From: fshck@UMAC on 16/02/2001 06:33 PM


thanks for the comments everyone
                         now neville - you won't be getting any absolutist
defence of relativism out of me

i'm not sure what the 'natural' self evident growth of language might be
i do certainly think the idea of natural language is a useful one

i suppose those i'm calling descriptivists are collecting evidence of how
natural languages behave... the field linguist's tradition and now the
dictionary maker's tradition...

i agree certainly (and said) that description and prescription of language
blur... in fact i think they're often part of a cycle... at the very least it's
obvious that the role shifts with shifts of context so that words sent as
description are often received as prescription (the voice of the teacher, the
voice of the native speaker) and vice versa (when reading ancient edicts as
historical texts)

the beauty and ugliness of words gets jammed in the wheels somewhere there -
hard not to realtivise on that one

it's also plausible that prescription just doesn't work - telling people what
and how they can speak or write doesn't succeed in regulating language but it
does succeed in regulating and socialising people ... the academie
francaise...the banning of various languages in various places through
history... the teacher who tied my dad's left hand to the chair so he'd have to
write with his right (his dad bought him a typewriter)

 however i don't know that any of this means that we can dispense with the
distinction between prescription and description ...

they seem to represent opposite poles in terms of one's intentions with
languages: being bossy versus having a captain cook

and for poets how does that work?... i think if you see yourself as setting some
kind of example
with your work (and it's hard not to at some level) or if on the other hand you
see yourself as just tellin it how it is, different ethics may apply

i don't think prescription is the same as having or finding or seeking a norm
... prescription is the imposition of what might be a norm or a desired norm
prescription in grammar is a lot like racism because it's telling people that
something about their parents which their parents couldn't help was wrong,
wrong, wrong - i.e. the way they talk ...
of course like maggie thatacher you can reform yourself, renorm yourself... but
your parents will still have spoken the way they spoke, you'll never recover
from that

i don't want to split hairs there though on prescription/description and the
usefulness of the divide...
by all means let us boldly pass beyond the dichotomies we have thus far ...
i merely want to ask again

how many grammars / i mean conceptions of grammar?
how far back in the head do they go?


> Christopher Kelen,
> Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities,
> University of Macau, P.O. Box 3001
> Taipa, Macau S.A.R., China
>
> telephone:
> 853 3974 212 (office)
> 853 3974 621 (home)
> 853 838 312 (fax)
> e-mail: [log in to unmask]

ps - i'm interested in the idea of Bible as trope... which trope/s? How would
that work?

pps - i'm not quite sure what you're about on efficiency and ambiguity - as a
teacher what i want in the way of grammatical explanation is to tell the punters
how things mean what they mean ... being able to explain how certain wording are
ambiguous and therefore open onto a certain range of interpretation is useful...
one's life seems to be devoted to selling the proposition that there isn't one
correct answer








Far from boring all sorts of interesting points,
I have no thoughts on Chinese grammar as such, but the
supposed division between the presciptors and
descriptors does seem for me an interesting point of
conflict.

The idea that the 'natural' self evident growth of
language is only respected by the descriptors and
poets and inhibited by those that seek to prescribe
seems wrong.

There are plenty of cases that could argue that
prescription is likely to encourage language diversity
and growth(not sure what that words means in this
context, but go with it anyhow)
For example the bible as a linguistic norm/trope
(grammar and rhetoric looking similar here) has
encouraged many to adopt that voice to produce vastly
divergent literary and other texts. (numerous
examples)
Censorship has an effect on literature producing all
sorts of allegorical and other writing.(examples too
numerous to mention)
Interesting that those that would argue that
_political correctness_ is censorship hasn't produced
this sort of effect?
my own personal loadstone is the writing practice of
the OULIPO who consciously adopt practices that limit
easy writing in an effort to find new linguistic
pathways.
Poets often adopt verse metre or syllabul counts or
'poetical language' or the voices of others to escape
the freedom of talking in common places(not much
chance of that poets being pretty well ignored).
Far from respecting and being interested in the ever
changing qualities of language there plenty of poets
who for example consciously adopt archaic language and
would frown upon modern useage. Poets are perhaps not
as right on as you paint them.

Also, the division between descriptors and prescrips
could be resolved on a point of efficiency and
misreading, a good grammar could allow for misreading,
ambiguity and all that good stuff but still argue that
some expression are more efficient less open to
misreading (when they are not intend) double negatives
for example if we are talking about a modern grammar.
Also some expression are ugly, we can argue about to
boldly go but would anyone want to read phrases like

to without delay, or sparing the horses go.

seems to me from these principles the two could be
brought together? I am personally never that
attracted to the all powerful white wash of relativism
too often it relies on false dichotomies.





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