S/O on No Grammar -- descriptive? prescriptive?

[Momling]

I didn't want to de-rail the question of whether grammar needs to be in a grammar stage curriculum!

 

I always get a little confused by the term "grammar" to begin with...

 

"Grammar" sometimes just means 'writing mechanics'--- you know, making sure sentences are punctuated properly and capitalized well. I think this is worth doing as early as first grade. There's no reason to put it off.

 

Then there is the grammar that I find a bit weird and belonging more in an ESL textbook. For instance, in CLE LA1, there are exercises where the student decides whether to write "Sam and I" or "I and Sam" or "Five ducks are" or "Five ducks is". In my experience, this is bizarrely unnecessary for a native speaker of standard English. The grammar that allows a six yr old to communicate is not learned from a textbook, but is acquired as an infant and toddler. It's totally unneccesary to teach this grammar -- it already exists in our brains.

 

Then there is the grammarian's grammar -- the language that is not a part of our dialect and needs to be taught if it is to be used. It's the grammar you dust off when you want to sound formal... you know... trying not to split your infinitives or end your sentences with prepositions. I think this one is up in the air whether or not you want to teach it at all.

 

Finally, there's the syntax -- the linguistic side of how we put together words into sentences. This is where we teach about the parts of speech, the different types of phrases and clauses, cases and declensions and how to analyze sentences. It can be done in a study of English grammar or in a study of Latin or any other language or the study of langauge in general. I think this grammar is best doled out in small chunks throughout the years. I do like to talk about language, so even though my kids are young, we talk about adverbs or adjective phrases or superlatives or whatever we come across... but I have no desire to delve into x-bar theory in elementary school.

 

I don't think that's true. My son is eight and he still messes up correct verb usage. He was adopted at 2 from another country, but I don't know whether that has had any impact on his language acquisition. But I DO think some kids need to be explicitly taught this stuff. For some kids, it's simply not innate. Grammar is patterns of language, and not all kids just "pick it up." If it were true that this type of knowledge were innate, we would not have slang and dialect and people who sound uneducated because of the way they speak ... we would all speak a standardized, "correct" form of English. That is, in part, what the whole Ebonics issue was about. My dd16 attends a mostly-black public school, and "black English" (for lack of a better term, and I am not trying to offend here) uses different verb conjugations a lot of the time. Is this an acceptable dialect or is it "bad English?"

 

Tara

 

 

Unless there is a language impairment, grammar is innate (this is the descriptive grammar that I'm talking about). Native English speaking kids will 'pick it up' on their own without a textbook. A child who was not exposed to English from birth is a different situation. Some irregular parts of our grammar are learned later than others (some irregular plurals, for instance), just as it is normal for some kids not to master certain English sounds until early elementary, but unless there is an impairment, they will master it... on their own... without explicit instruction.

 

As for "Black English" (aka "Ebonics" or AAVE), it is a dialect of English. It is no better or worse than Canadian English or RP English (Received Pronunciation -- "Queen's English), or English spoken in the Appalachians or in Singapore or in South Africa. It's just a dialect - nothing more or less. In academic contexts, we use what we've decided is 'standard American English'. It's also a dialect - no better or worse than any other dialect. Many of us speak it at home, which makes it easy for us to imagine that ours is the "proper English" and others are somehow less...

 

As to Ebonics and such: it isn't an accidental set of english errors, but an intentional developed sub-language to unify a group. It's a rather politically and socially charged thing of which I am largely ignorant. I did know a couple kids in my HS that spoke ebonics to each other and perfect english to everyone else. For them it was like flipping a switch (or a foreign language). In the larger society, being able to speak and write formal english is taken as a sign of intelligence. If your child struggles with that, of course they should receive extra help. But the majority of kids (IMO) if english is spoken properly in the home and good lit is read will learn all the grammar they need well into MS.

 

 

I agree with Chandler mom's sentiments, that AAVE isn't an accidental set of English errors. It is a dialect of English, with its own phonology and syntax. It isn't an intentionally developed sub-language for political purposes, but rather started as a pidgin and then a creole language that developed during the time of the slave trade when a bunch of people with different language backgrounds from different parts of Africa needed to communicate with each other. Native speakers of AAVE pick up standard English in some social contexts and on TV and in movies and books and at school. In order to be successful in the majority standard-English-speaking America, it is essential that speakers of any dialect are also able to communicate in the standard dialect.

