one of ...

[Duncan Powrie]

I am not sure what exams there are that categorically tell native speakers whether they are right or wrong in absolute (cod-)"linguistic" terms (in the UK at least); that is, we aren't tested on whether we end sentences in prepositions or not, for example.

I am also not sure if there is generally still a climate in which teachers feel beholden to teach what is "wrong" from what is (only implicitly) "right": there is now a tolerance, indeed an expectation that what is important is so simply because it is real and effective to a satisfactory (and never perfect) degree; and as I said before, where there is doubt, explicit references are at hand to HELP, not hinder, the end user.

The incipient collapse of civilization? Only if you listen to windbags - people don't need to be patronizingly told by the likes of John Honey that being polite and clear will land you a better job than not being so; there is, theoretically at least, a difference between supposedly "good" language and appropriate language/behaviour/manners etc (that is, there are many ways linguistically if not metalinguistically to achieve the same functional effect).

Modern references/"authorities" do actually include the "good" along with the "bad" anyway, so where is the problem in identifying and walking the line appropriately between them? And all the while, the judgemental labels grow ever fainter, to leave us just with the facts. Given this context, a teacher can surely operate in a regional variety whilst teaching students how to e.g. write an essay, or a business letter. People can "codeswitch" and are more linguistically savvy than it is thought, which comes from life-experience as users as much if not more than education.

A standard does not need to imposed here at all, but should be forgotten as futile, liable to perpetuate the very problems it (perhaps laudably) aims to solve, "for once and for all" (famous "last" words, anyone?). The fact is, standard and non-standard varieties are being accounted for, and there needn't be the tension between them (I think speakers of non-standard varieties appreciate and accept the uses of more standard varieties, without having to have their faces rubbed in it - much like we as EFL teachers will avoid idioms when speaking with learners. It doesn't matter whether you view it as empowering or unimpowering the teacher, it is just what we have to - and instinctively - do).

So, things are more pluralistic and hopefully less tense already in native-speaker communities; the problems we are concerned with now lie more in the international arena. Here, learners would undoubtedly appreciate a standard being set.

I hope that linguists can continue to build and study learner and international corpora, and work out an "average" that all speakers of English, of whatever native or non-native variety, subconsciously adhere to. This could then form the basis for helpful descriptions, to be used in teaching and functional testing etc. It would, however, be a huge undertaking, so it might need to be arranged into "genetically-affiliated", or similar "principles and parameters" or whatever "language blocs" (perhaps cultural too re. shared assumptions etc).

[Stephen Jones]

It's doubtful if we could set up an Academy now; the reasons that led to the setting up of the French and the Spanish Royal Academies are no longer valid.

Incidentally the American Heritage Dictionary have a panel that deal with thorny questions of usage. They quote a percentage figure with regard to controversial expressions. They are of course American sources.

There is no serious discussion over splitting infinitivesl it is a rule derived from Latin and propagated by someone in the eighteenth century with little other claim to fame and fortune than having set the cat among the pigeons in this respect. In Britain there is no argument about it; it is only in the States, where the tyranny of the copy editor is well known, that people still argue in favour, although paradoxically they never give any arguments to back their case up.

The one thing that can't normally be split in English is the verb from its object. This in fact explains why sometimes you have to split the infinitive as in the following example:
I want you to quickly tell all the students in the Prep Year that their exam will be on Tuesday

Of course splitting the verb from its object is something that no native speker does, so nobody has bothered to formulate the rule. Most of the so-called grammatical rules of English, in fact describe constructions that are perfectly grammatical in some, or indeed all, dialects of English. If people didn't insist on using them, there would be no need to insist on the rule.

That is to say the 'rules' are not grammatical rules but rules about the appropriate register.

[woodcutter]

I only have in mind a panel such as Stephen mentions, maybe (in the UK) one bloke from the BBC, one from the OED, and Mr.Swann can get together and make a website, which they revise year by year. The important thing would be getting fame and prestige for the thing. An international version would be nice too.

