Re: On prescriptions and misunderstanding: was can/may

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...>


> My turn to apologize, Sally.  I didn't mean to imply that you
> were one of the very "schoolmarms" you were clearly satirizing in your
> earlier message, despite the alignment in your profession.
Heh heh heh!  Thanks, Mark.  Alignment indeed.  :) I think when we all start
apologizing to each other it is definitely an indication of overeating (and
overworking) at the holidays! :)  My goose was cooked (A Dickensian
Christmas), by me, and what a job it was.  Two days.  At the moment, if I
see another goose, I think I'll be sick.  Also if I see another plum pudding
with "hard sauce."

Now I said I wouldn't comment on this again, but I lied! :)  This has turned
into an interesting discussion about language and identity.

You wrote:
> It is not true, however, that some - by no means all! - of the rules
> of "proper" English were not based on observation of actual use?  I
> believe several were added in an attempt to make it more Latinlike, in
> the hope that this would somehow cause it to gain some of the cachet of
> Latin.  The canonical example is the split-infinitive prohibition, which
> as I understand it, grew out of the fact that the Latin infinitive is a
> single word and therefore unsplittable - which makes observation of the
> rule much more convenient in Latin. :)
Of course!  The split-infinitive is one of the rules I break all the time.
Efforts to avoid it sometimes produce barbarous results:  "He was quick
vehemently to deny..."   But I don't break the double negative, which was
also, probably, a decided upon rule.  And I do think that in the long
history of a language's development that there are many cases where a group
of (or even single) individuals have consciously shaped the language, as in
Turkish for instance.  Prescriptively or not.  Shakespeare is a good
example.  The introduction of "inkhorn" terms was very popular in
Shakespeare's day, and much criticized by opponents.  It was a conscious
effort to give the English tunge "matter."  Other writers have tried
unsuccessfully to introduce "inkhorn" terms into English, producing words
derived from Latin or Greek that no one has taken up (like "adnichious"),
but Shakespeare was wildly successful in his introductions, and now they are
standard vocabulary, in the same way that the single negative is also
"standard" grammatical structure.  And by "standard," mind you, I mean to
refer to a "dialect" or "register" of English.  More about that below.  And
of course Shakespeare was not intending to be dogmatic:  i.e., he did not
use the word "obscene" and follow it with an edict that everybody now has to
use this term instead of other terms.  My point is that "genuine" language
is sometimes consciously shaped, whether it be by committee or talented
neologist.

>> I disagree with your final statement.  I understand your use of
>> "native" to mean the language we learn in the green years after our
>> birth, but "native" speech does not end at kindergarten.  The rules we
>> learn in school are no more "made up" than the rules we learn at home,
>> although they may seem so to us.  Mastering our complex "native"
>> language and its various discourses and registers can take us well
>> into our young adulthood.  Sometimes it takes a lifetime, especially
>> if we want to write and publish.  Aren't we all still learning?
>
> I would, in turn,  disagree that mastering English discourse is in the
> same category as learning English as a native language.
I would say, rather, that it occupies different parts of a continuum,
because we often "master" English discourse through reading, which has
components in it of the intuitive process of language we get at an earlier
age.  Surely there are people who have no interest in mastering English
style or vocabulary because their life's goals lie elsewhere.  And there are
others who are interested in exploring what they can do with the traditions
and expansions of their native language.  But reading has a powerful effect
on language use, and I would say it's just as "genuine" as learning English
from our mother's lips.

> I would argue,
> in fact, that the English of educated discourse is actually a second
> language (to those of us whose first language is English itself), which
> we gain greater and greater fluency in over time (hopefully), but which
> is distinct from our mother tongue.
Case in point: the "grapholect."  And while I would call it a different
dialect,  it is no less English.  And there are different dialects, even,
within the grapholect.  I may write differently from a physicist.  Or even
from a journalist.

