Re: SCWC 32: Discussion: IMPLEMENT

On Sun, 10 Jun 2007 14:33:30 -0700, "Peter T. Daniels"
<grammatim@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

It is the job of the linguist and the lexicographer to _describe_ the
language "as she is spoke," not to set out "rules" for "correct" usage
(which "rules" almost always have no historical warrant whatsoever).

As you probably know, quite a lot of people feel that they
should say, for example, "to Henry and I", even though it
would feel more natural to them to say in the same context,
"to Henry and me", and of course, were Henry not involved,
they would say "to me", and not "to I". And they do this
because they have picked up the idea that it is "correct"
to say "I" in many circumstances when it feels natural to
them to say "me", e.g. it is correct to say "it is I", not
"it's me".

Suppose, as a thought experiment, that these people became
the majority. Say, polls regularly reveal that 60% of the
English-speaking population say "to Henry and I", when 40%
say "to Henry and me".

Would a correct description of English "as she is spoke"
then have to give this as the rule observed in practice?

Also, is this somehow more "realistic" or "objective" than
observing that it is in fact a widespread mistake, which
is ironically brought about by people consciously observing
poorly-learned rules, instead of allowing themselves to use
the language with less conscious interference, and more in
accordance with a simpler and more logical set of rules?

Also, in describing English "as she is spoke", since there
are in fact billions (or at least hundreds of millions) of
speakers, all speaking it differently, how can you avoid
making what are in effect "rules", which are basically all
the one rule, viz. "Thou shalt do whatever the majority of
people around you seem to be doing, regardless of whether
or not it makes any sense, even if it can clearly be seen
to be based on identifiable misconceptions"?

I can understand that a language can evolve creatively, by
being informal and responsive to circumstances, and that
what is grammatically correct can (and does) change over
time. But that which changes, that which evolves, /is a
set of rules/; and no amount of putting the word "rules"
in scare quotes will change that, or make something that
is a mistake into something that is not a mistake.

A language without rules makes no more sense than a game
without rules. Games, too, evolve. For example, chess
evolved. It /became/ legal for a pawn to move two squares
on its first move. The game changed --- admittedly in a
discrete and consciously worked out step, not exactly
comparable to the complex, informal and unconscious way
in which language seems to change --- but there was no
point at which it no longer mattered whether you played
according to the rules or not. Cheating is cheating;
errors are errors.

Even mathematics changes. Standards of logical rigour
have evolved, and will presumably continue to evolve.
There is still all the difference in the world between
a valid argument and an invalid one.

If there is any point at which we agree, it might be in
saying that language is in some sense wiser than we are,
and makes its own rules. Any rules we might either try
to impose upon it, on the basis of some dubious authority
(e.g. the belief that the grammar of English should be
like that of Latin --- is that really the origin of the
idea that infinitives should not be split, or is there
another reason? --- me, I like to split infinitives!),
or induce from it by introspection, or (which I think
is what you are suggesting) impose upon it because of a
scientistic belief that empirical observation (even of
human beings by other human beings) is the sole fount
of all reliable knowledge ... any formal rules that we,
the mere users of language, wish to impose upon it are
secondary to the rules it observes itself (which do
indeed change over time, and are of course reflected
in the way that people actually use the language).

One way of looking at this (sheer speculation, not
something I've read about or thought through) may
be not to think of English (or any other natural
language) as a single coherent system, but as an
inconsistent, dynamic entity consisting of God-knows-
how-many systems of rules, which are to some extent
cooperative and to some extent competitive with each
other, and whose fortunes may individually rise and
fall, so that the overall statistical profile of the
language may change over time, without any individual
part of it suffering any discrete catastrophic change.
Ways of using words may fade away, or gain currency,
perhaps starting as a joke or a mistake, but finding
themselves in some lucky way in harmony with some
other usages, so that they gradually become part of
the mainstream language.

The use of the word "evolution" may even suggest some
quite far-reaching analogy with genetics (about which
I know even less than about linguistics, so I'll shut
up now).

(Sorry, that was a bloody lecture! But feelings run
deep on this subject.)

--
Angus Rodgers
(twirlip@ eats spam; reply to angusrod@)
Contains mild peril
.

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