50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice

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fluffyhamster
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Post by fluffyhamster » Tue Apr 14, 2009 12:58 am

Just a quick reply to Metamorfose/José: I don't have a problem with Pullum - his views are pretty much always sound, from what I've read of him on or linked from LL at least.
What's your beef against Pullum fluffy?

fluffyhamster
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Post by fluffyhamster » Tue Apr 14, 2009 1:47 am

The day after Liberman's announcement on LL of Pullum's Chronicle of Higher Education article, Pullum appeared to post some indirect rejoinders to comments from fark.com regarding his article; I also noticed that he made a recommendation in passing to those asking for some form of writing/style guidance (other than Strunknflunk):
To the various people who assert that I am a disappointed style-guide author plugging a rival text ("the article's author has his own competing book to flog"): I haven't written anything that could plausibly be recommended to a freshman taking English composition. When people ask me for recommendations, I tell them to look at the very sensible and intelligent book Style: Toward Clarity and Grace by Joseph Williams.
( http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1319 : )

Has anybody read this book? Is it any good - or rather, is it not too bad?

(EDIT: Actually, I've just noticed that Liberman, and then Pullum, both mentioned the book in the comments section on Liberman's earlier thread, in reply to someone suggesting and asking about it there. So my question just then has kind of been answered already).

I'm not ashamed to say that the writing books that I've got are more about things like "Plot structure 101" than about style in itself, or if they do mention style I don't take what they have to say that seriously (e.g. Stephen King's comments, expounded at non-trivial length in his On Writing, seem modelled on Strunknflunk: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p ... ment-25410 ). Generally, if I'm not reaching for a strictly empirical and completely unemotive grammar or dictionary, then I'm reaching for at least Merriam-Webster's Concise Dictionary of English Usage.
Last edited by fluffyhamster on Wed Apr 15, 2009 10:37 am, edited 3 times in total.

woodcutter
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Post by woodcutter » Tue Apr 14, 2009 3:06 am

Congrats to S.Jones for becoming a virtual language log member, but surely a few too many people who disagree with you fall into this "crank" or "nutter with axe to grind" category?

(By the way, hasn't the US and British spelling mix-up OK thing you were prominently supporting generally been my axe!? I don't remember much backing from you!)

This endless descriptivist debate really has to die. It is meaningless. 23% of people say that. 52% of people in that area say this. So what? Can I say/write it and still be considered to be speaking/writing educated English, that is the point. Judgement calls are then needed, and the experts at the log seem to agree with this. They just have a bizarre idea that they can make them on an entirely scientific basis, which is not possible. Solve the problem properly. Don't whinge on an obscure log. Make your "scientific" prescriptions in a place where anyone can find them. Help the students of the world get sensible red ink on their papers.

I guess the real point of this thread is to plug Ted's "Color-coded English" but it is nice to see one take off anyway........ :wink:

jotham
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Post by jotham » Tue Apr 14, 2009 1:45 pm

Stephen Jones wrote:By insisting on the 'preference du jour'. For the idiocies of prescriptivism have a look at the ridiculous discussion of fark.com where somebody holds Pullum to account for starting a sentence with a conjunction. Garner of course holds the opposite point of view and insists you should never start a sentence with 'However' but use 'But' instead because it's more vigorous. And Strunkenstein insists it's a rule you should never have 'However' at the beginning of the sentence, even though at no stage in the history of the English language has anybody ever followed the rule. Stuff and nonsense the lot of it.
Garner doesn't "insist" that a sentence never starts with "However." He gives you the principle and let's you decide:
Bryan Garner wrote:It seems everyone has heard that sentences should not begin with this word -- not, that is, when a contrast is intended. But doing so isn't a grammatical error; it's merely a stylistic lapse, the word But ordinarlily being much preferable. The reason is that However -- three syllables followed by a comma -- is a ponderous way of introducing a contrast, and it leads to unemphatic sentences. E.g.: some examples.

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Post by Stephen Jones » Wed Apr 15, 2009 7:45 am

Overjoyed Garner hasn't found software to change all the initial 'Howevers' in my sentences to 'Buts'; very restrained of him.

The trouble is that Garner isn't giving a principle but a preference, and he is misselling it. He doesn't say, "This is a personal preference I've pulled out of my rear end," but suggests there are clear and objective reasons for following it.

Woodcutter, I can assure you Halpern is a nutter with an axe to grind. There was a long and vicious discussion on LL because posters didn't have a very high opinion of the articles on his web site, and told him so with reasons. He retaliated with a tirade of insults. The comment on Turing is in a class of its own, but you'll find his whole site is full of adhominems and faulty logic. Interestingly his own publisher classifies his book on language under politics.
It is meaningless. 23% of people say that. 52% of people in that area say this. So what? Can I say/write it and still be considered to be speaking/writing educated English, that is the point.
It's a somewhat bizarre point? You are presumably a native educated speaker of English. If you say it naturally it will almost certainly be part of standard educated English. As for what others will consider it that is a matter of psychology (or pathology) more than linguistics. There are a large number of people who use language as a shibboleth. They view their pet preferences as showing them to be 'careful users of the language', and view those that do not adhere to them as being part of the great unwashed.