>  As with any other second language,
> it can cause interference with the native language,
How?  I go home and I say to my husband, "gimme the sports page."  I write
in a grant proposal "I hope you will consider my project worthy of your
perusal."   I don't find that the one register interferes with the other at
all.  And I've seen colleagues of mine speak with an uninflected Eastcoast
accent with academic vocabulary in the classroom and in administrative
meetings, and then speak to their spouses in an "X" accent and with a
different vocabulary.

> and if separated
> from the native language long enough, one can even seem to forget it,
> but that doesn't identify the second language with the native one. :)
It doesn't identify it with the native one?  So, in speaking in a certain
register of English considered "received standard," I am in danger of
forgetting my "native" language?  And what is my native language? :)  Is it
saying "kinda" instead of "kind of"?  There's cats outside" instead of
"they're cats" outside?  Those were acquired language quirks of mine!  Maybe
the second register is the one I was raised with, seeing that both my
parents, especially my mother, are mindful of certain linguistic patterns
they deemed "acceptable."  Is that not my "native" language?  I tend to
agree with Mach, a person who is better acquainted with high and low German
than we Murkins are with our own registers.  He wrote:

Mach wrote:
> I strongly believe it's different varieties of one and the same language.
> I'm very sensitive to this questions because I'm defending the opinion
> that
> all over the German speaking area, the same language is spoken: German,
> even
> though it's split up into many different traditional local varieties that
> are mostly not mutually intelligible. In spite of using a dialect in
> everyday speech, my native language is a rich language with an old
> tradition
> of literature, and not just a poor, mostly illiterate language spoken only
> by few in some remote region.
How much more confidently could we say that about the different registers of
English as part of a continuum of the English language?  Mach notes his
opponents however:

> Opinions are very divided, and there are e.g. many who consider Low German
> to be a language of its own. It's not as much question of linguistics (and
> neither a question of the political definition) as rather a question of
> self-identity: There are those who identify themselves as opponents, and
> others who identify themselves as parts of a literary tradition.
So I imagine, then, that the same question could be turned to English and
its registers.  How does the language we use identify ourselves within
certain groups?  Maybe we change groups.  I've already noted that my "pub
talk" is different from my academese, and my "girl talk" different from my
"spouse talk."  I would never use four letter words with my parents,
although I do so regularly with my girlfriends (another acquired language
"affectation," picked up at Berkeley when we were all pretending to be
"proletariat").  The obvious example of language and identity is never more
apparent (and fraught, as you know!) than with Black Dialect in America and
how we are to define it/regard it.

Sally

Okay, I just saw your response, after composing this post:

Mach:
>> I strongly believe it's different varieties of one and the same language.
Marcos:
> You're inferring a distinction I did not mean to make.  Native English
> and formal English ("mother" and "father" tongue; thanks, John!) are
> obviously mutually intelligible (mostly), and calling them different
> dialects of the same language is certainly more justifiable than calling
> them different languages.  My point was simply that they are
> different; that what we learn in school adds a manner of speech,
> rather than replacing or even merely extending the natural
> language we pick up before going to school.
I think what both Mach and I picked up on was your phrase "I would argue, in
fact, that the English of educated discourse is actually a second language
(to those of us whose first language is English itself)";  "English itself"
is vague.  See above.  I'm glad that you agree with me that these are
dialects (or registers).  What I disagree with is the identification of
preschool English as the authentic one ("English itself).  I would not be
able to identify, for instance, where "English itself" ended and my "father
tongue" began. I don't consider my preschool use of language to have
"gelled," nor was I able, at five, to inquire about taxes, understand the
Pledge of Allegience, or describe to a doctor whether I felt nauseated or
just tired.  I prefer to see the process of being educated in one's mother
and father tongue as a continuum that can be stopped or extended at any
point in life, or changed to fit in with different groups.  Even those who
don't go to school (or go infrequently) still acquire new modes of speaking
as they grow up, through exposure to peers and different registers.  In
other words, what I'm getting from you is a sense of a sharp divide (between
native or authentic English and artificial or taught English) that I want to
blur a little more.  Perhaps we agree more than we differ, actually.

Sally

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