Not to dump on everyone's fun but there are a few points to keep in
mind.
(1) What people refer to as "grammar" is a set of conventions about
the usage of a language that have developed over time and have been
influenced by class distinctions, social and cultural factors, economics,
political factors, and so on. If you ask a Chomskyan linguist about
syntax (the scientific representation of the rules which grammar allegedly
follows), you may get an answer that syntax is not learned, that
"native speakers" have the intuitive/tacit/implicit knowledge to know
what is syntactically correct or incorrect, and that the actual usage
patterns reflect the surface structures one has been exposed to.
>From this perspective, one could argue that any person's usage of
language, as long as that person is a native speaker, is correct.
Ask a sociolinguist about syntax and one is likely to get a list of
factors (like the one I started with) that will reflect the rules that
guide language usage (regardless of whether one agrees with them
or not). The real question about grammar is who is in a position
of power to enforce the use of certain rules and not others.
Clearly, teachers are in such a position. But we should not be
surprised if the real world blithely ignores such people and the
rules they promote (by the way, where's the outrage about
using nouns as verbs? Shall we "task" someone to find out?).
Listen to CNBC for a prolonged period of time and see how
they use language (by the way #2, when did "impactful" replace
"influential" in speech, especially bizspeak? Check out
www.urbandictionary.com for its definition of impactful).
(2) Pop quiz: which of the following is wrong? Why?
(a) The aggendum is...
(b) The agenda is...
(c) The agenda are
(d) The agendas are
(3) Does anyone else get the irony of using a scene that is a parody
of a scene from the movie "Inglourious Basterds" (which should not be
confused with the movie "The Inglorious Bastards")? Check Wikipedia
for the entries on these movies (standard disclaimers apply).
-Mike Palij
New York University
m...@nyu.edu
-----------------Original Messages---------------------------------
On Sun, 13 Mar 2011 09:37:27 -0700, Karl L Wuensch wrote:
Perhaps if our students viewed this video they would become more
likely to consider grammar important:
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1935115
Cheers,
-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Annette Taylor [mailto:tay...@sandiego.edu]
Sent: Sunday, March 13, 2011 12:31 PM
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
Subject: RE: [tips] Pet peeve
The plural actually sounds much better to me.
Are we using aesthetics for the rule?
;)
Annette
Annette Kujawski Taylor, Ph. D.
Professor, Psychological Sciences
University of San Diego
5998 Alcala Park
San Diego, CA 92110
tay...@sandiego.edu<mailto:tay...@sandiego.edu>
________________________________
From: sbl...@ubishops.ca [sbl...@ubishops.ca]
Sent: Sunday, March 13, 2011 7:22 AM
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
Subject: Re: [tips] Pet peeve
On 13 Mar 2011 at 6:06, Helweg-Larsen, Marie wrote:
> How we can possible teach students that the word `data´ is
> plural with a New York Times headline like this: "This Data
> Isn´t Dull. It Improves Lives."
Not wanting to be contrary (oh, yes I do), but I think Marie has
stumbled onto one of the best examples of why we should sometimes use
data as a singular noun.
I'm not talking about saying if it's good enough for the New York
Times it's good enough for me (although that does carry a certain
weight) but this:
What's the allegedly correct alternative?
"These Data Aren't Dull. They Improve Lives".
Tell the truth, now. Which sounds better?
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