Descriptive and Prescriptive Grammar

When we're studying language, what rules are the rules that matter? This week, The Ling Space takes a look at prescriptive and descriptive rules, and explains why the rules that tell you how you actually do something are more interesting and more scientific than the ones that tell you how you should do it.
This is Topic #3!
This week's tag language: Tagalog!
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Spanish subtitles by Federico Falletti
Looking forward to next week!

[@watsonwrote]

Wasn't expecting to run into Homestuck while boning up on my linguistics. What a pleasant surprise!

[@thelingspace]

Yep, we are Homestucks here! There's another Homestuck-themed episode later on, too. ^_^

[@marcotigno2902]

He said: "Until next time!" in Tagalog, a major language in the Philippines. This video makes a feeling of inclusivity. I love it!

[@jillsomani7293]

Wow! Thank you so much for creating this channel. This is the first video I have heard and the explaination is done in such a simple way that I found it easy to understand. I loved this channel.

[@notoriouswhitemoth]

Merriam-Webster got it wrong. No one has ever seriously used the word "literally" in its literal sense to mean "not literally". It is, however, quite often *used figuratively*, in the same figure of speech that has long since become the standard usage of "very" and "really" in English, i.e., as an emphatic. Yes, there are figurative uses of a word that means "not figuratively". It's ironic. That it's ironic doesn't make it wrong, but the fact that a dictionary lists "figuratively" as a definition not only has no correlation to how the word is actually used, but also makes that word completely meaningless as far as that dictionary is concerned, because the two definitions given are mutually exclusive. When the word "literally" is used as an emphatic, it doesn't mean "figuratively" any more than "were" means "to be a metaphor" in the sentence "His legs were trees."

[@thelingspace]

+notoriouswhitemoth Yeah, this is a fair point. That actual usage of "literally" is as an emphatic, not to be used more or less interchangeably with "figuratively". As you note, it's ironic that the word's changed that way, but even if on some level it is the case that there is a figurative meaning, it's not the general use.

[@frankharr9466]

+The Ling Space Not that ironic. You need a way to say "very" when dealing with something figurative.

[@cafeinst]

You have a great channel. I have recently become fascinated with this topic of linguistics. I think it is the most difficult topic in science.

[@thelingspace]

Glad you're liking it! It can be challenging, but if you work at it, you'll get there. ^_^

[@Justpixy2002]

Great channel!

[@rath60]

I wasnt looking but when I did I ended up returning to here the sentence about dirk and Jake darn

[@romulo353]

I'm Brazilian and I "teach" English as a foreign language. From what I understood from your video, what I'm basically doing is: indoctrinating my students through prescriptive grammar into rules created by a certain society. Although that's not necessarily bad, I feel like approaching things a different way. I'm looking for a method that would develop a creative yet socially functional thought process instead of an automated, indoctrination-prone one. Would you be kind enough to point me in a good direction please (if there is such a thing)? I'm at lost. Thank you for this simple great video, professor Chomsky is not the most accessible source of knowledge for one to refer to, especially for a foreigner such as myself, if you know what I mean.

[@felipevasconcelos6736]

Prescriptive rules are important to learn, but if you think that your students don't gather enough descriptive grammar, maybe you should give them more dialogue listening. Or you may want to encourage them to watch movies, series, etc. in English with English subtitles. I only became fluent in English when I started watching KZbin videos in English.

[@sugarfrosted2005]

For second language learning it's basically unavoidable. But please don't teach them the lies about "not splitting the infinitive" and "not ending a sentence with a preposition" these have always been preposterously wrong.

[@thelingspace]

Sorry for the long delay on answering this! I don't really specifically have a great answer, but I will note that a lot of second language teaching / learning is getting across things that would be classed as descriptive grammar points. Word order, what prepositions can go where, how to form questions, etc., most of that are things that would be a part of descriptive grammar for a language. I think the difficult thing for replying to this in my view is that I'm not aware of any grammars of English that aren't technical linguistics books that attempt to lay out just the descriptive grammar rules. I'll try checking with a couple of education people I know who've also done linguistics, and see if they have any ideas. Also, yeah, as much as I admire and respect Chomsky, his books are not really lucid; I can only imagine trying to come at them as a non-native speaker. ^^;

[@BananaBoi27]

So... how are there people in this comment section who dont get the homestuck references?