As for prescriptive judgements most of the important ones are uncontroversial. It is generally accepted that double negatives used for reinforcement are sub-standard, and that 'ain't' is not a usual form in standard English. Where there is controversy it is normally because somebody has decided that a perfectly acceptable form offends his sensibilities. Nearly all of prescriptivists' pet peeves are against perfectly grammatical constructions; if they weren't perfectly grammatical they wouldn't be common enough to arouse their ire.

MrPedantic
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Post by MrPedantic » Wed Apr 15, 2009 3:54 pm

I've spent too much of my scholarly life studying English grammar in a serious way. English syntax is a deep and interesting subject. It is much too important to be reduced to a bunch of trivial don't-do-this prescriptions by a pair of idiosyncratic bumblers who can't even tell when they've broken their own misbegotten rules.
Pullum is interestingly emotive. But it seems to me that an emotional attitude towards prescriptivists in a descriptivist is analogous to an emotional attitude towards electrons in a physicist. Surely a prescriptivist text (and its influence) should simply provide more material for detached analysis, if you are a professor of Linguistics.

Even if S&W's advice is contrary to ordinary usage, and based on flawed analyses, if it becomes ordinary usage, by its popularity, that's merely normal linguistic change (which the professor can duly and dispassionately document).

Pullum also seems to distort things a little. If you heed his exhortation to look up the "passive" examples online, for instance, you find that it isn't really true to say that they "can be found all over the Web in study guides for freshman composition classes". (The second example seems mostly to feature in criticisms of S&W's analysis.)

Then too, it isn't strictly accurate to say that S&W present them as examples of the passive voice. They occur in a passage that advocates the active voice, but seem to be intended as examples of "perfunctory expressions".

On the other hand, to call Wilde's Dr Chasuble to the stand in defence of plural "none" (and to try to bluff the reader by describing him as "learned") is entertainingly enterprising.

But I liked best the unwitting bathos of this incredulous expostulation:
Is the intelligent student supposed to believe that Stoker, Wilde, and Montgomery didn't know how to write?
(Yes; "Montgomery" as in "Anne of Avonlea".)

MrP

woodcutter
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Post by woodcutter » Thu Apr 16, 2009 12:42 am

I have made a few modest contributions at LL, and oddly Halpern insulted me personally even though I am much more on his side than most folks over there. Agreed he came off a bit of a wally, and the Turing comment is weird, but the guy is not a crank to be dismissed to my mind. (nor to the language log writer, if you recall).

Pullum is often emotional, and as I have said over there, it is normal in the "science" of linguistics to introduce emotion in support of vaguely 'left-wing' ideas.

The kind of comments I tend to make are in support of informed prescriptivism, and at language hat or language log for example
there is no edit function, and the language which flows from my native speaker's brain sometimes comes out wrong. I assure you that "descriptivists" are always ready to tear me to pieces when this happens and proves I'm thick. This is not necessarily only
a writing problem, for example there may be a problem with cohesion, and who knows, perhaps even some East Anglian dialect!

Anyway, when people want guidance on a problem it is usually a subtle or controversial problem, and the clubbed hands of corpus linguistics may not suffice to say whether the language seems standard or not. Starting sentences with "but" is a good example. You can over-do it.

fluffyhamster
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Post by fluffyhamster » Thu Apr 16, 2009 2:23 am

Basically corpus linguistics etc can't absolutely tell you what to write, only what others after the fact have written (and for what likely purposes they did so etc), all of which is about inference, suggestion, extraploation etc rather than anything to be set in stone and copied almost verbatim; but other people can certainly insist that you write a certain way if you allow them to dictate to you (but even the most rabid prescriptivist cannot literally dictate to you your every word - they too would have better things to do ultimately!). So language in an at all creative sense is essentially a personal/individual matter...and if you are responsible for others' linguistic welfare (which as a language teacher you are), much still remains down to you, although one thing is certain: prescribing or establishing, as SJ says, shibboleths, for the sheer sake of it or some counter-evidential logic, really isn't the way to go about things. (I am not talking here about those shibboleths that exams and potential employers might trade in and expect, although I personally would and do try to teach not just "the exam").

woodcutter
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Post by woodcutter » Thu Apr 16, 2009 3:41 am

Of course it isn't, and I maintain that precisely nobody establishes or preaches these rules for the sheer sake of it. There is always a reason. The main fault behind faulty reasoning is often an over-attachment to history or unreliable authority, but there are many such reasons, and few of them are plain barmy.

At the other extreme, nobody merely describes and avoids the word "wrong" altogether, apart from non-humans like Google, and even that constantly suggests to me that I made a mistake!

If I am responsible for others linguistic welfare then hopefully not too much should be down to me - the chances are, after all, that I am a bit of a linguistic ignoramous. Much better if I could have a reliable place to go to get advice. One holier in academic reputation than Strunk and White.

