My Humble Opinion about the Prescriptivism/Descriptivism Debate

I’m not posting this in GD because:

  1. My points in this post are not that well developed, and not that important

  2. 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.

I may just be punch drunk…worked 17 hours today…but “you shouldn’t use a split infinitive.” cracks me the frig up…and if I ever do it could someone please tell me.

Yeah, I know you didn’t want to be taken wholly serious with this, but that’s OK, I don’t want you to get offended by my response

Hey, I found an alternative way to refute your argument. It is as follows:

Who gives you or anyone the authority to tell me or anyone else what I can and can’t say? Did you invent English? What gives someone the right to tell us what the “rules” are? You cling to your doctrine of unsplit infinitives and non-dangling prepositions, but nobody has the right to decide what static point in history we should be immitating? Should we all go back to the days of Chaucer? or shall we go further and all learn the accepted grammar of the days of Beowulf. Where does it stop? Are we all uneducated fools because we use the plural pronoun “you” to refer to one person instead of the “more correct” thee, thou, thy, and thine? Do some research and you will find some of the greatest wizards of the English language were renegades of their day, Shakespeare ring any bells?

P.S. if your looking for a fun time, try looking up the etymology of the following words:

Adder - Nadder
Apron - Napron
Nickname - Ichname

and don’t forget the forthcoming…

nother - other

A hundred years from now, people will laugh at the fact that it took us so long to adopt “they” and “their” as third person, singular, neuter pronouns

Did anybody leave THEIR book out here?