Is English deteriorating?

Ling 1

Remember!

• Language is instinctive -- humans are grammatical beings.

• Children are grammatical geniuses.

• All languages are structure-driven.

• If all this is arguably correct, why is everyone always complaining about the state of English? • “to grow the economy”• “y’all”, “y’uns”, “yins”, “yous”• “ain’t”• “my bling, (bling)”

Arbiters of English

• Who decides what is and is not correct spoken language?

• Why do people get so stressed out about “incorrect usage?”

• Do we have a moral imperative to protect language?

Examples of “bad” English

• “Hopefully, we’ll end early today.”

• For most of us, the adverb indicates our attitude toward the entire sentence…[One hopes that [X]].

• *We’ll end hopeful(ly) today.

• It does NOT modify just the verb phrase.

• We know exactly what we mean.

• Confusion of lay/lie

• “I’m going to lay down” - is this bad?

• “I have lain down” - how’s this sound?

Regular/irregular?

• “He snuck into the room late” - ?

• “She dove off the platform” - ?

What’s wrong here?

• I want to gradually save money for a new car.

• She decided to never touch another cigarette.

• That’s John and mine’s favorite song - ?

• Conjoined nouns are often treated differently than simple nouns:

• John and me arrived late.

• *Me arrived late.

• That’s between you and I.

Hypercorrection

• Me and you went to the movies.• Rule? • Internalize: “Never say ‘you and me’”• Hypercorrection:

• He gave the book to you and I.• He lent the DVD to John and I.

• Hypercorrection: misapplication of prescriptivist rules

Prescriptive versus Descriptive Grammar

• Prescriptive grammars describe how one ought to talk.

• Descriptive grammars describe how people DO talk.

• We all have our own likes and dislikes about how others use language. Examples?

• Prescriptivists, though, feel very strongly that only their definition of correct usage is accurate.

• “This is an outrage up with which I shall not put” – Churchill in response to being told not to strand prepositions

Language as Shibboleth

• Shibboleth: Hebrew for ‘torrent, stream’ - custom or usage that distinguishes one group from another.

• Judges (12:4-6) recounts the slaying of 42,000 Ephraimites at the passage of Jordon who could not pass as Gileadites because they said ‘sibboleth’.

• For prescriptivists, language use is a shibboleth.

• They protect their status -- being smarter and more urbane than others.

• Language ‘corruption’ is interpreted as a sign of mental/moral corruption.

They’re everywhere!

• It’s not just English that’s going to the dogs.• Many societies, particularly literate ones, are

constantly preoccupied by language corruption.

• Greek grammarians in 100BCE were worried that spoken Greek was not as pure as Homeric Greek.

• Moslem grammarians of 8th-9th centuries tried to restore Arabic to its perfect state as revealed in the Qu’ran.

• 1794 Murray’s English Grammar:

• 2 negatives in English cancel each other out.• Never put a preposition at the end of a

sentence.

• Murray’s example of ‘bad’ preposition use:

• “Who do you speak to?” (quoted from Shakespeare’s As you like it)

• Pittsburghese: “Where’re you at?” would probably have killed him.

• Many of these ‘shibboleths’ come from a misunderstanding that English should be more like Latin.

• Ex, prepositions don’t occur finally in Latin.

Origin of these notions

• 18th century preoccupation that Latin was perfect and English defective unless regulated by ‘experts’.

ain’t

• This is used as a contraction of “am not”.

• It’s of very old origin and was used even in cultivated speech (and it still is).

• (You/we/they) are not aren’t(He/she/it) is not isn’t

• I am not I’m not (*ain’t)

• Only with “I” is the contraction to the pronoun.

I am not He is not

• Ain’t makes this symmetrical.

I am not

Y’all - Y’uns - Yous

• Even Tok Pisin, based on English, has a singular versus plural you.

• yu

• yupela

“Conservative” American English pronoun paradigm

• I weyou yous/he, it they

• To fill in the gap, we have all kinds of variants, depending on region.

• Even if you don’t like yins, you probably use:

• You guys…

Negation and ‘polarity’

• Double negation is considered a solecism.

• Example “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet”

• English isn’t math: two negatives do NOT make a positive.

• Double negatives were fine:Chaucer: He never yet no vilainy ne said..“He never said any evil.”

• “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet”

• You haven’t seen anything yet -or-

• You have seen nothing (yet).

• “any” has to occur with neg.• “some” “none” “nothing” have to occur with

pos.• Why?

But…

• Some people use ‘anymore’ without a negative:

• “Anymore I just work”

• Dialectal variant = synonym for “these days”

The StarTrek corruption

• “to boldly go where no man has gone before!”• Again with the Latin!… It’s impossible to split

an infinitive in Latin because infinitives are expressed via inflections (ama-re) not periphrastic expressions (to go).

Right and wrong usage

• Every generation is accused of corrupting or degrading the language.

• Languages change generation by generation.

• Those who get all incensed about correct usage are usually wasting their time.

• Spoken language always has a lot of variation - due to regional, stylistic and personal differences.

• Sometimes grammatical variations are in competition for a very long time.

• Only speakers will eventually sort this out - probably not a “language maven”.