[Veritaserum]

My degree is in linguistics, so I like these kinds of discussions. :) Dialects are fascinating. I also enjoy looking at how languages evolve over time. WRT the prescriptive/descriptive debate, one could argue that a native speaker of a language uses that language correctly because how else can you describe correct usage other than by looking at native speakers?

 

Because English has a written form with accepted conventions and rules, I lean toward the prescriptive end of the spectrum. ;) I'm also one who advocates explicit grammar instruction in grammar stage. :)

[ChrissySC]

Let me ask this question ...

 

If all dialects are acceptable, what is the point for grammar?

 

If slang is a result of dialect, how many different languages will develop? Spanglish anyone?

 

In response, "your" dialect had a parent. Do you choose disobedience and selfishness? Do you prefer living alone and without a parent for support and advice?

 

Perhaps this is a little remedial in words, or even a bit confusing, but there always exists a "mother tongue."

[twoforjoy]

I really appreciate you posting this. I teach writing at an inner-city university, and many of my students speak (and write in) AAVE/BE. Yes, it's not just "wrong" standard English; it's a dialect with its own consistent grammatical structures. Some students seem to have a much stronger natural ability to "code-switch"--to move between AAVE and standard English--than others; some students really, really struggle with standard English, particularly standard written English.

 

I think--and I try to teach my students--that the big issue is audience. There is absolutely nothing wrong with AAVE. However, for reasons that are indeed largely political and probably quite unfair, standard English is what is going to be expected of most students in academia and the work world. So, it's to their advantage to learn standard English, and become comfortable communicating in it (especially in writing), even though they can communicate just fine in their usual dialect.

 

But personally I try not to make value judgments, with my students, like "right" and "wrong"; I talk more about something being standard English and not being standard English. Unfortunately, it is very, very, very difficult for adults, even young adults, who haven't already internalized the forms of standard English to become comfortable with it. I don't know that formal grammar instruction would necessarily make the difference, because, despite popular opinion, most schools, including the ones they attend, DO include formal grammar in the curriculum. I tend to think that immersion is the best solution, and find that my students who are avid readers tend to have a much better grasp of standard written English grammar than my students who don't read, regardless of their language background. I don't think that negates the value of formal grammar instruction, and immersion probably doesn't work for every student--my sister is an avid reader but isn't a fantastic writer--but I don't think formal grammar instruction is the cure-all, either.

 

If slang is a result of dialect, how many different languages will develop? Spanglish anyone?

 

Isn't the English we now consider "standard" a Spanglish-like mixture of Old English and its predecessors, Latin, and other languages?

 

I think it's best to combine a respect for the prescriptive rules of grammar with a respect for the inevitable reality of language change.

[ChrissySC]

I think it's best to combine a respect for the prescriptive rules of grammar with a respect for the inevitable reality of language change.

 

 

The evolution of language - where did I leave me "thee" and "thou"?:lol:

 

 

I advocate a nice healthy blend. I agree. There is much to use or to practice from both prescriptive and descriptive grammar. This may be why there is such controversy. Neither is right and neither is wrong?

[Momling]

My degree is in linguistics, so I like these kinds of discussions. :) Dialects are fascinating. I also enjoy looking at how languages evolve over time. WRT the prescriptive/descriptive debate, one could argue that a native speaker of a language uses that language correctly because how else can you describe correct usage other than by looking at native speakers?

 

I always figured that a prescriptive grammar is trying to be an unchanging "standard" grammar that at one time was someone's actual descriptive grammar. But then language changes and a disconnect grows between what we speak and what is deemed 'proper grammar'. So the grammarians scramble around and modernize their expectations...

 

Don't you think that in 100 years, a prescriptivist grammar will no longer include 'love' as a stative verb (I'm loving it) and the present perfect will have disappeared and modal + of (could of been) will be standard?

