Debating Grammar Pt. 1: What is Grammar?
February 15th, 2009 | View Comments
I feel like I’m about to open up a Pandora’s box of philosophical and linguistic debate with this post. I will try to stay away from existentialism, since the meaning of life is not the point of this blog. But I felt the need as a linguist to stand up for grammar, especially after reading this post. Here goes:
First, I would like to say: language is arbitrary. SAY WHAT?!?!? Yes. It is. Aside from onomatopoeia, there is very little in the world that relates an object or phenomenon to a word with which it is associated. Take for example, a shoe. There is nothing about the object one wears on his/her foot that tells us it should be called a “shoe”. It could easily be called a *skohkaz. Or a “poinko”. The point is, nothing about that object correlates to the way we contort our mouths and airflow to produce the spoken word, “shoe”. Likewise, nothing about the spoken word “shoe” is innately related to the written Arabic letters s-h-o-e, arranged in that order. If someone invented a language using other symbols, the word for that thing you wear on your foot could just as easily look like this: 3&$@4^!
Now that we’ve established the fact that language, by nature, is arbitrary; let’s get to the meat of the debate: Does “grammar” exist?
First, we need to define what “grammar” is and is not.
Grammar is NOT the same as semantics or meaning. Many sentences that make absolutely no sense can be grammatical. Take for example, this famous wonderful gem in the world of linguistics composed by Chomsky himself:
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
The sentence may seem like a bunch of gibberish, but it is not ungrammatical.
Definitions 1 and 2 of Merriam-Webster talk about inflections and syntax. In other words word and sentence structure. What we have come to know as “grammar,” courtesy of elementary school phonics books, is actually prescriptive grammar: the “correct” way to use language. Linguists, however, focus on descriptive grammar, or how language is actually used, paying attention to morphological and syntactic structure. While the phrase “colorless green ideas” may not make sense semantically, it does not violate morphological and syntactic structure.
So, if we define grammar as how language is used, specifically focusing on inflections and syntax, then yes; grammar exists; since we all use language with inflection and syntax.
Case closed? Ahh…. not so fast young grasshopper. The debate continues…
*dun dun dun*
Up next: Rules, Schmules… are there rules in language?
Peter posted this on February 15th, 2009 @ 8:00pm in Grammar | Permalink to "Debating Grammar Pt. 1: What is Grammar?"
American-born Taiwanese girl who married a Japanese guy. And who forgot about six years' of Spanish grammar and most of the vocab.
E-mail Yvonne
nerissa
celiviel
yvonnekao
Korean-American girl who blogs under a Spanish pseudonym because being culturally confusing is fun. Native speakers say that she has outstanding Spanish (which is a definite compliment) and outstanding German (which is most assuredly not).
Elenita
American-born, Taiwanese guy who took five semesters worth of German and ended up with a major in Linguistics.
Subscribe
I (as a non-linguist) always thought of grammar as structure and/or frameworks. So: changeable rules about syntax (word order), morphology (word creation), diction (word choice), etc. Or to put it another way, changeable rules about usage, both prescriptive and descriptive.
Changeable, of course, because who today talks like the characters in Romeo and Juliet or The Canterbury Tales? And thus. hardly intrinsic to anything–and with a variety of possible forms. But it most certainly exists.
Thinking of grammar as a broad set of structural guidelines is exactly the way to go, as opposed to the very specific: “Change y to i before adding -ed”
The rules are changeable, but language by nature is fluid. New vocabulary is constantly being invented. Shakespeare and Chaucer each followed the syntax and morphology of their time. Those guidelines may or may not apply today, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
Fifteen years ago, if you had told somebody to “Google it”, they would have no idea what you meant. But now, in that context, “Google” is a verb meaning “to enter into the search engine Google in an effort to find an answer to your question”.
Interestingly, Google actually tried take legal action against using its name as a verb a few years ago. But, to prove our point, it never really went anywhere; language is too changeable. And even if it weren’t, English doesn’t have any Immortals (i.e., a body to enforce usage), so the legal nonsense could only go so far.