Snow

[Jonathan Lighter]

There are crucial differences between most kinds of linguistic study
and mathematics or the physical sciences.

Mathematics and physical science demand objective proofs (or at least
falsifiable results). This necessity has led to methodological standards
that must be rigorously adhered to if the results are to be accepted.

Language, as I tell my introductory linguistics students, isn't like math or
science. In fact, it isn't much like *anything* else.  As I said before,
it's psychological rather than purely logical.

Even the question of "standards" is misleadingly simple, partly because
generations of many generations of schoolteachers misinformed their pupils
about the nature of language in general and of English in particular. At
first they insisted that English be made to conform as much as possible to
Classical Latin. Why? Because Latin was more complicated (and "therefore"
more "precise") and because it was a much older language (and
"therefore" had undergone less "decay" from some Edenic ideal).  To be
entirely consistent, they should have insisted that English model itself
on Hebrew, but with so few English pedagogues who were fluent in Hebrew,
Latin was accepted as a solid compromise. (They did have to be practical.)

Some people are still terrified of splitting an infinitive.  Why were they
instructed not to? Because Roman writers did not split Latin infinitives.
The reason they didn't, however, is that Latin infinitives are composed of a
single word and it's impossible to split them.  This is not the sort of rule
that has anything to do with the internal logic of English, which often
encourages you to split infinitives for the sake of clarity or emphasis.

The obsession with English as a debased form of Latin eventually passed, but
its soul kept marching on. That soul was the belief that English could be
"improved" through the observance of innumerable subtle principles that
often seemed "logical" in the abstract but whose "logic" was not always
sufficiently obvious to be adopted by the millions of native speakers of
English. Take "ain't."  From the pedagogical point of view, "ain't" had
several strikes against it.  Unlike "don't" and "isn't," it was not
transparently a contraction of anything (and well into the nineteenth
century all contractions were rather frowned upon). Furthermore, since it
can be used with any person (I, you, etc. ain't) it "obscured grammatical
distinctions," something that was supposed to be ruinous for your mind as
well as for your language. People who like to judge such things
sometimes said it had an "ugly" sound. Strike four was the perception
(correct or not - it's impossible to say) that the vast majority of people
who used "ain't" were ignorant, illiterate rustics; dangerous, illiterate
slum dwellers; and social climbers stupid enough to give away their
hereditary boorishness by saying "ain't."  In other words, lunkheads.

Now consider this. The war against "ain't" has been going for well over 200
years. With interesting results.  On the one hand, the absolute number of
"ain't"-sayers in the world has undoubtedly exploded from what it was in,
say, 1790, when the population of the U.S. was under three million. On the
other, the taboo against using "ain't" in formal writing has been
so thoroughly accepted that in twenty-odd years of teaching I don't think I
saw a single freshman, no matter how benighted otherwise, use it seriously
in a theme. And I never told them not to, because they already knew.

Let me make my major point and go away. There are many different "standards"
applicable to a language. Possibly the most obvious is the distinction
between what's "acceptable" in speech and what's "acceptable" in writing. In
speech, any locution seems to be functionally acceptable to the world at
large if it is perfectly understandable and if it does not incite violence.
In writing, it is acceptable to the university-educated community of readers
and writers if it is perfectly understandable. not obviously illogical, not
ridiculously or distractingly novel, and not associated with lunkheads.  If
you believe I'm belaboring this "lunkhead" idea, think about it. Writing
that seems to have originated with a stranger whose command of spelling (not
an issue in speech), vocabulary, punctuation (not an issue in speech),
syntax, etc., is much less than perfect in the eyes of his audience is
likely to be utterly unpersuasive. That stranger appears to be too feckless
to have learned how to "write" like an educated person.

In speech there are regional standards, social expectations, and on and on.
Why do Northerners sing pop songs with fake Southern accents and nobody
seems to notice? Because it's become a "standard" feature.  It can be
explained historically but not justified logically.  As we've discussed here
recently, if "decimare" in Latin meant "to execute every tenth one" (one of
those unsplittable infinitives) must to "decimate" in English be confined to
an identical meaning?  And if so, how can we enforce our decision?  Or any
decision like it that the public doesn't feel like honoring?

An astronomer who thinks "Jupiter" is really called "Venus" will not keep
his position long because other astronomers won't stand for it.  If
people talk of Marines as soldiers, who can stop them? (I agree that a
professional journalist should be held to a higher standard, but most people
are not journalists.)

So what is "right" and what is "wrong" in English usage?  Usage ultimately
decides; that's how we got from Beowulf's English to here.  One may prod and
protest, but common usage always wins out.

One more word. The popular belief about English in general being at risk of
"decay" in any meaningful sense of  the word is nonsense.  People have
always made blunders that don't stick; the ones that do stick and spread
become "normal" and the system adjusts elsewhere to retain clarity. By the
principle of "decay," Shakespeare and Chaucer were much poorer writers than
Bede because Will and Geoff didn't use his presumably "purer" Old English.
If English hasn't produced a later writer as great as Shakespeare (and
"greatness" cannot be measured mathematically), blame Shakespeare's genius,
not the supposed "decay" of English.

JL

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org