 

Because English has a written form with accepted conventions and rules, I lean toward the prescriptive end of the spectrum. ;) I'm also one who advocates explicit grammar instruction in grammar stage. :)

 

I agree -- I firmly believe that academic English needs to have a standard and that written conventions, in particular, are important to be taught. I think the problem comes with prescriptivist grammar being associated with the old-fashioned view that grammar is unchanging and infallible... and anyone who doesn't adhere to it is uneducated or improper or somehow primitive.

 

That's when the whole descriptive grammar idea came along... with the idea that other dialects and languages exist and there is nothing uneducated or improper about any other language.

 

But that shouldn't stop us from using the right register of English. It's like... wearing clothes. It would be inappropriate to wear a black dress and black veil to a wedding or to the swimming pool or to a nudist colony. It would be inappropriate to wear a swimsuit to a funeral. It would be inappropriate to wear a wedding gown to do your gardening. These are all equally good articles of clothing, but they ought to be used in different contexts. Similarly we should not use the same writing style to write academic papers as we do to write legal briefs or love letters or text messages. It's all about register and context.

[Violet Crown]

I'm not a linguist (though I'm married to someone who wrote a thousand-page dissertation on anaphora [essentially, pronouns]).* But I agree with momling that there's more than one meaning to "grammar" here. I would call them the study of Standard English, and (as momling puts it) syntax/linguistics.

 

As far as the latter goes, it seems meaningless to talk about descriptive vs. prescriptive. But my children would be surprised to hear me call myself a descriptivist, because I hound them relentlessly to use Standard English. They already know how to speak English like Texans, and I know perfectly well they're not going to stop; but I figure the nagging will set off little alarm bells in their minds when they're writing or speaking publicly, and remind them that "fixin to" or "go ahead on" or "all y'all" [second person plural emphatic: every language should have one!] aren't the way everybody speaks.

 

I do let them know at an early age that the way they speak isn't wrong, it's just Central Texan; and an East Texan isn't wrong for using a double modal; and Yankees aren't wrong for the weird things they say.

 

*I love him dearly, but it gets very tiring to be asked at the dinner table, "So, would you say the following sentence is grammatical?"

[Momling]

Let me ask this question ...

 

If all dialects are acceptable, what is the point for grammar?

 

I don't understand your question. Dialects are different variations in a language. Is Australian English more acceptable than South African English? I don't know! Can you even say that one language is more acceptable than another? I mean, would you say that French is acceptable, but English is not? Or would you say that French is acceptable in communicating with French people and English is better in communicating with English people?

 

As for, what is the point of grammar? Grammar exists. Grammar is how we know how to put together words into sentences... and how we pronounce (and even perceive) words. It is in my brain and it is in yours. Your grammar may be slightly different than mine. Mine is certainly different from Shakespeare's grammar and different from the grammar of a speaker of a black 8 year old AAVE speaking child.

 

If slang is a result of dialect, how many different languages will develop? Spanglish anyone?

Again, I don't really understand your question. Slang is about register, not dialect. The language you use around a child is different from the language you use with your grandmother which is different from the language you use when you go out with friends your own age. Slang is that really informal language you might use with friends. Is it appropriate to use in other contexts? Probably not.

 

In response, "your" dialect had a parent. Do you choose disobedience and selfishness? Do you prefer living alone and without a parent for support and advice?

 

Are you suggesting that language change is an act of disbedience and selfishness? If so, which English would you propose that we ought to be speaking? Should I brush up on my Anglo - Saxon? Or would you go whole-hog and reconcile your disobedience with some Proto-Indo-European? :tongue_smilie:

[Violet Crown]

nm

[ChrissySC]

More or less the questions were rhetorical. ;)

 

I do not have an answer. Ask the linguist, LOL.

 

I was more or less thinking aloud (well, thinking textually). These were things bouncing around in my head as I read the posts, and perhaps even contrary to my own belief.

 

Perhaps I am just tired from garbage disposals and sand filter laterals today. I will think on this and get back to you in the morning! :lol: (Yes, I just put it off until later.)

 

I am curious to see what our English or language majors have to say. I am computer science; therefore, I studied grammar for the purposes of writing technical manuals and policies. Without my structured study, the masses, regardless of dialect, would be confused and distraught when trying to insert memory into a computer or run an application. I see grammar perhaps as something far to serious and needed based on my experiences and uses. I consider it a must for written communication. :001_smile: I think prescriptive instruction is needed at some point in the education of a child with persistant and rigorous intent as well.

