[MUD-Dev] Re[2]: [MUD-Dev] Languages (slightly offtopic, was Text Parsing)

[Travis Casey]

On Wednesday, June 02, 1999, Matthew Mihaly wrote:
> On Wed, 2 Jun 1999, Travis S. Casey wrote:

>> These are very common misconceptions -- read any good introductory book on
>> linguistics, or, for a more popular treatment, try Pinker's _The Language
>> Instinct_.  (Spelling has nothing to do with natural language -- only
>> speech is natural.  Over 90% of sentences spoken in casual conversation
>> are perfectly grammatical (provided you're using the *actual* grammar of
>> the language, and not the idealized "grammar" taught in schools).  The
>> average person knows more than four times as many words than Shakespeare
>> used in all his writings.)

> Saying that 90% of sentences spoken in casual conversation are
> grammatically correct reveals either a lack of contact with the wider
> world (no offence) or a willingness to define grammar as essentially
> whatever is spoken. I can go to my local dive bar, pick a person at
> random, and unless your definitions of correct grammar are extremely
> loose, 90% of sentences spoken will not constructed using proper grammar.

That is the difference between *prescriptive* and *descriptive*
grammar.  A prescriptive grammar, which is the kind of grammar you're
exposed to in grade school, is some group's idea of the way the
language *should* be spoken.  A *descriptive* grammar, which is what
linguists work with, is a description of the way the language *is*
spoken.

To quote from Pinker's _The Language Instinct_ (page 31):

[*surrounding asterisks* indicate italics in the original]

  Another project of Labov's involved tabulating the percentage of
  grammatical sentences in tape recordings of speech in a variety of
  social classes and settings.  "Grammatical," for these purposes,
  means "well-formed according to consistent rules in the dialect of
  the speakers."  For example, if a speaker asked the question *Where
  are you going?*, the respondent would not be penalized for answering
  *To the store,* even though it is in some sense not a complete
  sentence.  Such ellipses are obviously part of the grammar of
  conversational English; the alternative, *I am going to the store,*
  sounds stilted and is almost never used.  "Ungrammatical" sentences,
  by this definition, include randomly broken-off sentence fragments,
  tongue-tied hemming and hawing, slips of the tongue, and other forms
  of word salad.  The results of Labov's tabulation are enlightening.
  The great majority of sentences were grammatical, especially in
  casual speech, with higher percentages of grammatical sentences in
  working-class speech than in middle-class speech.  The highest
  percentage of ungrammatical sentences was found in the proceedings
  of learned academic conferences.

and, from page 28:

  But though the language engine is invisible to the human user, the
  trim packages and color schemes are attended to obsessively.
  Trifling differences between the dialect of the mainstream and the
  dialect of other groups, like *isn't any* versus *ain't no*, *those
  books* versus *them books*, and *dragged him away* versus *drug him
  away*, are dignified as badges of "proper grammar."  But they have
  no more to do with grammatical sophistication than the fact that
  people in some regions of the United States refer to a certain
  insect as a *dragonfly* and people in other regions refer to it as a
  *darning needle*, or that English speakers call canines *dogs*
  whereas French speakers call them *chiens*.  It is even a bit
  misleading to call Standard English a "language" and these
  variations "dialects," as if there were some meaningful difference
  between them.  The best definition comes from the linguist Max
  Weinreich:  a language is a dialect with an army and a navy.

--
       |\      _,,,---,,_        Travis S. Casey  <efindel at io.com>
 ZZzz  /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_   No one agrees with me.  Not even me.
      |,4-  ) )-,_..;\ (  `'-'
     '---''(_/--'  `-'\_)




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