Malamud Intro to LinguisticsLecture 2. Notions of grammar• Missing century in the study of grammarGeoffrey Pullum: …almost everything most educated Americans believe about English grammar is wrong.• Goals: o to continue our introduction to the basic tenets of modern linguistics, o to disabuse you of some popular misconceptions about language.• Grammar: prescriptive vs. descriptive sci.lang FAQ: 3 Does linguistics tell people how to speak or write properly? No. Linguistics is descriptive, not prescriptive. Prescriptive grammar: Rules of proper usage distinguishing "good" grammar from "bad":1. "Good": He doesn't know. 2. "Bad": He don't know. Descriptive grammar: What native speakers know about their language in order to use it: 1. Grammatical: He doesn't know. (in standard written American English)He don't know. (in many styles and dialects, e.g., AAVE)2. Ungrammatical (regardless of dialect or style): *He not know. *He known't. *Not know he. E.g., do-support in questions• Four levels of "Correctness": (1) _____________________________________________________________________a. third-person singular /s/: "she goes," not "she go."b. no double negatives: "he didn't see anybody," not "he didn't see nobody."c. complete sentences(2) _____________________________________________________________________a. "who/whom did you see"b. "Winston tastes good like/as a cigarette should"c. "the data is/are unreliable"d. "I disapprove of him/his doing it"e. "get it done as quick/quickly as possible"(3) _____________________________________________________________________a. "between you and I"b. "me and Harry went downtown"c. "was" for "said"(4) _____________________________________________________________________a. prohibition of dangling prepositionsb. "I shall" vs. "you will"c. "It is I"d. prohibition on singular “their”e. prohibition of split infinitives 1• "Correctness" in the world's languages: (1) Pidgins and creoles:a. Haitian Creole (6+ million speakers in Haiti and New York City)b. Tok Pisin (2 million speakers in Papua New Guinea)c. Jamaican Creole or Patois (2 million speakers)d. Palenquero (3,000 speakers in Colombia)(2) Unwritten languages:a. Ilocano (5.3 million speakers, Philippines)b. Chagga (800,000 speakers, Tanzania)c. Buang (10,000 speakers, Papua New Guinea)(3) Written languages with no academies:a. English (400 million speakers)b. Marathi (65 million speakers)(4) Languages with academies:a. French (109 million speakers; academy established 1635)b. Spanish (266 million speakers; academy established 1713)c. Hungarian (14.4 million speakers; academy established 1830)d. Hebrew (2.7 million speakers; academy established 1953)(5) Languages codified to preserve an archaic form:a. Latinb. Old Church Slavonicc. Sanskrit• Linguistics has its roots in language preservation:o Panini, an Indian grammarian of the fifth or sixth century B.C. o The purpose of his grammar was to preserve knowledge of the language of the Hindu religious canon (Vedic Sanskrit).Goals of grammarians were 1. to codify the principles of languages, so as to show the system beneath "the apparent chaos of usage"2. to provide a means of settling disputes over usage3. to "improve" the language by pointing out common errors• Prescriptive agenda almost always has an aspect of social gatekeeping. o A literal (and fatal) example of language as gatekeeper, Judges 12: 6 they said, "All right, say `Shibboleth.'" If he said, "Sibboleth," because he could not pronounce the word correctly, they seized him and killed him at the fords of the Jordan. Forty-two thousand Ephraimites were killed at that time. o "shibboleth" = an arbitrary linguistic marker that distinguishes one group from another. o A 20th-century parallel to the Biblical shibboleth story took place in the Dominican Republic in 1937, when tens of thousands of Haitians were massacred on the basis of whether or not they could roll the /r/ in the Spanish word for "parsley." 2• Why are most linguists reluctant to take the step from description to prescription? - is it a bit as if doctors were describing the medical conditions, but not prescribing any treatmens? - A social or regional dialect is not a medical condition.o Language change is not "corruption" or "decay", but a natural and inevitable process. o Some language mavens sometimes invent rules: pseudo-correctness. • Singular “their” and linguistics: Henry Churchyard, Steven Pinkero The use of "they" or "their" with an indefinite third person antecedent• The grammar (and logic) of quantifiers like "every" is actually quite subtle and difficult to get right.  The ancient Greek (and Roman) logicians (and grammarians) couldn’t get it right, nor could the logicans of Medieval Europe.  The first adequate quantificational logic: Gottloeb Frege and Bertrand Russell.  The relationship between the grammar and the logic of quantificational expressions: topic of research to this day. • Prescriptive rules exist independent of linguistic motivation: members of the language community who accept this rule will make social judgments based on it.  Not every pet peeve of the language mavens is an arbitrary prejudice.  Speakers and writers may use language badly. There were tears strolling down their faces.That is a mute point.I may look calm, but beneath this cool exterior is a churning iceberg ready to explode! • How can we distinguish a mistake from normal speech or writing? By looking for a system behind the use: o one-time occurrence vs. systematic use by many writers and speakers.• Linguists want to describe and explain normal (and good) language use. Language vs. dialect • Non-linguists: Language as "the prestige dialect of some language" (whether the user of the term acknowledges this or not).Dialect as "a non-prestige dialect of some language." • For linguists, every utterance occurs in some (social and geographical) dialect. • Nonstandard dialects: less logical? simplified versions of the standard?• The rules by which nonstandard dialects work are often more logical or more complex.o An example of greater logic: hisself, theirselveso An example of greater complexity: double negative (I don't see nothing).Many "standard" languages use double negatives, including French, Spanish, and Russian.3• Attitudes toward language usage as a kind of fashion:o different speaking styles – depending on the situation, audience, and purpose o appropriate in a given