Does Grammar Matter?
Last Modified: 30/11/2016
(TED) Find out why there's an ongoing debate about how language is used.
- 1You're telling a friend an amazing story and you just get to the best part...
- 2...when suddenly, he interrupts, "The alien and I, not me and the alien."
- 3Most of us would probably be annoyed,...
- 4...but aside from the rude interruption, does your friend have a point?
- 5Was your sentence actually grammatically incorrect?
- 6And if he still understood it, why does it even matter?
- 7From the point of view of linguistics,...
- 8...grammar is a set of patterns for how words are put together...
- 9...to form phrases or clauses, whether spoken or in writing.
- 10Different languages have different patterns.
- 11In English, the subject normally comes first,...
- 12...followed by the verb and then the object.
- 13While in Japanese and many other languages,...
- 14...the order is subject, object, verb.
- 15Some scholars have tried to identify patterns common to all languages,...
- 16...but apart from some basic features, like having nouns or verbs,...
- 17...few of these so-called "linguistic universals" have been found.
- 18And while any language needs consistent patterns to function,...
- 19...the study of these patterns opens up an ongoing debate...
- 20...between two positions known as prescriptivism and deprescriptivism.
- 21Grossly simplified, prescriptivists think a given language...
- 22...should follow consistent rules, while descriptivists see variation...
- 23...and adaptation as a natural and necessary part of language
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