Descriptivists: When does an "error" become "nonstandard usage" become "alternative"?

Factual Questions
21

Certainly not my impression. I don’t think most people who use these words have any intention of suggesting an actual range of probability.

My point is that casual speech doesn’t require any such precision, so it just wouldn’t happen. There’s “definitely yes,” “definitely no,” and a whole imprecise mass in the middle. Human communication isn’t science. We don’t have to speak in statistically precise, and we usually don’t, and it seems to me there’s no support for capturing ordinary words with customarily imprecise meanings.

22

It’s a matter of intentions. Consider the differences in the meanings of these two sets of sentences:

  1. Nobody will help me! I shall drown!

  2. Nobody shall help me! I will drown!

One of them is the desperate cry of someone who realizes that no one is coming to rescue her or him from drowning. The other is the final statement of someone determined to take his or her own life by drowning. Can you “hear” the difference?

23

Exapno Mapcase, your post is beautiful! I wish I could begin to think that clearly again, but to be able to write it – oh my! Are you a teacher?

I agree. I do not include in that group those who write captions for television. (Personal irritant)

I guess that would depend on what you mean by error. This statement was overheard in my father’s store in West Tennessee many years ago. An old man was referring to his wife:

That is not a standard West Tennessee dialect, but I had no trouble understanding the meaning of his sentence. But to say that it is error free? If it had been “error free,” there would have been no poetry.

There are plenty of kids these days that speak in a street dialect and they understand each other just fine. They may be error free. I will never know. It is not formal English.

ee cummings broke many rules with his poetry. But I suspect that he knew the rules very well before he ever broke the first one.

There were plenty of times when I was teaching that I could set aside the rules of grammar and allow for dialect and the creative juices to run a little wild. But I didn’t let my students kid themselves into thinking that “anything goes.”

24

Of course I can’t “hear” the difference. This distinction doesn’t exist in modern standard English, if it ever did. I see absolutely no reason to follow this rubric.

This statement makes no sense. Poetry and error have nothing to do with each other. He was clearly using a syntax that is standard in his dialect. Your personal aesthetics might label it “poetic” but that has nothing to do with whether there are any errors.

What does this have to do with the subject at hand? Poets and other language artists play with the language to create artistic effect. To some extent you might say they are creating new dialects. But it has nothing to do with “error” as a concept and it has nothing to do with “error” in naturally occurring dialects.

(And, by the way, the poet wrote his own name as E. E. Cummings.)

There were plenty of times when I was teaching that I could set aside the rules of grammar and allow for dialect and the creative juices to run a little wild. But I didn’t let my students kid themselves into thinking that “anything goes.”
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25

Ascenray’s just being difficult. First he claims we have no need for subtlety inbetween “yes”, “no,” and “maybe,” then he doesn’t see the difference between “i’m gonna drown” and “i’ll go drown,” and finally he doesn’t understand how a native speaker can be understood and still be in error, particularly when he knowingly makes the errors on purpose. Ignore him.

26

The third sentence contradicts the second. By your own admission, “ain’t” is not a “fad.” Nevertheless, I can see the merits of the “pro writer” standard. Namely, writers will use new usages if they are useful. Hence, they’re not reluctant to adopt words like ‘proactive’ or ‘reactionary’.

27

This is a rather serious mischaracterization of what I’ve said.

You’ve proposed a rubric, namely:

– that as far as I can tell, is unsupported by actual usage. I’ve been speaking English all my life at several level of formality and in a couple different locations, and I don’t see how anyone would interpret these words with this level of precision. There’s absolutely no support for the proposition that when a native English speaker says “may” that he or she intends that the following action is more likely that if he or she had used “might.”

Again, this is a mischaracterization.

I said that I see no difference between

No native English speaker that I have interacted with personally would understand the distinction being proposed here. I suspect that this is an obsolete distinction, one that exists in some non-American dialects, or one – like many other “usage rules” – was invented from whole cloth by some language busybody.