[Just Robyn]

My degree is in linguistics, so I like these kinds of discussions. :) Dialects are fascinating. I also enjoy looking at how languages evolve over time. WRT the prescriptive/descriptive debate, one could argue that a native speaker of a language uses that language correctly because how else can you describe correct usage other than by looking at native speakers?

 

Because English has a written form with accepted conventions and rules, I lean toward the prescriptive end of the spectrum. ;) I'm also one who advocates explicit grammar instruction in grammar stage. :)

 

:iagree: with all of this, or 99.99% of it. My degree is also in linguistics. (Yay us!) The only place I differ is that though we do study prescriptive grammar in the grammar stage, I'm not 100% convinced it's necessary. I guess I feel like there are good enough arguments for, or at least ideas about, both sides (starting in the grammar stage being one side and starting in the logic stage being the other side). I haven't seen (or even looked for) real proof that either one is better for most children. So, I'm remaining open minded, at this point, about which route is better, or that they are perhaps each better in their own way and so basically equal.

 

Other notes:

 

I DO feel 100% certain that grammar improves writing, even if only in ways that would usually be corrected by an editor. My children won't have editors for their college papers.

 

I do want my children to study linguistics eventually, probably in high school. It doesn't have to be a big deal. I will likely require each of them to read one or two books and discuss with me informally. With all this prescriptive grammar I'll be teaching them, I don't want them getting ideas in their heads about other people speaking "incorrectly" or other worse ideas that often come from that.

[twoforjoy]

:iagree: with all of this, or 99.99% of it. My degree is also in linguistics. (Yay us!) The only place I differ is that though we do study prescriptive grammar in the grammar stage, I'm not 100% convinced it's necessary. I guess I feel like there are good enough arguments for, or at least ideas about, both sides (starting in the grammar stage being one side and starting in the logic stage being the other side). I haven't seen (or even looked for) real proof that either one is better for most children. So, I'm remaining open minded, at this point, about which route is better, or that they are perhaps each better in their own way and so basically equal.

 

Same here. Plus, I was an English major, and I love grammar. I think it's fun. So, I partly do grammar at this point because I just like teaching it. ;) I have a feeling that my DS, who seems to have a natural facility with language, would internalize grammatical structures even without formal instruction, and be able to use them in writing. Even in kindergarten and first grade, his writing was surprisingly in line with standard written English, and we weren't doing formal grammar then. But, it's something I enjoy, and I certainly don't think it does any harm, since it's not something that he hates doing at all. So, we do it.

 

I see grammar perhaps as something far to serious and needed based on my experiences and uses. I consider it a must for written communication. :001_smile: I think prescriptive instruction is needed at some point in the education of a child with persistant and rigorous intent as well.

 

I absolutely agree; grammar is a must for communication of any sort. But, I think the point was that dialects also have grammar, which is how people who speak those dialects are able to understand each other. If people were just conjugating verbs willy-nilly, communication would break down. So there's always a grammar for any understandable dialect, and the issue isn't about whether the use of language is grammatical or not, but whether it's following the rules of what has come to be standard usage.

 

At one level, I think there's the issue of intelligibility. If somebody is continually using the wrong verb tense, then that is not simply non-standard, but confusing. If somebody is writing sentence fragments or run-ons where there is no clear relationship between ideas, it's often difficult to decipher their meaning. Those are issues that interfere with the ability to get a message across at all, and, as a writing teacher, those would be the first issues I'd tackle with a student, and if that was all they corrected all term, I'd feel like significant progress had been made.

 

Then there's things like subject-verb agreement, which is more of a standard/non-standard thing than an intelligibility issue. It's not too difficult to discern that the "be" in AAVE is the present form of "is." It's non-standard, but it's grammatical. I think people need to be aware of which usages are standard and which are non-standard, and what settings the different usages are appropriate in, and how to switch between them comfortably. But I'm not going to bemoan the end of civilization as we know it because people are using non-standard but grammatical and intelligible (at least to the people they are intending to communicate with) forms in their e-mails or Facebook updates.