[@tatermaniac9319]

homestuck isnt that popular

[@IEatSignificantAmountsOfAss]

It was one of the biggest fandoms of all time and like half of Tumblr, how is it not that popular?

[@tatermaniac9319]

@@IEatSignificantAmountsOfAss what i mean is most people dont know specific homestuck references, all they know of homestuck is that it exists and had a cringy fandom years ago

[@IEatSignificantAmountsOfAss]

@@tatermaniac9319 yeah fair enough

[@jasminealbios3089]

Is that a plushie of L from Death Note? Adoooraable

[@meraki4051]

How about teaching grammar? How can we distinguish 3 types of grammars? I mean prescriptive, descriptive and teaching grammar? Pls

[@dianalepka8435]

Still wondering why their videos don't get million views.

[@teacherdkennedy]

I am wondering if it is within your purview in future episodes to talk about how prescriptive rules often work as class gatekeepers.

[@thelingspace]

Diana Kennedy Sure, we could come back and address that topic again! When I've taught in the past, I usually get into that conversation as part of a discussion on dialectology, so if I had to guess, we'd probably bring it up again around then. It's definitely a topic of interest!

[@TheDemoskratos]

Whom do Dirk and Jake expect to see them in dreams? Oh, the irony =) But I really had hard time understanding what that sentence meant without the "m". Dialectical differences? Do dialects prescribe or describe?

[@thelingspace]

TheDemoskratos If we can't get our Homestuck right, what can we get right?And if your dialect makes a stronger distinction between "who" as a subject (i.e. nominative case) or "whom" as an object (i.e. accusative case), that's quite interesting! Ours doesn't, so we didn't catch that. If you have a hard time accessing the interpretation without it being "whom", that suggests that it's more of a descriptive issue - you can't get the meaning without it. If it was just you prefer "whom" because it's better / more proper / the right way to speak English, that'd be prescriptive. But if you can't access the interpretation because the wrong word was used, that's a descriptive issue. Hope that helps! ^_^

[@verushckacizzelle7403]

Prescriptive - traditional grammar Descriptive - modern grammar

[@119Agent]

I din’t believe that is true. There are prescriptive grammar rules that far more modern than descriptive usage that has been in use for much longer.

[@belakhalranda2565]

the video was very helpful thank you😊

[@MickulyashyYT]

Bro looks like john and is wearing the dirk shirt

[@mrderby01]

Hanggang sa susunod ❤

[@AbdulWahab-se5nu]

Thank u for nice explanation

[@mackenziesigmon898]

I spy House of Leaves on his bookshelf lol

[@GregSanders]

Great episode, it's interesting to think of the difference between descriptive and prescriptive rules. I think there's more interplay between the two in political science where evaluating prescriptive rules, in the form of constitution, laws, and regulations, is part of the process. One question: do descriptive rules change over time? The example of sfik vs. stik being a possible english word made me wonder if say English from earlier in the millennium had different rules than the a language as used by Shakespeare or by us.

[@graceseybold2592]

Yes, descriptive rules do change over time. You can even see a kind of fossilized remnant of old descriptive rules in our spelling system. For instance, words like "knight" and "knife" used to be pronounced the way they're spelled. It used to be perfectly all right to have a word begin with the sounds /k/ + /n/. In modern English, that sound combination doesn't feel right to us anymore, so we say the words differently, even though social inertia has kept the spelling the same.

[@thelingspace]

Grace Seybold Very good point! And we can see other languages that still allow that cluster of consonants, like Czech or Russian. We know it's still good elsewhere, but it doesn't make for a good word of English anymore.

[@thelingspace]

Greg Sanders Descriptive rules definitely change over time, as well! It's not just the prescriptive norms, but the language itself can change. Old English was different in a whole lot of descriptive ways; it was far more Germanic than modern English. For example, it had a more extensive noun marking system, so we marked for singular or plural; male, female, and neuter for genders; and subject, object, indirect object, and possessive for markers. It also had free word order, and had the verb at the end of the sentence, like Japanese or Turkish today. So we've come a long way from there!It's not my area of expertise, but I'd agree that there's more importance placed on prescriptive rules in politics. There are descriptive rules, as well, but in a lot of cases, we're trying to curb trends or behavior that are descriptively true but prescriptively bad. There's far more value in trying to achieve a more multicultural and more peaceful society than trying to coach people not to say "no problem" instead of thank you.

