Marcin wrote:
> This is perfect English and you could probably find Jane Austin or
> Charles Dickens using such constructions.
I think this little discussion reveals a fundamental problem of an Open
Source grammar checker, and perhaps of grammar checkers in general.
In the back of my head, I've thought this for years. The more popular LT
becomes over time, the more time we will probably have to spend fighting
off "prescriptivist poppycock"[1].
There are a lot of people around who are well-meaning and intelligent
and in some way interested in language and grammar, but are not trained
linguists. This type of person will just take some grammar book (or even
worse, a style manual) from their shelves and try to translate all the
rules they happen to find there into LT rules, and they are unable to
understand what the rule was originally intended to do. Eventually they
end up doing more harm than good.
The Hemingway app[2] is a good example of what I have in mind here. It
complains about adverbs and gives useless advice such as "1 adverbs. Aim
for 0 or fewer." The idea behind the rule is probably something like
"don't use verb + adverb if the same thought can be expressed more
clearly by choosing a more descriptive verb", e.g. don't say
She moved quickly.
but rather
She ran.
The second sentence is easier to understand and expresses a fact more
accurately with less words, so it is in some way an improvement over the
first.
But it is by no means trivial to translate this idea to the XML
formalism, or (more generally speaking) to something a computer can
understand. Running around and telling people not to use adverbs is
certainly not the way to go, it is just confusing.
My first thought when Daniel published the new rule editor was, "Let's
hope this tool will not bring us a bunch of grammar Nazis and nitpicky
smartasses."
These are just some thoughts I wanted to share. I'm not sure if I said
something useful, or if these are just smartass remarks themselves.
[1] http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?cat=5
[2] http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=10416
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