Is English deteriorating?

1. Is English deteriorating? Ling 1

2. Remember! • Language is instinctive -- humans are grammatical beings. • Children are grammatical geniuses. • All languages are structure-driven.

3. 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)”

4. 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?

5. 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]].

6. *We’ll end hopeful(ly) today. • It does NOT modify just the verb phrase. • We know exactly what we mean.

7. Confusion of lay/lie • “I’m going to lay down” - is this bad? • “I have lain down” - how’s this sound?

8. Regular/irregular? • “He snuck into the room late” - ? • “She dove off the platform” - ?

9. What’s wrong here? • I want to gradually save money for a new car. • She decided to never touch another cigarette.

10. 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.

11. 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

12. Prescriptive versus Descriptive Grammar • Prescriptive grammars describe how one ought to talk. • Descriptive grammars describe how people DO talk.

13. 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

14. 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’.

15. 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.

16. 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.

17. 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.

18. 1794 Murray’s English Grammar: • 2 negatives in English cancel each other out. • Never put a preposition at the end of a sentence.

19. 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.

20. Many of these ‘shibboleths’ come from a misunderstanding that English should be more like Latin. • Ex, prepositions don’t occur finally in Latin.

21. Origin of these notions • 18th century preoccupation that Latin was perfect and English defective unless regulated by ‘experts’.

22. 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).

23. (You/we/they) are not  aren’t(He/she/it) is not  isn’t • I am not  I’m not (*ain’t)

24. Only with “I” is the contraction to the pronoun. I am not He is not • Ain’t makes this symmetrical. I am not

25. Y’all - Y’uns - Yous • Even Tok Pisin, based on English, has a singular versus plural you. • yu • yupela

26. “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.

27. Even if you don’t like yins, you probably use: • You guys…

28. Negation and ‘polarity’ • Double negation is considered a solecism. • Example “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet”

29. 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.”

30. “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?

31. But… • Some people use ‘anymore’ without a negative: • “Anymore I just work” • Dialectal variant = synonym for “these days”

32. The StarTrek corruption • “toboldlygo 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).

33. 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.

34. 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”.