 

And then there's places where standard usages of language are actually changing. I'm pretty sure that we'll soon see "they" become commonly accepted as a standard neutral third-person singular pronoun (i.e., "Someone left their book in the classroom" as opposed to "Someone left his or her book in the classroom"). To me, that's language change in action, and a good thing. Not having a neutral third-person singular pronoun is a gap in the English language, as many people do not feel that "he" fills that role successfully. So using "they" in that way is becoming increasingly common. I don't think that's some sort of destruction of the integrity of language so much as a perfectly natural and appropriate evolution. We've already come to totally accept "they" used that way in speech, and I think it's only a matter of time until it will become part of our prescriptive grammar. And I would be perfectly happy, in my role as writing instructor, to consider that use of "they" standard from any student who could explain to me why they were using it. ;)

Edited May 2, 2011 by twoforjoy

[Spy Car]

I'm not a linguist (though I'm married to someone who wrote a thousand-page dissertation on anaphora [essentially, pronouns]).* But I agree with momling that there's more than one meaning to "grammar" here. I would call them the study of Standard English, and (as momling puts it) syntax/linguistics.

 

As far as the latter goes, it seems meaningless to talk about descriptive vs. prescriptive. But my children would be surprised to hear me call myself a descriptivist, because I hound them relentlessly to use Standard English. They already know how to speak English like Texans, and I know perfectly well they're not going to stop; but I figure the nagging will set off little alarm bells in their minds when they're writing or speaking publicly, and remind them that "fixin to" or "go ahead on" or "all y'all" [second person plural emphatic: every language should have one!] aren't the way everybody speaks.

 

I do let them know at an early age that the way they speak isn't wrong, it's just Central Texan; and an East Texan isn't wrong for using a double modal; and Yankees aren't wrong for the weird things they say.

 

*I love him dearly, but it gets very tiring to be asked at the dinner table, "So, would you say the following sentence is grammatical?"

 

Ah ha!

 

I strongly suspected you were a closet perscriptivist :D

 

Bill

[Veritaserum]

I always figured that a prescriptive grammar is trying to be an unchanging "standard" grammar that at one time was someone's actual descriptive grammar. But then language changes and a disconnect grows between what we speak and what is deemed 'proper grammar'. So the grammarians scramble around and modernize their expectations...

 

Fair point. Standardized written English has slowed things down, though. I think that's a good thing. I rather like being able to read older literature. :)

 

Don't you think that in 100 years, a prescriptivist grammar will no longer include 'love' as a stative verb (I'm loving it) and the present perfect will have disappeared and modal + of (could of been) will be standard?

 

Time will tell. If I don't fight about "I'm loving it" (which at least makes sense), can I throw a fit about "could of"? :D Oh, it just makes me shudder. :tongue_smilie:

 

What if we ditch English in all its form and adopt a wholly artificial language. Esperanto? Klingon? :)

[Just Robyn]

Fair point. Standardized written English has slowed things down, though. I think that's a good thing. I rather like being able to read older literature. :)

 

 

 

Time will tell. If I don't fight about "I'm loving it" (which at least makes sense), can I throw a fit about "could of"? :D Oh, it just makes me shudder. :tongue_smilie:

 

What if we ditch English in all its form and adopt a wholly artificial language. Esperanto? Klingon? :)

 

I heart Esperanto. Of course, if we started using it as our spoken language, it would evolve too.

[Momling]

What if we ditch English in all its form and adopt a wholly artificial language. Esperanto? Klingon? :)

 

I like it! Or perhaps I should say... "Mi ŝatas ĝin!"

[Violet Crown]

Ah ha!

 

I strongly suspected you were a closet perscriptivist :D

 

Bill

No no no. "Perscriptivist" is Panhandle/West Texan, not North/Central Texan.

[Spy Car]

No no no. "Perscriptivist" is Panhandle/West Texan, not North/Central Texan.

 

Blasted typos! :D

 

You are saying it's spelled wrong, right? :tongue_smilie:

 

Bill

[Violet Crown]

Blasted typos! :D

 

You are saying it's spelled wrong, right? :tongue_smilie:

 

Not if you're from Lubbock. If you are, you get to say "nucular," too.

[Spy Car]

Not if you're from Lubbock. If you are, you get to say "nucular," too.

 

Lubbock near Crawford? ;)

 

Bill