Prescriptive versus descriptive grammar In the everyday sense, 'grammar' refers to a collection of rules concerning what counts as socially acceptable and unacceptable language use. Some of these rules, like the ones in (1), make reference to particular words and apply to both spoken and written language. (1) Don't use ain't. Don't use seen as the past tense of see (as in I seen him at the party last night). Don't use contractions. But mainly, the rules in question concern the proper composition of sentences in written language. You may recall being taught rules at school like those in (2). (2) Don't start a sentence with a conjunction. Don't use sentence fragments. Don't end a sentence with a linking ver d. Don't use dangling participles. e. Don't end a sentence with a preposition. f. Don't use an object pronoun for a subject pronoun in a conjoined subject.
g. Don't use a plural pronoun to refer back to a singular noun like everyone, no-one, someone, and the like. h. Don't split infinitives. i. Use whom, not who, as the object of a verb or preposition. Someone who composes sentences in accordance with rules like those in (2) is said to have good grammar, whereas someone said to have bad grammar doesn't apply the rules when they ought to be applied 1 and so produces sentences like (3). (3) Over there is the guy who I went to the party with. violates (2f), (2j) Bill and me went to the store. violates (2g) From the amount of attention that people devote to rules like those in (1) and (2), it is easy to get the impression that they are the only linguistic rules there are. But it is also easy to see that that can't be so. The reason is that even people who don't follow the rules in (1) and (2) don't produce rampantly variable, confusing word salad. For instance, even people who invariably produce sentences like (3) do not produce the likes of (4). (4) Over there is guy the who I went to party the with. Over there is the who I went to the party with guy. Bill and me the store to went. The sentences in (3) may be instances of bad grammar in the everyday sense, but they are still English sentences. By contrast, we don't need to rely on school rules to tell us that the examples
in (4) are not English sentences - even though they contain exactly the same English words as the sentences in (3). Since native speakers of English do not produce a variable mishmash of words of the sort in (4), there must be another type of rules according to which sentences are composed. We can determine what some of them are by taking a closer look at the sequences in (4). Why exactly is it that they are word salad? In (4a), the article the is in the wrong order with respect to the nouns that it belongs with, guy and party. In (4b), the relative clause (who I went to the party with) is in the wrong order with respect to the noun that it modifies (guy). In (4c), the preposition to is in the wrong order with respect to its object (the store). In other words, the sentences in (4) do not follow the rules in (5). (5) Articles precede the nouns that they belong with. Relative clauses follow the noun that they modify. Prepositions precede their objects. (There's a further rule that's not followed in (4), which you are asked to formulate in the Exercise 1.1.) Rules like those in (5) have a different intention than those in (2). The rules in (2) are prescriptive; those in (5) are descriptive. Rules of prescriptive grammar have the same status as rules of etiquette (like table manners or dress codes) or the laws of society, which divide the spectrum of possible human behavior into socially acceptable or legal behavior, on the one hand, and socially unacceptable or illegal behavior, on the other. Rules of prescriptive grammar make statements about how people ought to use language. In contrast, rules of descriptive grammar have the status of scientific observations, and they are intended as insightful generalizations about the way that speakers use language in fact, rather than about they way that they ought to use it. Descriptive rules are more general and more fundamental than prescriptive rules in the sense that all sentences of a language are formed in accordance with them, not just a more or less arbitrary subset of shibboleth sentences. A useful way to think about the descriptive rules of a language (to which we return in more detail below) is that they produce, or generate, all the sentences of a language. The prescriptive rules can then be thought of as filtering out some (relatively minute) portion of the entire output of the descriptive rules as socially unacceptable. In syntax, as in modern linguistics more generally, we adopt a resolutely descriptive perspective concerning language. In particular, when linguists say that a sentence is grammatical, we don't mean that it is correct from a prescriptive point of view, but rather that it conforms to descriptive rules like those in (5). In order to indicate that a sequence of words or morphemes is
ungrammatical in this descriptive sense, we prefix it with an asterisk. Grammatical sentences are usually not specially marked, but sometimes we prefix them with 'ok' for clarity. These conventions are illustrated in (6) and (7). (6) * Over there is guy the who I went to party the with. (= (4a)) * Over there is the who I went to the party with guy. (= (4b)) (7) ok Over there is the guy who I went to the party with. (= (3a)) ok Over there is the guy with whom I went to the party. Prescriptive grammar is based on the idea that there is a single right way to do things. When there is more than one way of saying something, prescriptive grammar is generally concerned with declaring one (and only one) of the variants to be correct. The favored variant is usually justified as being better (whether more logical, more euphonious, or more desirable on some other grounds) than the deprecated variant. In the same situation of linguistic variability, descriptive grammar is content simply to document the variants - without passing judgment on them. For instance, consider the variable subject-verb agreement pattern in (8). (8) There 's some boxes left on the porch. There are some boxes left on the porch.
In (8a), the singular verb is (contracted to 's) agrees in number with the preverbal expletive subject there (in red), whereas in (8b), the plural verb are agrees with the postverbal logical subject some boxes (in blue). The color of the verb indicates which of the two subjects it agrees with. The prescriptive and descriptive rules concerning this pattern are given in (9). The differences between the two rules are emphasized by underlining. (9) In a sentence containing both the singular expletive subject there and a plural logical subject... Prescriptive rule:... the verb should agree in number with the logical subject. Descriptive rule:... the verb can agree in number with either the expletive subject or the logical subject. To take another example, let's consider the prescriptive rule that says, "Don't end a sentence with a preposition." 2 A prescriptivist might argue that keeping the preposition (in italics) together with its object (in boldface), as in (10a), makes sentences easier to understand than does separating the two, as in (10b). (10) With which friend did you go to the party? Which friend did you go to the party with? But by that reasoning, (11a), where the verb and its object are adjacent, ought to be preferable to (11b), where they are not. In fact, however, (11a) is completely ungrammatical in English. (11) * Adopt which cat did your friend? ok Which cat did your friend adopt?
It is important to understand that there is no conceptual or semantic reason that prepositions can be separated from their objects in English, but that verbs can't. From a descriptive perspective, the grammaticality contrast between (10a) and (11a) is simply a matter of fact, irreducible to more basic considerations (at least given our present state of knowledge). (12) highlights the difference between the relevant prescriptive and descriptive rule. (12) When the object of a preposition appears in a position other than its ordinary one (as in a question),... Prescriptive rule:... it should be preceded by the preposition. Descriptive rule:... it can either be preceded by the preposition, or it may stand alone, with the preposition remaining in its ordinary position. The contrasting attitude of prescriptive and descriptive grammar towards linguistic variation has a quasi-paradoxical consequence: namely, that prescriptive rules are never descriptive rules. The reason for this has to do with the way that social systems (not just language) work. If everyone in a community consistently behaves in a way that is socially acceptable in some respect, then there is no need for explicit prescriptive rules to ensure the behavior in question. It is only when behavior that is perceived as socially unacceptable becomes common that prescriptive rules come to be formulated to keep the unacceptable behavior in check. For example, if every customer entering a store invariably wears both a shirt and shoes, there is no need for the store owner to put up a sign that says "No shirt, no shoes, no service." Conversely, it is precisely at illegal dump sites that we observe "No dumping" signs. In an analogous way, in the domain of language use, rules of prescriptive grammar are only ever formulated in situations where linguistic variation is common. But being prescriptive, they cannot treat all of the occurring variants as equally acceptable - with the result that they can't ever be descriptive.