[@frankharr9466]

100 km/h= 62.1 mph for us normal people and 9.27e-8 c for physics majors. But I do think you can study prescriptive rules. But ONLY if you study them as stylistics or socio-lingistics. But cool! [Edit: More units for physics majors: 27.8 (or 27 7/9) m/s and 91.1 or fps. That's a lot of colons]

[@thelingspace]

+Frank Harr Haha, we thought about providing a translation of the speed to other units, so thanks for including it here. ^_^ And yeah, this is a good point. There is room for studying prescriptive rules: what they are, where they came from, and how they evolve. As long as we treat them as societal constructs rather than telling us how language works underlyingly (i.e. exactly as you say, either as style or sociolinguistics topics), then they can be quite interesting to look at!

[@frankharr9466]

I'm so glad you took those the way I meant them. It's way too easy for things like that to spiral out of control. Incidentally, I did a unit conversion app called Frank Harr's Conversion App. You can convert more than one unit at a time e.g. feet and inches, pounds and ounces etc. It also separates out imperial and U.S. units and includes some Canada-specific units. Furthermore, you can use fraction. Sorry, I just had to mention it.

[@otakuofmine]

Normal: exaggerating. The metric system is just used in Europe. Or do you really think we are not 'normal'. ;)

[@frankharr9466]

No. It just amuses me. It's not like anyone actually care what I think.

[@beverlybarkon4643]

So...I live in Pittsburgh. I have not always lived here. I learned to speak in the city on the other side of the state of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, which has its own specific weird language stuff. There are several aspects of what I think may descriptive language rules that seem so different from what I am used that they grate every time I hear them. One of these is the grammatical structure--that "something needs done". Even very intelligent, well-educated people who learned to speak in Pittsburgh make this "error". My question is: Is this a dialect type of difference or is it part of the descriptive rules that they learned that are different from the ones with which I am comfortable?.

[@thelingspace]

Beverly Barkon Good question! The answer is that it's both. Dialectal differences like that one, where the sentence structure is different, are a sign that the syntactic rule that's generating the sentence isn't the same in the two dialects. Every individual dialect, and every individual speaker, generates their language through the descriptive rules that they've picked up. If your descriptive rules are different, then it makes sense that it'd grate, because they're violating your own grammar when they say it. But it doesn't mean it's out of order! It just means it's out of your own personal linguistic order. Hope this helps!

[@sarayesilsoy918]

Do you guys have a space on reddit/quora? Many people would be interest based on the questions and different understanding levels shared.

[@LockMacFly]

I wonder how these things are being studied. I mean it's not like there are empirical studies being conducted for each single word.

[@BigR.O.B.]

Finally Trolls hooked on phonics

[@salah-eldingad7567]

What is the principle of normativity in prescription???????

[@athellmeuz2049]

How upper class used to speak in 19 century

[@strivingtoo7669]

Thanks

[@jakearandz]

Hanggang sa susunod! ☺

[@thelingspace]

Jake Arandilla Unfortunately, I only know a few more words and phrases from Tagalog beyond that, but I'm glad you got it. ^_^

[@jakearandz]

The Ling Space As a pure blooded Filipino, I always get amazed when I hear Tagalog words being said by non-Tagalog speakers. You did a great job! =)

[@thelingspace]

Jake Arandilla Thanks! I try hard - most of my non-English languages sort of sound like Japanese when I try to pronounce them. So I'm glad that one worked right!

[@powersite65]

Nice and concise. Why not make it agreeable to listen to as well? Please ask for a decent microphone for Christmas or your birthday, whichever comes first.

[@BananaBoi27]

"It's like Christmas up in this bitch!" - Andrew Hussie

[@Gyroglle]

I think descriptive rules can definitely be broken, if the person knows the rule and if he chooses to do so on purpose.

[@thelingspace]

Bolino This is certainly true, but the people around you who speak the language will definitely be thrown by it in a way that's different from prescriptive rule breaking. So, say, if I say "Where'd you get that snazzy watch from?", this is wrong prescriptively, but it comes naturally from English rules, and unless you're trying to enforce prescriptivism, you're not going to notice. And it definitely doesn't impede understanding.But let's say that you want to, say, break the rules around pronoun usage. You want to say, "Jim took a picture of him. And by him, I mean Jim himself." So you can't have him in that first sentence if you want him to mean Jim, right? You can break it, but no one will get the interpretation you want; it'll just be wrong, and you'll confuse people. Or even if you're not confusing people, people will just register as wrong a sentence like "You runs a marathon last weekend." You shouldn't ever have that "s" there with "you," and it's the wrong tense to boot. English speakers may know what you mean, but they'll know you did it wrong.So it's true, you can violate descriptive rules if you come at it consciously, but you don't really do it naturally, and you break your sentences way more than you would for breaking prescriptive rules. Thanks for the question!