Standard English is a foreign language to us all. I do not believe any native speaker has a perfect grasp of it, or uses it all the time. It is a set of somewhat arbitrary rules. The arbitrary rules should be written with authority for the benefit of students and teachers. "Wrong" is a fuzzy concept, but we do not use fuzzy marking systems. It isn't fair on anybody.

I think that ESL teachers underestimate the extent to which society at large still believes that the older the textbook, the more correct it is. And an academy of some sort in Britain or America, following our intellectual trends, would actually dispel notions of "purity" of language, not promulgate them. It would be an educational tool, that's all.

[Duncan Powrie]

I only have in mind a panel such as Stephen mentions, maybe (in the UK) one bloke from the BBC, one from the OED, and Mr.Swann can get together and make a website, which they revise year by year. The important thing would be getting fame and prestige for the thing. An international version would be nice too.

In the UK, descriptive linguistics has always been pretty healthy (it was able to survive and even flourish despite the rise and predominance of Chomskyism elsewhere), and recently has been coming on in leaps on bounds. I don't know what such a panel would have to do other than ask each other about the latest CLAWS tagger or make a reading circle to go through the latest COBUILD publication together, and if they did appear on the radio or TV, it would ultimately be to just pump the latest thing from one of the leading publishing houses (see, for example, the interview with David Crystal on the ELT News website - OK OK I know it isn't the BBC, but still, you get my point).

It is of course nice to get answers from authorities and save yourself time (which is why people post questions on Dave's, for example), but the evidence can now be had where we can find our own answers; and seeing as that evidence will concentrate on what we generally say or write anyway, the answer will have been pretty obvious from the start. In all cases, we simply do not now need an Academy on top of all this to underline this stuff for us.

Standard English is a foreign language to us all. I do not believe any native speaker has a perfect grasp of it, or uses it all the time. It is a set of somewhat arbitrary rules. The arbitrary rules should be written with authority for the benefit of students and teachers. "Wrong" is a fuzzy concept, but we do not use fuzzy marking systems. It isn't fair on anybody.

If you persist in viewing "Standard English" as an abstract concept, only appearing in print or on tape after the writer or speaker has consulted dusty arcane tomes, prayed to the "gods" and gone into some wierd kind of trance in which they lose all self-volition, then it will always be out of reach, and you will need that team of knights to go haring off after your Holy Grail. On the other hand, if you look at and begin to actually trust the evidence piling up around you, it will not appear so arbitrary at all. Of course, there may be some areas in which things are still fuzzy or unclear, but I would like to think that these would involve far more interesting, wonderful and ultimately celebratory things, things which have never been on the (pitifully short) prescriptive "(s)hitlist". Hey, and why you so keen on exams?!

I think that ESL teachers underestimate the extent to which society at large still believes that the older the textbook, the more correct it is. And an academy of some sort in Britain or America, following our intellectual trends, would actually dispel notions of "purity" of language, not promulgate them. It would be an educational tool, that's all.

People don't believe in these textbooks - they don't even look at them. People believe windbags who don't know when to shut up (if indeed they know anything at all). Getting into a p*ssing contest with this kind of person is hardly going to be edifying, and rather distracts from the business of serious research and description, even if you believe that the real authorities have a duty to the unwary public to hunt down and lynch every fruitcake there is with crackpot ideas about the language.

I know some teachers who can hold a decent conversation with students, and who possibly even run a halfway-decent (conversation) class, but who are dissapointingly unversed and unread in grammar or even AL theory. For our purposes, then, this kind of teacher is not that different from "society at large"; but even this kind of teacher is surpriseded to find the coverage of even modern dictionaries is not always "all-inclusive", and they seem able to identify outmoded items that somehow made it in in preference.

Ultimately, we have the same goal, woodcutter, even if we differ in how we would achieve them: I fear that an Academy would end up perpetuating, rather than dispelling, notions of "purity" about the language.

