Листая книжечки...)
A
Student's Introduction to English Grammar by RODNEY HUDDLESTON and GEOFFREY K. PULLUM
Кроме замечаний общего характера в приводимом ниже параграфе по теме, в последнем его абзаце
анонсируется замечательная рубрика, которая есть в книжке -
'Prescriptive grammar note'
с ок. 15 заметками по различным грамматическим моментам.
Эти заметки служат прекрасными иллюстрациями к проблеме и к the grammar RULES that no longer apply.
2 Descriptive and prescriptive approaches to grammar
There is an important distinction to be drawn between two kinds of books on English grammar:
a book may have either a descriptive or a prescriptive goal.
Descriptive books try to describe the grammatical system that underlies the way
people actually speak and write the language. That's what our book aims to do:
we want to describe what Standard English is like.
Prescriptive books aim to tell people how they should speak and write - to give
advice on how to use the language. They typically take the form of usage manuals,
though school textbook treatments of grammar also tend to be prescriptive.
In principle you could imagine descriptive and prescriptive approaches not being
in conflict at all: the descriptive grammar books would explain what the language is
like, and the prescriptive ones would tell you how to avoid mistakes when using it.
Not making mistakes would mean using the language in a way that agreed with the
descriptive account. The two kinds of book could agree on the facts. And indeed
there are some very good usage books based on thorough descriptive research into
how Standard English is spoken and written. But there is also a long tradition of pre
scriptive works that are deeply flawed: they simply don't represent things correctly
or coherently, and some of their advice is bad advice.
Perhaps the most important failing of the bad usage books is that they frequently
do not make the distinction we just made between STANDARD VS NON
STANDARD DIALECTS on the one hand and FORMAL VS INFORMAL STYLE on the
other. They apply the term 'incorrect' not only to non-standard usage like the [.B] forms in [1]
{[1] STANDARD i .A. I did it myself. ii A. I haven't told anybody anything.
NON-STANDARD i .B. *I done it myself. .B. *I ain 't told nobody nothing.}
but also to informal constructions like the [.B] forms in [2].
[2] FORMAL a. He was the one with whom she worked. II a. She must be taller than I.
INFORMAL b. He was the one she worked with. b. She must be taller than me.
But it isn't sensible to call a construction grammatically incorrect when people
whose status as fully competent speakers of the standard language is unassail
able use it nearly all the time. Yet that's what (in effect) many prescriptive manuals do.
Often they acknowledge that what we are calling informal constructions are
widely used, but they choose to describe them as incorrect all the same. Here's a
fairly typical passage, dealing with another construction where the issue is he
choice between
I and
me (and corresponding forms of other pronouns):
[3]
Such common expressions as it's me and was it them? are incorrect, because
the verb to be cannot take the accusative: the correct expressions are it's I and
was it they? But general usage has led to their acceptance, and even to gentle
ridicule of the correct version.4
By 'take the accusative' the author means occur followed by accusative pronoun
forms like
me, them, us, etc., as opposed to the nominative forms I, they, we, etc.
(see Ch. 5, §8.2). The book we quote in [3] is saying that there is a rule of English
grammar requiring a nominative form where a pronoun is 'complement' of the verb
be (see Ch. 4, §4.1). But there isn't any such rule. A rule saying that would fail to
allow for a construction we all use most of the time: just about everyone says
It's
me. There will be no ridicule of
It is I in this book; but we will point out the simple
fact that it represents an unusually formal style of speech.
What we're saying is that when there is a conflict between a proposed rule of
grammar and the stable usage of millions of experienced speakers who say what
they mean and mean what they say, it's got to be the proposed rule that's wrong, not
the usage. Certainly, people do make mistakes - more in speech than in writing, and
more when they're tired, stressed, or drunk. But if I'm outside on your doorstep and
I call out
It's me, that isn't an accidental slip on my part. It's the normal Standard
English way to confirm my identity to someone who knows me but can't see me.
Calling it a mistake would be quite unwarranted.
Grammar rules must ultimately be based on facts about how people speak and
write. If they don't have that basis, they have no basis at all. The rules are supposed
to reflect the language the way it is, and the people who know it and use it are the
final authority on that. And where the people who speak the language distinguish
between formal and informal ways of saying the same thing, the rules must describe
that variation too.
This book is descriptive in its approach, and insofar as space permits we cover
informal as well as formal style. But we also include a number of boxes headed
'Prescriptive grammar note', containing warnings about parts of the language where
prescriptive manuals often get things wrong, using the label 'incorrect' (or 'not
strictly correct') for usage that is perfectly grammatical, though perhaps informal in
style.