When I hear people bring up "grammar" in daily conversations, most of the time it's interchangeable
with "proper grammar". Ain't ain't a word. Double negations are ungrammatical. Always
use who as a subject, but whom as an object. Following these kinds of rules makes your
speech sound polite, educated and prestigious.
This "proper grammar" is telling you how to use your language. Linguists call it prescriptive
grammar because it prescribes certain words and structures.
If prescription demands that you follow certain grammar rules (it's
a linguistic "DO THIS!"), proscription prohibits you from breaking rules (a linguistic "DON'T
DO THAT!").
But now you've come over to the nativlang channel, and you've started watching the videos
here, and these videos talk about grammar differently. You learn that in Catalan, a
language native to Eastern Spain, they put articles before proper nouns: "el fill de
la Joana" literally means "the son of the Joanne", but that's how they say "the son
of Joanne" or "Joanne's son". Maybe you even find out that in earlier English, double negatives
were common and expected, like in "nān ne dorste nān þing āscian". Yup, that is English,
and it literally means "no one dared not ask nothing". These are real-life descriptions
of language. This is descriptive grammar.
Notice the difference. One approach attempts to dictate how speakers ought to speak their
language. The other one captures and documents language objectively, as it is used, not as
some people wish it were used.
Historical descriptions show us that prescriptive rules go into and out of fashion: double negatives
were once mainstream in English, but now they're marginalized. Cultural differences show us
that prescriptive rules don't apply to all languages, so they're not fundamental to human
language or grammar: many modern languages also use double negatives.
Yes, from this perspective, the prescriptive rules you hear from grammar geeks and style
guides sound flighty and incidental. But before we shout "nobody tells me what to do!" and
race to dump prescriptivism in the trash, let's think about the possible upside. Establishing
a standard language could boost social cohesion. Monumental works of literature, standardized
reference resources like dictionaries and the education of a highly literate population
traditionally involve - and maybe even depend on - some amount of prescriptivism.
Prescriptivism and descriptivism both talk about language use. But both of them stop
short of offering a model of human language. A model of language wouldn't be a laundry
list of descriptions of a particular language. Instead, a model explains human language.
It's a theory of language. For example, Chomskyan theories of generative grammar see language
as a group of rules that, once activated in the right way, will produce the structure
of a specific language. On the other hand, functional theories of grammar see language
as a linguistic instrument for communicating in social situations.
Prescriptive, descriptive, theoretical - you'll sound smart when you get the chance to work
these concepts into at least one upcoming conversation. What's more, now you can see
some of the reasons behind dividing the study of language into different fields.
I hope you've enjoyed this topic as much as I have. Please subscribe for more on linguistics,
languages and logic in the future, and thank you for learning with me!