I’m not posting this in GD because:
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My points in this post are not that well developed, and not that important
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I don’t expect anyone to respond to this post anyway.
Anyway, here’s an expression of my humble opinion on the descriptivism/prescriptivism debate (actually, “clash” is more like it) in questions of grammar and usage:
A. You can not refute “Here is how X should be used” by saying “But that’s not how X is used.” It is entirely possible for people to by systematically wrong about things.
B. You can not refute “Here is how X should be used for reasons W Y and Z” by saying “But W Y and Z do not accurately track the way language works.” The claim was not about “how language works” but rather, about “how X should be used.” How language works is a different subject entirely than how various usages should be applied.
An illustration as to what I mean:
Take the following extreme example. Say most people who know what a “split infinitive” is would say, if asked, that “you shouldn’t use a split infinitive.” And say, if asked why, they would say “because we should try to use Latin grammatical principles as far as possible while maintaining a language which is recognizable as English.”
I think there would be a whole lot of things wrong with this rule and this justification. But I think the following do not successfully refute the validity of either:
“People use split infinitives all the time and are understood just fine.” The view in question did not say “People don’t generally use split infinitives, and when they do, it is hard to understand them.” The view didn’t say this or anything implying it. Rather, the view simply says “You shouldn’t use split infinitives.” It is entirely possible for this to be true even if almost no one ever actually heeds the rule.*
“The principle ‘track Latin grammar as far as possible without becoming unrecognizable as English’ does not conform to the way the transformation or lack thereof of the English language actually procedes.” The view in question did not claim that the English language actually, over time, tends to maintain conformity with Latin. Rather, the view is that it should do so. The view does not make any claim at all about “how langauge works.” It makes a claim only about how it ought to work. The view is not even necessarily born of some kind of ignorance as to “how language works.” A person could be apprised of all the relevant facts, yet still wistfully hope that English comes to conform to Latin grammar. It could well have turned out, in some possible world, that this fond hope came to be a standard cultural assumption, or something like that. In such a case, I would even have called it “correct” (for those people in that world in taht situation) to say “English should conform to Latin”–even as, at the same time, in that world, the language in fact does no such thing.
To be clear: I think the rule and its justification which I just gave are poor ones. But not because they don’t reflect actual usage, and not because the justification fails to reflect the way language actually works. Rather, IMO, the rule is poor because its justification is poor, and its justification is poor because it barely makes sense: what does it mean to conform to Latin grammar “as far as possible without ceasing to be recognizable as English?” Since Latin and English grammar are incompatible, this justificatory rule sets up two incompatible grammatical standards on the language. Rules should not entail contradictions, but this one seems to. Now, with reflection, a more clearly deliniated principle could probably be designed which prescribed exactly which aspects of grammar are to be considered constitutive of “recognizable as English” and which are to be considered to be such that they “should conform to Latin grammar.” But clearing up this distinction would, (I have deep faith,) inevitably expose this kind of principle as necessitating hopelessly and uselessly ad hoc thinking about linguistic norms.
The end.
-FrL-
*I would say it could have turned out to be true, even if no one ever actually heeds the rule, in much the same sense that “One should not lie solely for personal gain” is true even though almost no one gets through life without failing to heed that rule many times.