I make this distinction, mainly because I’m adopted. I’ve never met my father, Albert (IIRC), but I’ve known my dad, Peter, for 32 years.
I gave a reason why I’ll have to rethink what I said in that post, but regarding your view that “Dog can run” is grammatically correct, I’d need to see a cite.
I would have thought that if I understand every word in a grammatically correct sentence, then I thereby have everything I need to know what the sentence itself means. Is that not right? I ask because I know what every word in “dog can run” means but I have no idea what the sentence itself would mean. It doesn’t appear to have any meaning to me.
Is the idea this?
________ is pointless.
What goes into the blank, whatever it is, is a noun phrase. If it’s a single word, then whatever goes in the blank is a noun. This is because the only role that can be filled before “is pointless” is the role of noun phrase. It doesn’t matter what the word or prhase is–it only matters what role it’s fulfilling, and the only role to fulfill there is that of noun phrase.
So not only is “Theology is pointless” grammatically correct, but so is “Girl is pointless.” And not only is “walking too quickly while whistling is pointless” grammitcally correct but so is “Walk dog snow is pointless”.
Is that the idea?
What about “furiously is pointless”? The -ly marks the spot in the sentence as requiring an adverb phrase, while the “is pointless” marks the same spot as requiring a noun phrase. Does this “contradiction” mean the sentence is ungrammatical?
Of course I could mean something like “to say ‘furiously,’ of all the things you mgiht say, would be a pointless endeavor.” So I guess the sentence is grammatical–or is it that it’s grammatical if “furiously” means one thing and nongrammatical if “furiously” means another thing? But for some reason I thought grammaticality isn’t ever supposed to turn on the meanings of terms and just on the roles they play in sentences. But then I’ve never been convinced I’m sure of all the consequences of that.
I’m supposed to be in bed right now.
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
Basically, yeah. The syntax is acceptable within the currently understood rules of English. What makes “Dog can run” sound weird is that the common semantic meaning of dog requires an article in front to make sense. But as soon as I tell you that Dog is the name of my cat, suddenly there’s a light switch and the sentence turns from possibly ungrammatical to perfectly correct.
We can say that singular count nouns that are not proper nouns always require an article or a word functioning in place of an article (such as a possessive pronoun or correlative such as “that”).
When you construct a sentence where an article is not used in such a circumstance, that sentence is not well-formed. (Under this rule, the proposed correct sentence “Dog can run” is only correct because in this sentence, “Dog” is a proper noun.)
This is, incidentally, not intended to be a prescriptive rule, but a descriptive one: speakers will not spontaneously produce sentences that break the rule.
Not sure what your point is. I understand exactly what that sentence means. It is, strictly speaking, true, because the set of “colorless green ideas” is empty hence every colorless green idea does in fact sleep furiously (and also non-furiously, and also doesn’t sleep, and also talks spuriously, and so on).
It’s grammatical, and I know the meaning of every word in the sentence, so I know exactly what it would take for the sentence to be true. It would have to be that either the set of colorless green ideas is empty, or else there is at least one colorless green idea and all those colorless green ideas sleep in a manner that expresses anger.
“Dog can run” I can’t interpret in the same way at all. I can’t tell you what would have to be the case in order for it to be true. I can’t tell you whether its true or not. (Another way to put it: I can translate the colorless green ideas sentence into predicate logic. I can’t see a way to translate “dog can run” into predicate logic. I’m not saying translatability into predicate logic is exactly the same thing as grammaticality, but I’m using that fact about predicate logic to illustrate the difference between the two sentences–a difference which at least in this case seems to amount to a difference between their status as grammatical.)
But this makes every string of words grammatical, since you could always assign meanings to the terms in them in much the same way you assigned meaning ot the term “dog”. Notice that you guys ar saying this possibility of assignment doesn’t make the sentence “potentially” grammatical, but grammatical simpliciter!
By the same logic, I can argue that “Dragon wilco x fjfjfjfj edible” is grammatically correct.
Is that not a grammatical rule?
For the (vast) majority of English speakers, you are correct: this is purely a question of usage. If we take the OP at face value, however, it appears that there is at least one English speaker for whom this is a grammar question. In the OP’s native English, the two cannot be used interchangeably.
Here we’re just disputing where the boundary is between “grammar” and “usage”, and I don’t think this is a substantive debate. I think that where you put the boundary is different from where most professional linguists would put it, but again, this is just a disagreement over terminology, not over facts.