[@machaiarcanum]

One kind shakes a finger at you and tells you you're wrong and bad if you don't use your words *correctly* ;)

[@subhransunaik9535]

So.....speed dude

[@feanorofsunspear2320]

/sfrægistiks/

[@Amphibiot]

I hate when people say 'literally' but mean 'figuratively'. Far too many times have i read people write "I literally died when ..." I always have to resist the urge of saying something sarcastic, like "It's a good thing medical personell was on hand to resuscitate you!" or something to that effect.

[@g-rexsaurus794]

I hate when people don't understand the concept of an hyperbole, yes it means that when people say "literally" they aren't trying to say "figuratively", no they are saying exactly what they want to say, but what they say is simply an exaggeration of reality and I imagine people expect others to not be "autistic" and miss that.

[@dzxn3728]

I hate it when people don't realize that living languages evolve whereas only dead languages are written in stone.

[@athellmeuz2049]

@@dzxn3728 yes, meaning changed so nothing can be done, we just accept it, that is real descriptive science

[@kjun03]

Kids? Those are young or baby goats!

[@sugarfrosted2005]

Hell, some "rules" are out and out bullshit. Like not splitting the invinitive and not ending a sentence with a preposition. I feel that any English teacher who says these are rules should be sacked immediately. This bullshit needs to dies. It's the equivalent of a math teacher teaching that 2+2=5, but yet it's accepted. (Also usually people who say that idiocy are too stupid to even get the difference between a preposition and a prepositional particle.) I'm sorry I'm a grumpy copy editor that has seen way too many awkward sentences that are born out of these false rules instituted by Grammarians who wanted English to be more like Latin because they are pretentious. (Yes I realize the irony of being an antiprescriptivist copyeditor. Also in my opinion not splitting the infinitive sounds really off to me most of the time.)

[@thelingspace]

I'm definitely not going to criticize you for being antiprescriptivist and a copyeditor, though! I agree that many of those rules don't make sense. I think generally I want proper spelling and I want sentences to make sense, and then after that, it really depends on who's writing and why what rules I want to see followed. But yeah, I don't see any point to the no split infinitive or no preposition stranding rules, either. That's just how English works, and the fixes tend to sound worse than the original sentences to me, for sure.

[@dlwatib]

The problem with the preposition rule is that English has two uses for prepositions, and Latin only has one. One use in English, which mimics the Latin usage, is to introduce a prepositional phrase. In this usage it is always followed by the object of the preposition. The previous sentence is an example with three such prepositional phrases: "in this usage", "by the object" and "of the preposition". Based on this usage, the Latin-influenced grammarian makes the rule (erroneous for English) that a sentence should never end in a preposition. But English also has another use for prepositions, as adverbials. In this usage, the preposition becomes part of the verb phrase and modifies the verb. Importantly, this usage is distinguished from the other usage in that it is never followed by an object. If a well-formed sentence ends in a preposition, the preposition is always being used in this adverbial way. An example sentence of this type is: "This is something I can't put up with." This example is especially interesting in that it has not one, but two adverbial prepositions modifying "put": "up" and "with". The similar sentence "This is something I can't abide by" just has one adverbial preposition. Both of these examples could be restructured as "I can't put up with this" and "I can't abide by this", but there are examples that are not so easy to restructure. A particularly simple example is "I'm going to." Here, "to" modifies "going" and in so doing changes its meaning from "I'm leaving now" to "I intend to do this after some indefinite amount of procrastination." Only a robot would ever use the more explicit statement.

[@dirgaam2875]

The video editing is so disturbing.

[@thelingspace]

M. Dirgantara Disturbing is a new one! We were still learning the ropes at that point - that was only our third video. I think we've gotten better since then. If you're interested in this topic, maybe try our recent one on linguistics as a science. ^_^

[@user-it8kw3wy2y]

The editing is not bad at all, so what are you talking about