Alex, the OP asked about descriptivism. I suggest you reread Post No. 7 and the further refinement of the proposition by Dr. Drake.

And Zoe’s tale from West Tennessee offers data on usage, but offers nothing on “intentional error.”

28

Except that words don’t live in some free function space. They live only in context.

The contexts of English are multifold. Here in print and in the context of this thread, the two sentences are clearly distinct and have separate meanings. You say that these meanings may not be heard in ordinary spoken English and you’re probably right. But even in spoken English many levels of discourse can be found and the perceptions and understanding of listeners will vary greatly.

In written English context is even more important since it lacks the visual cues and stress emphases that make up so much of spoken language. Speakers can be established as paying attention to such nuances. Or they could simply be British, a culture that has preserved this particular nuance to a far greater extent than Americans. Or the writer could set up a scene in which this more formal usage is being used as the emphasis itself to tell the listener what the intended action is.

There is no one English just as there is no one correct English. Words and usages and meanings and pronunciations exist that are not universal. Actually, this is every word and usage and meaning and pronunciation in the English language. That’s quite the exception.

29

That’s exactly what you said.

You said we don’t need anything beside “yes,” “no,” and “maybe.”

30

You’re lecturing a descriptivist on context, Exapno?

Zoe hasn’t offered any context for this distinction. She’s offered up an old canard that I have never seen in any other context but this particular pedagogical joke.

Indeed, these meanings, so far have I can tell, have absolutely no currency outside this specific bit of persiflage. However, it was implied that this distinction has some kind of validity in English that’s actually used in society, not just in schoolmarm humor English.

I can believe that British English might include some nuances and distinctions that don’t exist in American English, and vice versa. What I have never been shown is actual evidence that even British English speakers perceive and use such a distinction except when they’re making fun of Irish English.

31

acsenray, the difference between will and shall is the same difference as between would and should.

I would go to the bank, but I can’t. (I want to.)

I should go to the bank, but I won’t. (I need to.)

I will go to the bank, because I want to. (I want to.)

I shall go to the bank, because I have to. (I need to.)

Of course, American English has tended to make “shall” obsolete, and substitute “will” for both meanings.

In more structured uses (like legal situations), shall serves to distinguish things that are required.

Will is a description (this is what happens), shall is a proscription (this is what must happen).

Alex_Dubinsky, you’re a bit unfairly characterizing what acsenray has said. You are paraphrasing his remarks with what are to your ears semantic equivalents, but those semantic equivalents are not shared by acsenray. The you are ridiculing acsenray for your paraphrase of the remarks rather than what acsenray means.

Alex_Dubinsky said:

Cite where. That’s not what was said.

What was intended was that your list of probability is too finely parsed and too specific in intent. People may mean different values of maybe, but they are not necessarily consistent in word choice to convey that level of probability. They might in one context use “might” to suggest something desirable but difficult, and in another case use “might” to indicate something very unlikely.

Again, a mischaracterization. acsenray is saying he doesn’t equate “will” with “gonna” vs “shall” with “'ll go”. He agrees there is a semantic difference in your paraphrases, but he doesn’t relate that semantic difference to the words “will” vs “shall”.

32

The idea of any “standard” status is inherently prescriptive, so it would be difficult to say when a descriptivist believes a usage evolves from “wrong” to “alternative” or “standard”. What many here seem to misunderstand about descriptive grammar is that for the linguist it is a tool for attempting to understand the structure of language. By this definition, all linguists are descriptivists, as they are not interested in telling people how they should speak. On the other hand, just agreeing that any utterance sufficiently clear to be understood correctly by listeners is automatically correct does not suffice for them. A linguist would want to know why “less” instead of “fewer” sounds so horrible to some people, at least to the point of determining to what extent it has been deliberately taught and drilled in as opposed to learned naturally through one’s exposure to the language.