Again, if we take the OP at face value, this is false. There is at least one American English speaker who treats Mom and Dad as proper nouns and not Mother and Father.
In sum, I think we’re agreeing on all the substantive facts and instead arguing over what gets to count as ‘grammar’ vs. ‘usage’ and what gets to count as ‘dialect’, and I think this has ceased to be productive. If I’m missing a substantive point here, please let me know.
I was concerned about this as well, but I engaged in a discussion of the question whether it’s “really” a grammatical issue or not because I see a general pattern on the SDMB of people rushing in with a “Papa Smurf always says” line about grammar whenever anyone asks anything about what may or not be grammar, and it’s the hypercorrectors that are as often as not apparently confused, despite their seeming (or feeling) more informed about the subject. Kind of aggravates me, so I try to discourage it. My point has been that it was not constructive-nor informative-to try to nail the OP on a misuse of the term “grammar.” It’s not even clearly a misuse.
There is an issue here that from a linguist’s point of view there is very little in language that can be called “wrong,” so long as there is a group of people who use and understand a particular construction. But people often come in with language questions hoping (perhaps implicitly) that people will agree with them that “X usage which annoys me is bad and I should feel free to correct people.”
However, “grammatically incorrect” can still be a valid label to slap on a disfavoured construction, so questions can be rephrased in terms of “grammar” with the (perhaps unrecognized) hope that “even if I can’t say it’s wrong, at least I can say it’s grammatically incorrect.” It’s like seeking permission to club someone with knowledge.
Because of this, in my view it’s important to defuse the “grammar” issue quickly.
No, you really can’t. “Dog the can run” is not grammatical under current English rules, because we don’t place the article after the noun.
Whenever anybody asks a language question, it’s referred to as a grammar question. That’s a problem.
Grammar questions are about rules and definitions. People can talk about what constitutes a noun or pronoun or a noun phrase and other subtleties that are agreed upon by virtually every knowledgeable commentator. You can look them up and give cites.
Questions of style and usage have no such answers. No such agreement in the first place. Something is grammatically correct whenever and whenever it is used. Style and usage depend on context. What may be allowable, even encouraged, in one context is deprecated in another. In addition, grammar changes slowly over time. Style and usage change from year to year.
There is simply no way of making a person understand that vast gulf of difference by calling everything a grammar issue. Context, as I’m fond of saying, is everything. If people don’t understand the context of a question about language, then how can they ever understand the answer, especially if the answer depends on context rather than rules?
From my perspective, making this distinction is the crucial first step. No discussion can even start without it.
You argued that “dog can run” is grammatical because “dog” might be referring to your cat, for example if the word is being used as a proper noun.
Now I argue that “Dog the can run” is grammatical because “the” might be referring to the number one, for example if the word is being used as a numerical term.
Why do you get to make your argument but I don’t get to make what appears to me to be the same argument?
If you don’t like that one, why don’t I just make this argument?
“Dog the can run” is grammatical because “Dog the” is the name of my neighbor’s fish.
“Dog the can run” is grammatical because “dog” can be a verb and “can” can be a noun used attributively as an adjective.
That’s another good reading showing that “dog the can run” is grammatical.
And I submit that every string is grammatical, if the argument Bosstone is making (as well as you?) is sound. I’ve already explained how I draw this conclusion.
Jumping ahead a little, I think the right response to my point here is to draw attention to the fact that not every word can be used in every grammatical role.
“The” can’t really be used as a number term in English. It’s just not one of the things “the” can mean.
Right?
This invites the question, how is it known whether “dog” referring to dogs and “dog” referring to being lightheartedly aggressive (I think that’s what it means?) are the same word or not? I ask because if they’re not the same word, then it’s not legitimate to say “dog” can be used both as a noun and as a verb. That is to presuppose there’s a single thing, the word “dog” being used in both cases. But what are the criteria for determining whether that presupposition is correct?
Context.
So really, the issue is whether name and noun are different grammatical categories. How do we know whether they are or not?
If they are different grammatical categories, then the OP should be told that his dialect makes a nonstandard grammatical distinction between dad and father.
If they aren’t different grammatical categories, then the OP should be told that his dialect makes a nonstandard semantic distinction between dad and father.
In either case, the straight answer to the OP’s question is “No, neither is standardly considered more grammatically correct.”
But to be as informative as possible, it would be good also to have it explained how we can know whether name and noun are different grammatical categories.