What is Grammar

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What is Grammar?

• Small-group work If you were to plan a class
  (for American college freshmen, say) in English
  Grammar, what would you teach?

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Prescriptivism vs. Descriptivism
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Descriptive Grammars

• The grammar (in a linguistic sense) of a language
  consists of
• Sounds and sound patterns (phonetics),
• Basic units of meaning (morphology),
• The rules to combine these to form sentences with
  the desired meaning (syntax what most of us
  think of when we say grammar).
• It represents our linguistic competence.

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• A descriptive grammar is a model of the
  linguistic capacity of the speakers of a given
  language.
• Thus, it does not describe how you should speak,
  but how you do speak.
• Examples
• Where did you get that from?
• If I was you, Id take lots of linguistics
  classes.
• I been studying all day.

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Prescriptive GrammarsIts not raining hard
enough to come in out of.

• Generally, what we think of as grammar is
  prescriptive it tells us how we should speak.
• Most of the present rules in prescriptive English
  grammar come from Lowths 1762 A Short
  Introduction to English Grammar with Critical
  Notes, and were influenced by Latin.

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Teaching Grammars

• Used to learn another language or dialect.
• Prescriptive in the sense that they tell learners
  how to speak, from sounds to sentences.
• Descriptive in the sense that they usually teach
  actual usage.

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Prescriptive vs. Descriptive GrammarsPrestige
Dialects

• Prescriptive grammars generally describe the
  rules of a languages prestige dialect.
• Whats a prestige dialect?
• Thought question Which groups of Americans do
  you think have the worst grammar?
• The Golden Rule

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Standard Dialect

• Linguists make no distinction between different
  dialects - none are linguistically superior or
  inferior, and all follow consistent internal
  grammatical rules.
• BUT, it follows from the Golden Rule that fluency
  in the prestige (or standard) dialect will
  probably be beneficial. (Which is different from
  saying one should only know the standard dialect.)

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Which of the following statements are
prescriptive? Which are descriptive?

• Its me is ungrammatical. Its I is the
  correct way to say this.
• People who say aint may suffer from some
  negative social consequences because many native
  speakers associate aint with the dialects of
  the working classes.
• In casual styles of speaking, English speakers
  frequently end sentences with prepositions
  ending sentences with prepositions is avoided in
  formal styles.
• Between you and me is correct between you and
  I is ungrammatical.

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Writing vs. SpeechFight!

• One of the basic assumptions of modern
  linguistics is that speech is primary and writing
  is secondary in human communication.
• Why?

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Why?

• History Spoken language has probably been used
  by humans for hundreds of thousands of years
  writing, about 6,000.
• Writing does not exist everywhere that spoken
  language exists. No societies have written but
  not spoken language many have the opposite.
• Writing must be taught, whereas spoken language
  is acquired naturally.

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• So why do we hold writing in such high regard?
• Writing is the result of deliberation, correction
  and revision while speech is spontaneous thus,
  writing is usually better-worded and organized
  than speech.
• Writing is intimately associated with education
  and educated speech.
• Writing, being physical, lasts and can be
  preserved for a very long time, making it
  resistant to change.
• (All of which is to say, this talk about equality
  of dialect doesnt apply to writing. In
  particular, it doesnt apply to the writing
  youll have to do in this course.)

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Language Universals

• Descriptive grammar, then, is an attempt to
  describe the laws of a given language.
• The big question in linguistics is Are there a
  set of fundamental laws underlying all human
  language?
• This set of laws constitutes a universal grammar.

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Evidence for a Universal Grammar

• All human languages share some fundamental
  concepts all have things that can be
  grammatically classified as nouns and verbs, for
  example.
• Children can and do become fluent speakers in a
  very short time with no explicit language
  instruction thus it stands to reason that there
  is an innate language blueprint.
• Similarities between acquisition of spoken and
  sign language.

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Linguistic Signs

• The words of a language and the pieces that make
  up these words represent a connection between a
  group of sounds, which give the word its form,
  and a meaning.
• For example, the sounds represented in writing by
  d, o, g, occurring in that order give the form of
  the word dog, which we associate with a meaning
  a 4-legged animal that goes woof.
• The combination of a form and a meaning connected
  in this way gives what may be called a linguistic
  sign.

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Arbitrariness in Language

• An important fact about linguistic signs is that
  the connection between form and meaning is
  typically arbitrary the meaning is not in any
  way predictable from the form, nor is the form
  dictated by the meaning.

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For example

• What is water in English is eau in French, Wasser
  in German, shui in Mandarin Chinese, and so on.
• The same form means bed (lit) in French, marks
  a question in Russian, and means meadow (lea)
  or side sheltered from the wind (lee) in
  English.

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Nonarbitrary Aspects of Language

• All languages have some words whose forms are
  largely determined by their meanings.
• Most notable are onomatopoetic words, which are
  imitative of natural sounds or have meanings
  associated with such sounds of nature.
• (But note that there is a degree of arbitrariness
  even among onomatopoetic words.)

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International Onomatopoeias

• What animals make the following sounds? What do
  they say in English?

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Sound Symbolism

• It is often found that certain sounds occur in
  words not by virtue of imitation but rather by
  simply being evocative of a particular meaning.
• For instance, words for small and small objects
  in many languages often contain the vowel i.
• English teeny and wee, French petite, Greek
  mikros and Japanese chiisai small, Spanish
  diminutive nouns such as perrito, and so on.

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Language-Specific Sound Symbolism

• Some sound or sequence of sounds becomes
  associated with some abstract and vague but often
  sensory-based meaning, for example in English
• Words beginning with fl-, such as fly, flee,
  flow, flimsy, flicker and fluid are often
  suggestive of lightness of quickness (but note
  flounder).
• Words ending in -ash, such as bash, smash, crash
  and flash signify a violent or sudden action (but
  note cash).

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Arbitrariness and Symbolism

• Worksheet

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Remember

• Bring two copies of your linguistic history paper
  to class tomorrow!