More boring stuff on language

[Doug Alan <nessus@athena.mit.edu>]

> [Julian West:] Arguing for the legitimization of the so-called "New
> Englishes" is completely different from granting the right to abuse
> the old one.  They are separate issues.

No they are not.  Standard Written English, the dialect of English
drilled into our brains by pedantic grade school English teachers,
differs significantly from the dialect that most people in the U.S.
actually speak.

> If you wish to tie them together, I could make the counter-argument
> that if we are accepting (say) Jamaican English as an acceptable
> language (and why not?) which has its own legitimate rules of
> grammar, we are _de_facto_ accepting the notion of grammatic rules.
> It is _only_ its grammar, vocabulary and orthography which
> distinguish Jamaican (or Bangladeshi) English from our own.  If we
> are to throw out our own (and their own) rules of spelling and
> grammar, what distinguishes the regional Englishes from one another.

I think you are confusing "prescriptive grammars" and "descriptive
grammars".  A "prescriptive grammar" such as Standard Written English
is a set of rules that tell you how you "should" speak (at least
according to supporters of the grammar).  A "descriptive grammar" is
an attempt to describe how people *do* speak.  I truly doubt anyone
has ever made a prescriptive grammar for Jamaican English.  However,
I'm sure that many linguists have worked on descriptive grammars for
Jamaican English.

If you stray from a prescritive grammar, then a grammarian assaults
you and says, "You stupid fool!  You are speaking improperly!"  If you
stray from a descriptive grammar for your language, the linguist will
go, "Oh my goodness!  There's something wrong with my grammar.  I
better go fix it!"  (He will first check, of course, that other
speakers of the language -- ignoring pedantic scholars -- found your
utterance communicative and acceptable.)

The problem with prescriptive grammars is that they never indicate how
people usually communicate.  As I mentioned in a previous message,
until the late 1700's it was considered perfectly acceptable to say "I
don't have none".  Some people decided they needed to feel superior
and trained themselves not to use this form so that they could label
those who did as inferior.  However, despite the fact that Standard
Written English declares that "I don't have none" is an unacceptable
sentence, it continues to be a very widely used and accepted one.  Any
*descriptive* grammar of English by any linguist who hopes to be
accepted as a good linguist will necessarily include "I don't have
none" as an acceptable sentence of English.

>> Regarding "correct" spelling, there was not even such a thing as
>> correct spelling in English until the invention of the printing
>> press.

> But the European invention of the printing press was 500 years ago.
> Are we that far behind the times?  We might as well say that "there
> was no such thing as English as recently as the 6th century" is a
> convincing argument for reverting to Sanskrit.

Somethings have improved since then and somethings have not.
Certainly using dialect to enforce social class has not been an
improvement.  As someone else pointed out, even less than 200 years
ago, idiosyncratic spelling was considered acceptable.  Becoming anal
about spelling has not been an improvment.  Criticising others for
idiosyncratic spelling is not an improvment.

> Doug, for someone who insists that "|>oug" is good spelling while
> "!>oug" "?>oug" and "|}oug" are not, you are on very shaky ground.

I have never said I have any objection to "!>oug"!  I don't mind it
all.  Anything that looks like a "D" for the first letter is fine,
including "D". ":>" does not look like a "D", and neither does "?>".
"|}" looks like a breast -- not a "D".

"Money cannot by love,
 but it makes shopping for it a lot easier."

|>oug