Anyway, sorry to move off topic. Now, if only we could colour everything in the right way, the problems would presumably all fade away........

fluffyhamster
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Post by fluffyhamster » Thu Apr 16, 2009 4:13 am

Google suggests this and that, yes, because it lacks real intelligence - a bit like prescriptivists, then! But seriously, how can either really tell you what or how to say or write something of any length, sophistication and thus genuine variation upon whatever theme.

Actually I've come up with probably a new term to describe people like you (and perhaps Jotham too, though he seems to be content enough with his Garner), Woody - linguistic hypochondriacs (not quite linguistic martyrs, but possessing a slight masochistical streak nontheless). At least, I reckon I could be forgiven for thinking that certainly you for one feel that there is always something linguistically wrong with you, so desperate do you seem for a truly "sympathetic" expert opinion, and then a second opinion and then a third etc after that, all because the first didn't quite convince you of your actual comparative rude health! (You should take all that as a compliment ultimately! :wink: ). Anyway, it's hard to know what could be prescribed to cure you for once and for all, make you feel truly better. :lol:

But if you're in so many words simply banging on again about how language is too complex and not always described well, then I don't think anyone would disagree, and if you're also of the opinion that books as large as the CGEL aren't exactly accessible in terms of cost let alone style etc, sure, they could do with being read and mined, boiled down to essentials, but will others do a good (to you comprehensible) enough job for you? :o :)

So there is a basic tension between facts, the terms/potential jargon they might then be expressed in, and how amenable one personally is to that form of expression if not the facts themselves (intuitions if not actual individual usage differs), and ultimately Mr Pullum can't tell you how you "should" do anything (though he may be able to shed some light on things after the fact). Maybe all linguistics is a bit forensic, and prescriptions like a gamete in search of its other half: who knows what the resulting form of linguistic life will grow to be like, given the complexity of the DNA involved.

fluffyhamster
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Post by fluffyhamster » Fri Apr 17, 2009 8:00 pm

Has the woodcutter been blunted? :o :lol: :wink: :D

Anyway, Mark Liberman's announced that Pullum's now been interviewed on NPR. There are some telling comments on the LL thread, including this beauty:
Sridhar Ramesh said,
April 17, 2009 @ 12:33 pm

From the interview with Barbara Wallraff

"There's a certain zen quality to some of them, like 'Be clear'. There's a lot being conveyed there in two words, and exactly how to do it people will spend whole other books explaining."

This is intended as praise, but, to me, it illustrates one of the most damning things about the book: where it isn't simply erroneous or misguided, all it offers is empty platitude, advice about as useful as an admonishment to "Write well', without actually providing any helpful guidance as to how to achieve this.
( http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p ... ment-29776 )

Writing well is simply writing logically and grammatically, and most native speakers manage to do this fine given enough practice/reason to do so (e.g. studying on past school-leaving age and into university and beyond). Miss Knucklerappers' dictats will only get one so far - basically, no further than whatever "problematic" point in those junior high school assignments.

woodcutter
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Post by woodcutter » Sun Apr 19, 2009 1:56 pm

I think I'm in a fairly high percentile when it comes to linguistic awareness, but I make errors. I've often thought that "mistakes native speakers make" would be a good thread. One common thing for all, for example, is using an odd preposition with a particular verb. And as I keep saying, if you grow up speaking another dialect then speaking/writing standard dialect can pose all kind of problems. All the same, people may expect you to do it, and it will help you stay sane if Mr.Pullum outlines the rules that your red ink wielding teacher/editor etc consults, and not Mr.Strunk. Mr.Pullum doesn't know how to advertise himself as a consultant, so it is unlikely.

One marker at UNE said my clear prose was very refreshing. I take it therefore that plenty of MA candidates can't manage it.

On the other hand I don't believe that clear prose is always a good idea at that level, so maybe I should have taken a hint and created a bit more semantic sludge.

fluffyhamster
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Post by fluffyhamster » Fri Feb 05, 2010 2:27 am

Thought here would be a good place to post this:
http://ling.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/grammar/otherstuff.html
> http://ling.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/LandOfTheFree.pdf
(Prescriptive grammar in America: The land of the free and The Elements of Style. To appear in English Today. An article by Geoffrey K. Pullum (PDF format, 20 pages; copyright © 2010 by Geoffrey K. Pullum) that is under consideration for publication. Background: This paper is a rewritten and expanded version of a talk given at a workshop on Normative Grammar at ISLE 1, the first conference of the International Society for the Linguistics of English, University of Freiburg, Germany, 8-11 October 2008. It addresses the manifold shortcomings of William Strunk and E. B. White's book The Elements of Style as a guide to grammatical writing. For a shorter discussion, see 50 years of stupid grammar advice by Geoffrey K. Pullum The Chronicle of Higher Education 55 (32), 17 April 2009, Chronicle Review section, B15).

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