<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">On Wednesday, September 16, 2015 3:27 PM spike <<a href="mailto:spike66@att.net" x-apple-data-detectors="true" x-apple-data-detectors-type="link" x-apple-data-detectors-result="1">spike66@att.net</a>> wrote:<br></span><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><font color="#000000"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">…Most of this seems complaining about arbitrary rules that have<br></span></font></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><font color="#000000"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">little to do with communication… Yet they continue to be passed<br></span></font></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><font color="#000000"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">along as if they were rational and objective.</span></font></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><font color="#000000"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></font></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><font color="#000000"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">…It is the ancient feud between prescriptivists and descriptivists.<br></span></font></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><font color="#000000"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Fuelled by the fact that correcting grammar shows off your (high<br></span></font></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><font color="#000000"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">status) education, and allows you to reduce the uneducated other guy…</span></font></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><font color="#000000"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></font></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><font color="#000000"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">OK cool, it does have that value. I often find it useful to whack<br></span></font></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><font color="#000000"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">some yahoo without physical injury of any kind.</span></font></blockquote><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br>There's something called the rhetoric of prestige, where someone using certain syntax and diction is seen as of higher status and perhaps more professional. Sometimes people in authority use this to reassure everyone else that the authority they have is not arbitrary. (And there's the related rhetoric of solidarity, where people try to sound homespun to reassure everyone else that they're just ordinary folk. Watch how some candidates will use this.)<br><br>But what does any of this really prove?<br><br></span><blockquote type="cite"><font color="#000000"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Regarding ancient feuds between prescriptivists and descriptivists,<br></span></font></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><font color="#000000"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">like any feud, both sides have their value and contributions.</span></font></blockquote><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br>Well, I wasn't taking a totally descriptivist side here. My prescription though is far more limited and one I believe most here would agree on: being understood. My problem is more with arbitrary rules here being inflicted on people as if they actually helped people to better communicate (or achieve other goals in speaking and writing). Following many of these rules seem to only show the person has memorized a rule and habituated themselves to its use. There seems to be no other basis for these rules.<br><br></span><blockquote type="cite"><font color="#000000"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">As with a two-party political system, it is educational to try to<br></span></font></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><font color="#000000"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">discover what good things each party has to offer and take the<br></span></font></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><font color="#000000"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">good while rejecting the bad.</span></font></blockquote><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br>No argument from me on that.<br><br></span><blockquote type="cite"><font color="#000000"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Consider the prescriptivists and descriptivists (Ps and Ds.) I see<br></span></font></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><font color="#000000"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">some really useful contributions by the Ps: they help standardize<br></span></font></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><font color="#000000"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">language to make it easier to understand. I see that the Ds contribute<br></span></font></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><font color="#000000"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">simplicity to language, allowing margin for usage rather than requiring<br></span></font></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><font color="#000000"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">additional study.</span></font></blockquote><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br>This doesn't make sense. Standardization would actually mean simplification in most cases. Descriptivists usually just describe what happens. That's the point. The extreme position here would be that the standards are arbitrary. But that doesn't necessarily lead to simplicity. Also, prescriptivists, in their extreme form, can foist quite complicated rules, such as the difference between saying (or writing) "the first two" and "the two first." But my complaint was not against this so much as rules that actually don't make any sense, such as "never split infinitives" or "don't start a sentence with a connective."<br><br>Actually, too, language change goes in both directions: toward both complexity and simplicity, toward both standardization and variation. (If it didn't, it would be hard to explain how humans didn't settle on a fairly uniform language given the spread of communication and the massive amount of contact between cultures from the Renaissance on.) <br><br></span><blockquote type="cite"><font color="#000000"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Simplifying language is good, but it comes at a price. The Ps would<br></span></font></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><font color="#000000"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">argue that if we pay attention to grammar, we sound more like the<br></span></font></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><font color="#000000"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">mellifluous Shakespeare, or the brilliant PT Wodehouse.</span></font></blockquote><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br>Who? Shakespeare did many things that some perscriptivits elsewhere rail against, especially ones that go by arbitrary rules -- like the two aforementioned ones or the one on ending in prepositions.<br><br></span><blockquote type="cite"><font color="#000000"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The Ds would argue that simplification of language reduces the required<br></span></font></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><font color="#000000"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">training load. A Ps language might converge towards an Orwellian Newspeak.<br></span></font></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><font color="#000000"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">This has its advantages, but certainly lacks the beauty of a Shakespearean<br></span></font></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><font color="#000000"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">sonnet.</span></font></blockquote><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br>The history has been quite different. Prescriptivists wrote their rule books, though, for the most part, the language evolved despite their pronouncements.<br><br></span><blockquote type="cite"><font color="#000000"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">A middle upper ground I prefer is the grammatical libertarian: simplicity<br></span></font></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><font color="#000000"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">is good, standardization is also good, decry neither, but try for as much<br></span></font></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><font color="#000000"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">of both as can be achieved. Use language as a playground at every<br></span></font></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><font color="#000000"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">opportunity.</span></font></blockquote><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br>But wouldn't that actually be a descriptivist stance? <br><br>Also, libertarians often use language as an example of a spontaneous order, where standardization arises (and alters) without the need of central planning. To wax Shakespearian: Why not cleave to that position? (To be sure, no one here is calling for enforcing standards of grammar, spelling, punctuation, or pronunciation at the point of a gun.;)<br><br>Regards,<br><br>Dan<br>See my Kindle books:<br><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dan-Ust/e/B00J6HPX8M/" x-apple-data-detectors="true" x-apple-data-detectors-type="link" x-apple-data-detectors-result="2">http://www.amazon.com/Dan-Ust/e/B00J6HPX8M/</a></span></div><style><!--
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