2008, 10:12 AM

In his introduction to the first edition of The Elements of Style (Strunk & White), E.B. White writes of his old professor (Strunk) that "although one of the most inflexible and choosy of men, (he) was quick to acknowledge the fallacy of inflexibility and the danger of doctrine.

"It is an old observation," he wrote, "that the best writers sometimes disregard the rules of rhetoric. When they do so, however, the reader will usually find in the sentence some compensating merit, attained at the cost of violation. Unless he is certain of doing as well, he will probably do best to follow the rules."

===========

And it should be noted that when Strunk first had the original book privately printed in 1918 at Cornell University, the final chapter was one on spelling. It was discarded by White and replaced with the "Approach to Style" section.

The section on spelling included, among other things, the following rule:

Quote:

Write to-day, to-night, to-morrow (but not together) with hyphen.

The loss of this once-prevalent device within just the past 100 years, I believe, shows how the rules of grammar continue to evolve from generation to generation.

KurtEP · 05-15-2008, 10:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BrianW

This just isn't true. Strict grammarians come and go, but languages live for centuries or millini... millenni... milen... thousands of years. The rules grammarians seek to enforce are only the rules for today, a snapshot of the language at a very specific point in time. Strictly adhering to today's rules doesn't preclude change in the future. It only standardizes today's rules so that a broader group of people can have access to effective communication.

That's a very good thing.

Strictly adhering to a specific set of rules and a specific vocabulary inherently means you will stagnate. Once you change, you are no longer strictly adhering to the specific rules (and yes, I'm splitting hairs). My position is that the rules are useful and necessary in most applications, but they do not constitute a natural law or anything, and must therefore be flexible. We are not dealing with mathematics when we are talking about the rules of grammar. Unfortunately, many people think we are.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bob McLaughlin

We just won free tickets to a local children's festival. The title of the email: "YOUR A WINNER".

Nice.

Jeff Gatie · 05-15-2008, 10:56 AM

Kurt, I can shed a little light on it (and this lights up a lot of other things) with one of my favorite quotes - "If everyone knows that nobody is perfect, why do so many people go out of their way to demonstrate it."

There is a fine line between calling for rules to adapt to an ever changing use of language . . . and making excuses for being a shitty writer.

Mike Frezon · 05-15-2008, 12:28 PM

Here, from Strunk's original work, is another example of a convention no more:

Quote:

Write any one, every one, some one, some time (except the sense of formerly) as two words.

Again, this is one of those rules which just gave way over the last hundred years or so--even with the strictest of all grammarians, William Strunk, Jr. advising his Ivy League students against the dangers.

andrew markworthy · 05-15-2008, 03:51 PM

Quote:

So, who creates these grammatical "rules" and where does their authority spring from?

As far as English-speakers are concerned, a basic answer is 'the Romans'. A lot of formal rules of English grammar are an attempt to emulate Latin, seen as the pure 'mother tongue' (strange how various Germanic languages get conveniently forgotten). This leads to anomalous rules like 'don't split an infinitive' which whilst having validity in Latin (where a split infinitive sounds plain wrong) is plain capricious in English. We aren't aware of these rules in the form of a formal written document, because custom and practice have taken the place of books of grammar. However, if you really want a book on good grammatical practice, take a look in any decent bookstore and you will find there are many publications on the subject.

I can never decide which side I support in the grammar debate. I wince when I hear really bad grammatical errors such as data is, none are, ten items or less etc, but I equally have no sympathy with petty obsessions such as never ending a sentence with a preposition. Nor do I find regional variants of grammar offensive; it's not as if someone with a regional dialect is being lazy in their speech, they're simply consistently following the rules of their regional dialect.

Linked to this last point - I imagine that a lot of Americans find the Brit habit of saying e.g. 'got' rather than 'gotten' annoying. Certainly to a lot of Brits 'gotten' sounds ungrammatical (which it isn't - and Brits will quite happily say 'ill-gotten gains' without pausing to think about it).

Diallo B · 05-15-2008, 03:59 PM

way to bring this thread back from the grave...

andrew markworthy · 05-15-2008, 04:04 PM

Quote:

Write any one, every one, some one, some time (except the sense of formerly) as two words.

Interesting - we would now also write the phrase in parentheses as:

Quote:

(except in the sense of formerly)

We would feel the need to reinforce the phrase with 'in' and make the word 'formerly' stand out so that there would be no danger of it being misread as an adverb qualifying the previous phrase.

Incidentally, I would still use two words rather than one in certain circumstances. For example, in the phrase each and every one I hear this as two distinct words stressing the total inclusivity of things - using 'everyone' lessens the impact, I think.

Mike Frezon · 05-15-2008, 07:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by andrew markworthy

Incidentally, I would still use two words rather than one in certain circumstances. For example, in the phrase each and every one I hear this as two distinct words stressing the total inclusivity of things - using 'everyone' lessens the impact, I think.

Andrew: I can't imagine an instance--using your example--in which you wouldn't use the two distinct words: "every" and "one." There, of course, are going to be instances where you would say, for example:

"Any one moment in grammatical history should not supercede another."

..in which "any" and "one" would not be joined.

But I think Professor Strunk was referring to the growing practice of grammatical heretics of the day wanting to join those groupings of words together when referring to their present-day compounds: anyone, everyone and someone.