By Jendayi
For my blog I had to read Chapter 3 of Grammar for Grammarians. This chapter gave lots of insight to representative rules. Specifically rules developed by prescriptive grammarians during the eighteenth century. They express twenty or so grammatical rules in some detail. All of which have syntactic component rather than just dealing with vocabulary. The many rules they discussed in the chapter are listed below.
Don't end a sentence with preposition
Don't split an infinitive
Use shall with first person and use will with second and third
Lie is intransitive and lay is transitive
Use like as a preposition; use as as a conjunction
Use nominative case after the verb be
Don't use ain't
Don't use between you and I
Don't use hopefully to mean 'I Hope'use subjunctive for hypothetical situations
Don't omit the relative pronoun
Don't omit that introducing a noun clause
Pronouns must agree with their antecedents
Either/or and neither/nor take singular verbs
Case following as/than
Subject-verb agreement
Use
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11 comments:
So, after we discussed this in class on Tuesday, I still have some reservations before I completely change the way I talk or write or before I criticize anyone for these mistakes with some of these rules. My group's section explained that a person should not use "you and me" after any preposition other than between. I always thought that if you had two subjects following the prepositions, they were both considered objects of the preposition. "Is he riding with you and me?" I don't really see the grammatical function of an "I" after the preposition if it is not considered an object of the preposition. Also, I couldn't believe that we can't say "hopefully, I did well on the research paper" because you can't 'do' something hopefully. It feels so natural, and it is still strange to think of it as an adverb modifying my verb. I'm going to try and not say it anymore, but I seriously use this word all the time! (Can I use the word seriously?)
I'm going to go with Holly on this one, not so much on the You and Me part, but on the hopefully. I never would have thought that hopefully wasn't correct when being used at the front of the sentence like that. It is just such a part of everyday speech that I wonder if there are people out there taking the steps to change that rule or if it is something that is so obscure that most students and teachers won't even recognize it when they are confronted with it on a day to day basis. Which makes me wonder if there are any other grammar rules that we are blatantly breaking every day without even knowing it.
I go along with the group. I question some of the rules they outlined in this chapter. I specifically had the one "Don't omit the relative pronoun. The examples they gave sounded wrong to me and I would not have put the pronoun in the sentences. Many of the rules others discussed either confused me or did not sound correct to me. I am not sure I will change the way I write because of these rules.
I can understand the concerns brought up by the students and can agree on some levels. I feel like the textbook speaks in technicalities that are hard to understand or carry out in everyday speech.
I do believe however, that there should be a big difference between how we write and how we speak. In verbal communication, grammatical rules can be broken, as long the rules you are breaking don't make you sound un-intelligible.
As far as hopefully goes, I'm in support of the book. It is clearly an adverb, although our speaking practices have deemed it otherwise. Perhaps a solution would be to not use it in speech, but be sure and omit it from your writing.
Hopefully, this will give us a better understanding of the function of language. ;) Words are tools for communication. Why are all you young'uns out there so very concerned with prescriptive usage? The nitpicky stuff in this chapter is hard because it goes against common use. Unless you are writing a formal academic paper...in which I doubt you would ever utter "hopefully"...no one really cares...and if they do, then they are just language fascists. Language is a tool of communication, but it is also used as a form of power...social, political, etc. I can think of a few English teachers I've met that wielded around rules to intimidate students and peers...not to inform or communicate. Question is what kind of English teacher do you want to be?
In Jendayi’s response she gave a list of rules that you are NOT supposed to use; then why is it in that in the southern parts of this country these rules are broken, whereas the northern part breaks the rules less; I think the missed the memo somewhere in the eighteenth century. There are some rules that do not make sense in our language, and that it goes clashes with how we communicate everyday so why do a majority of the people use incorrect grammar when speaking if it is wrong, especially in the southern part of this country.
I question why so many rules are broken, as well. One of the rules Jendayi listed was not to use ain't, however we learned in the beginning of the semester, while studying AAE, that "ain't" is not a proper form of dialect. So either the rule applies or it doesn't..? This may seem easy, but often times I find myself confused about the either or neither nor stuff. So that is an important rule to list. Otherwise everything else listed is pretty much basic, and rules that we should always browse over again to tweak our grammar. I know that re reading grammar rules helps me.
I agree that I am probably not going to immediately change some of these. Yes, I know not to end a sentence with a preposition, but when speaking among friends, I see no reason why I cannot. I know these rules, mostly, but don't think they are very pratical. Perhaps this is a change in language, as languages must evolve. I do understand the Hopefully rule, but never would have thought of that on my own; I doubt anyone who hasn't read that book knows the rule. Anyway, I think language needs to be looked at in context and realize that we speak in many different levels everyday.
What would be interesting to see how scholars during the eighteenth century went about writing rules for grammar. I find it simply amazing at how eventhough they didn't know as much as we know about grammar they still wrote with great detail to grammar. Can grammar be inherant?
Well, after class discussion, I can def say that these rules should be posted like on the walls at school. then again, any form of art on the walls of faner would be awesome! I'm still a little confused on the whole, 'hopefully' thing, but I can say that the text was a good read, especially if you wanted to know the origin of most writing.
I too, question some of the rules in this chapter. especially with hopefully. I always thought hopefully would be ok to use in front of a sentence. I was never told otherwise before. In my opinion it sounds alright to use, but this is based on the fact, that I have been using the word hopefully in the way for a while. People also speak differently than they talk maybe that's another reason this chapter has all these rules of writing.
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