[Duncan Powrie]

What I am trying to say is that, as far as the public's way of thinking goes, the damage has already been done. You might not think it constructive or helpful, in this situation, to remain silent on "issues" of usage, but I would prefer that they (to rephrase a recent LL-ism), "dissolve rather than never resolve". The academics should just patiently refer people to the better references, and even throw the questions back at them (What is the context? What is the function?).

A few generations' silence on these non-issues might actually achieve something. Ridiculous, you say, hoping that a whole population could keep quiet for a hundred years about this!! But it would actually only be a few people, when you think about it, who'd need to be tied up and gagged 23 hours out of 24 (perhaps those "aspirational lower-class women" that Stephen mentions? ). And a bit of old rope is more easily had and used than trying to tell the other 99% about the error of their ways (and there really is no need to tell them about that which they are already right...um...er...about! ).

[woodcutter]

Well, I fear they won't let me in the academy, so it might do any dreadful thing without telling me.

I don't want to drag my dear mummy into it, but she spends her life telling little native speakers in high school why they are wrong, and I don't reckon she has checked up on her stuff much since 1980, at least. If somebody more important than me (and who sent home better revised e-mails to his mother) could be invoked our infrequent language chats, it'd be nice.

[Duncan Powrie]

Wore you down, did I, woodcutter? Good.

Now there is just your mumsy to sort out. Well, bring the fire-breathing prescriptivist b*tch on, then!

BTW, I am NOT a misogynist - I enjoy being spanked by women wielding grammar books (note the absence of a hyphen between women and wielding ) too much!

[Harzer]

A further tiny little string to my bow in this morning's paper:

(A review of "Being Bindy" by Alyssa Brugman)

" ... school is the most public arena you will ever inhabit, and the one where camouflaging relationships are most vital..."

Once again an instance of the verb's number being triggered by the antecedent noun, not by the subject (which is the phrase "camouflaging relationships" = singular).

Harzer

[Stephen Jones]

It would be interesting to speculate whether we would see the same number of these mistakes if the Grammar checker in Word flagged them as such, as it does with less important matters.

[JuanTwoThree]

Hang on Harzer, that last one could be perfectly ok, if "camouflaging relationships" are "relationships which camouflage".

[Harzer]

Yes, Juan, I thought of that, but dismissed it as rather meaningless in the context.

What is a camouflaging relationship after all?

harzer

[Harzer]

Here is a nice example y'all can see for yourselves, as it comes from Duncan Powrie in his post about life and death and birthdays (see App Ling index).

"I don't think news about birthday dates (even forgotten ones) retain their relevance for long"

Exactly what I have been talking about: the singular subject 'news' gives way to the plural antecedent noun 'dates' when it comes to determining the number of the verb 'retain'.

Yippee

Harzer

[Duncan Powrie]

Heh, actually I briefly thought about this thread when I typed that (I was aware that I had made a "mistake" somewhere), but as it seemed to read fine on my final quick whizz-through check, I soon forgot about it. You can probably find similar gems in the rest of my writing.

[revel]

Hey all!

Have to agree with Stephen here: "It would be interesting to speculate whether we would see the same number of these mistakes if the Grammar checker in Word flagged them as such, as it does with less important matters.", that is, more careful copy editing might have caught this "error" and might aid in establishing more clearly what is "good" writing in contrast to "sloppy" writing.

And though the thing exists in the mouths of the people, I still stick by my fuss budget ways of pointing out what the subject of the sentence is, that its verb ought to agree in number (which is only necessary to point out in the present tenses and modes and with the verb "be" in the past), despite whatever other items we put between the subject and its verb.

peace,
revel.

[Duncan Powrie]

Hey Harzer, if you slip me a tenner I'll start cranking out even more evidence for you!

Come to think of it, slip me a twenty and I won't come up with rethinks like: Birthday dates don't retain their relevance for long.

And, for the grand sum of fifty quid, I won't go anywhere near the "edit" button in that post of mine you quoted.