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From: steiny@scc.UUCP (Don Steiny)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: Grammatical Rules
Message-ID: <328@scc.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 20-Jan-85 14:29:27 EST
Article-I.D.: scc.328
Posted: Sun Jan 20 14:29:27 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 21-Jan-85 04:12:43 EST
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Organization: Personetics, Inc. - Santa Cruz, Calif.
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>
>    But some rules are entirely arbitrary, usually the
> product of some armchair linguist's reasoning. They become rules if
> said linguist convinces enough teachers that he's right.
> 
	I believe that you misunderstand the job of a linguist.
The role of a linguist is purely discriptive.   "Arbirtray rules"
are rarely arbitrary (the example you gave, "them" instead of "those"
was not arbrtrary, but based on different principles than we use today).
The linguist is interested in discovering these rules, not inventing them.
It is important to realize that a linguist does not think that there
is "the grammar" of English, but that we each have "a grammar" of 
English.  There are millions of grammars of English, each a
bit different, with regional and even personal variation.

	Many "rules of grammar" exist for purely sociolingistic
reasons.  Sociolinguistics is the study of language and society.
Languages or dialects of languages gain status and become more
widespread for political and other reasons.   Until the late
part of the last century we had a basic misconception about the
genetic relationships of languages.  The theory is that English
was really a deviant decendent of Latin instead of a totally different
branch on the same tree as Latin.   Because of the sacred writings
in Latin, Latin was considered a "better" and more "pure" language.
Thus, there are "rules of English grammar" that are "rule" simply
because people believed that English "should be" more like the
more holy pure language, Latin.  

	An example of this is a "rule" of English that we 
use the nominitive case for the object in:

	It is I.
	It is he.

and not

	It's me.
	It's him.

	This is a rule in Latin.  The rule is that the subject and
object agree in case when there is a copular verb, roughly, "to be."

	Few people talk this way, and it sounds funny if they do.
It is not a "rule" of English as far as linguists are concerned,
because linguists are primarily interested in spoken language.

	My syntax professor used to give several talks a year
to non-majors about how counter-intuitive and plain wrong
perscriptive grammar is.  I think he titled his lecture
"The Death of Miss MiGillicutty", or something like that.

	Linguistics is not an ancient subject that has had a great
impact on education or anything like that.   It was never considered
an independent dicipline until the late 20's of this century.  You
can't blame "armchair linguists" for much of anything because there
are very few linguists and they are mostly too busy trying to figure
out how human language works to be too political.  Linguistics 
a demanding subject to study.  It will be years
before linguistics has any impact on the way grammar is taught
in school.  It would be too much for the average teacher to learn,
and it will take a long time to convert the insights into pedagogies.

	Don't blame us for those silly rules!!


-- 
scc!steiny
Don Steiny - Personetics @ (408) 425-0382
109 Torrey Pine Terr.
Santa Cruz, Calif. 95060
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