"One of the interesting things about the word "grammar" is that many
of its users think that it is self-evident that it refers to one thing:
"the grammar" of the language. If only the matter were that simple.
Whereas linguists are agreed that language has grammar, what they can't
agree on is how to describe it. So, while there is a minimum agreement
that language is a system with parts that function in relation to each
other, there is no universal agreement on how the parts and the
functions should be analysed and described, nor indeed if they should be
described as some kind of self-sealed system or whether they should
always be described in terms of the users, ie those who "utter" the
language, and those who "receive" it (speakers and listeners, writers
and readers etc).
For some, this is just academic
nit-picking. There is just "the grammar" and one of the great failings
of education today is that neither teachers or pupils know it. In fact,
we would neither be able to speak nor understand if we didn't know it. A
three-year-old who says "I bringed it" is expressing the grammar
through the structure she has learned which indicates past happenings.
It just so happens that the "ed" ending isn't the customary way of doing
it with that verb. So she knows "grammar" but not the grammar of that
particular word in that particular context.
This
immediately raises the question of whether we get to know grammar in
order to be "correct", or in order to describe what people say and
write. So, one of the customary ways of talking in London is to say "I
ain't done it" or "I ain't going anywhere" or some such. Some would have
this as "wrong" or even as "ungrammatical". Others would say that if
"grammar" is about analysing and describing then "ain't" is as valid a
subject of study as anything else. I doubt if that's what is being
taught – or indeed what many people want to hear – at the Selfridges
class."
aqui.
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