is english deteriorating? ling 1. remember! language is instinctive -- humans are grammatical...
TRANSCRIPT
Remember!
• Language is instinctive -- humans are grammatical beings.
• Children are grammatical geniuses.
• All languages are structure-driven.
• If all this is arguably correct, why is everyone always complaining about the state of English? • “to grow the economy”• “y’all”, “y’uns”, “yins”, “yous”• “ain’t”• “my bling, (bling)”
Arbiters of English
• Who decides what is and is not correct spoken language?
• Why do people get so stressed out about “incorrect usage?”
• Do we have a moral imperative to protect language?
Examples of “bad” English
• “Hopefully, we’ll end early today.”
• For most of us, the adverb indicates our attitude toward the entire sentence…[One hopes that [X]].
• *We’ll end hopeful(ly) today.
• It does NOT modify just the verb phrase.
• We know exactly what we mean.
• Confusion of lay/lie
• “I’m going to lay down” - is this bad?
• “I have lain down” - how’s this sound?
What’s wrong here?
• I want to gradually save money for a new car.
• She decided to never touch another cigarette.
• That’s John and mine’s favorite song - ?
• Conjoined nouns are often treated differently than simple nouns:
• John and me arrived late.
• *Me arrived late.
• That’s between you and I.
Hypercorrection
• Me and you went to the movies.• Rule? • Internalize: “Never say ‘you and me’”• Hypercorrection:
• He gave the book to you and I.• He lent the DVD to John and I.
• Hypercorrection: misapplication of prescriptivist rules
Prescriptive versus Descriptive Grammar
• Prescriptive grammars describe how one ought to talk.
• Descriptive grammars describe how people DO talk.
• We all have our own likes and dislikes about how others use language. Examples?
• Prescriptivists, though, feel very strongly that only their definition of correct usage is accurate.
• “This is an outrage up with which I shall not put” – Churchill in response to being told not to strand prepositions
Language as Shibboleth
• Shibboleth: Hebrew for ‘torrent, stream’ - custom or usage that distinguishes one group from another.
• Judges (12:4-6) recounts the slaying of 42,000 Ephraimites at the passage of Jordon who could not pass as Gileadites because they said ‘sibboleth’.
• For prescriptivists, language use is a shibboleth.
• They protect their status -- being smarter and more urbane than others.
• Language ‘corruption’ is interpreted as a sign of mental/moral corruption.
They’re everywhere!
• It’s not just English that’s going to the dogs.• Many societies, particularly literate ones, are
constantly preoccupied by language corruption.
• Greek grammarians in 100BCE were worried that spoken Greek was not as pure as Homeric Greek.
• Moslem grammarians of 8th-9th centuries tried to restore Arabic to its perfect state as revealed in the Qu’ran.
• 1794 Murray’s English Grammar:
• 2 negatives in English cancel each other out.• Never put a preposition at the end of a
sentence.
• Murray’s example of ‘bad’ preposition use:
• “Who do you speak to?” (quoted from Shakespeare’s As you like it)
• Pittsburghese: “Where’re you at?” would probably have killed him.
• Many of these ‘shibboleths’ come from a misunderstanding that English should be more like Latin.
• Ex, prepositions don’t occur finally in Latin.
Origin of these notions
• 18th century preoccupation that Latin was perfect and English defective unless regulated by ‘experts’.
ain’t
• This is used as a contraction of “am not”.
• It’s of very old origin and was used even in cultivated speech (and it still is).
• Only with “I” is the contraction to the pronoun.
I am not He is not
• Ain’t makes this symmetrical.
I am not
Y’all - Y’uns - Yous
• Even Tok Pisin, based on English, has a singular versus plural you.
• yu
• yupela
“Conservative” American English pronoun paradigm
• I weyou yous/he, it they
• To fill in the gap, we have all kinds of variants, depending on region.
Negation and ‘polarity’
• Double negation is considered a solecism.
• Example “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet”
• English isn’t math: two negatives do NOT make a positive.
• Double negatives were fine:Chaucer: He never yet no vilainy ne said..“He never said any evil.”
• “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet”
• You haven’t seen anything yet -or-
• You have seen nothing (yet).
• “any” has to occur with neg.• “some” “none” “nothing” have to occur with
pos.• Why?
But…
• Some people use ‘anymore’ without a negative:
• “Anymore I just work”
• Dialectal variant = synonym for “these days”
The StarTrek corruption
• “to boldly go where no man has gone before!”• Again with the Latin!… It’s impossible to split
an infinitive in Latin because infinitives are expressed via inflections (ama-re) not periphrastic expressions (to go).
Right and wrong usage
• Every generation is accused of corrupting or degrading the language.
• Languages change generation by generation.
• Those who get all incensed about correct usage are usually wasting their time.