Grammatical mistakes

[John Dunn]

Some thoughts on this endlessly fascinating topic.

1. Forms such as 'I seen', 'I have came/went' are widespread in Scottish varieties of English (as opposed to Scots, which is different), especially in the West of Scotland, but they are generally regarded as sub-standard.  The construction 'This floor needs swept' is, as far as I know, found throughout Scotland and is accepted as standard.  Incidentally, if anyone is wondering what the standard Scottish variety of English sounds like, they can go to the BBC web-site and listen to Radio Scotland.

2. What has become known as the 'greengrocer's apostrophe' is indeed widespread in British English, but it is as nothing when compared to what the Italians do to the beast.  In Italian the sequence 's is seen as a symbol of 'English' and it appears in all sorts of unexpected places: there is a brand of shoes called Tod's, a performer called Eva Robin's and if you live in Bologna and want to instal air conditioning, you may use the services of a company called Clima's Studio.

3. I think it makes sense to try to distinguish between different categories of 'mistakes'.  There are at least three, though others might wish to make finer distinctions.
(i) Regionalisms and other forms branded as 'sub-standard'.  Until recently users of such forms were generally expected to know their place, which meant not speaking or writing in public, except when called upon to provide local colour (an interesting exception pertains to those who reached the giddy heights of General Secretary of the ЦК КПСС, in which case the approved response was to look away and pretend not to have noticed anything).  The move towards greater informality that Ralph Cleminson mentions, but also the opening up of the various spaces of communication to a greater range of speakers has led to such forms becoming more noticeable and in some circumstances less unacceptable.
(ii) Contaminations.  Many of the usages that are complained about in the Izvestija piece that Frank Miller forwarded fall into this category.  An example from current English is the construction 'bored of', which conflates 'bored with' and fed up of'.
(iii) The rectification of anomalies.  The process of language standardisation tends to leave in place of number of anomalies of one sort or another (some might argue that this happens at least in part deliberately; it is certainly possible to think of language cultures where the ability correctly to handle anomalies is very highly prized).  The use of the apostrophe in English to indicate the possessive form belongs in this category, as perhaps do the surviving strong verbs.  Russian is full of anomalies, as we have all had more or less painfully to learn.  Genitive plural forms are particularly problematic, largely because of the weakening of the link between the singular and the plural paradigms.  I would suggest that the use of analogy to iron out grammatical anomalies is close to being a universal of language history; the spread of printing and the advent of universal education may have slowed the speed of this process of change down to a glacial pace, but they have not!
  abolished it. 

John Dunn.

________________________________________
From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list [SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu] On Behalf Of R. M. Cleminson [rmcleminson at POST.SK]
Sent: 18 October 2011 10:53
To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Grammatical mistakes

If it's any consolation, even Avanesov in 1959 marks творог stressed on the first syllable as доп[устимо], and by the tenth edition of Ozhegov's dictionary, 19 years later, the two possible stresses have equal status, so nobody need worry about that.  (And in fact it must be years since I heard this word stressed on the second syllable.)

On the wider point, you can't get it wrong unless it's also possible to get it right, and this applies both to the evolving norms of speech and the literary standard.  Thus Gsg. жене is usual in some Northern dialects, but is definitely not part of the literary norm, so it would be correct in informal conversation in a village on the Dvina, but a mistake in standard Russian.  (And Gsg. *жену would be wrong in either.)

One is thus perfectly justified in complaining of mistakes in standard Russian or English where standard Russian or English is supposed to be used.  The reason for them, however, may be either that the perpetrators have not mastered the standard language (which may be their own fault or their teachers'), or that they have a different perception of the contexts in which the literary norm ought to be adhered to.  Considering the movement towards informality in both the English-speaking and Russian-speaking communities (the latter more recent and more radical), it is not surprising that at present there are frequent mismatches of perception of the appropriate register of language in many contexts, and that, consequently, speakers more and more often produce forms which they may consider normal in the register in which they expect to speak, but are mistakes in the register which their hearers expect.

The written language is another matter, since for the last couple of centuries it has existed only as in standardised form, and therefore one has every right to deplore the "greengrocer's apostrophe".

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