Does grammar matter? - Andreea S. Calude

2,454,048 views ・ 2016-04-12

TED-Ed


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:06
You're telling a friend an amazing story,
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and you just get to the best part when suddenly he interrupts,
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"The alien and I," not "Me and the alien."
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Most of us would probably be annoyed,
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but aside from the rude interruption,
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does your friend have a point?
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Was your sentence actually grammatically incorrect?
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And if he still understood it, why does it even matter?
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From the point of view of linguistics,
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grammar is a set of patterns for how words are put together
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to form phrases or clauses,
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whether spoken or in writing.
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Different languages have different patterns.
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In English, the subject normally comes first,
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followed by the verb,
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and then the object,
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while in Japanese and many other languages,
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the order is subject, object, verb.
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Some scholars have tried to identify patterns common to all languages,
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01:00
but apart from some basic features,
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like having nouns or verbs,
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few of these so-called linguistic universals have been found.
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And while any language needs consistent patterns to function,
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the study of these patterns opens up an ongoing debate between two positions
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known as prescriptivism and descriptivism.
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Grossly simplified,
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prescriptivists think a given language should follow consistent rules,
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while descriptivists see variation and adaptation as a natural
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and necessary part of language.
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For much of history, the vast majority of language was spoken.
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But as people became more interconnected and writing gained importance,
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written language was standardized to allow broader communication
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and ensure that people in different parts of a realm could understand each other.
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In many languages, this standard form came to be considered the only proper one,
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despite being derived from just one of many spoken varieties,
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usually that of the people in power.
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Language purists worked to establish and propagate this standard
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by detailing a set of rules that reflected the established grammar of their times.
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And rules for written grammar were applied to spoken language, as well.
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Speech patterns that deviated from the written rules were considered corruptions,
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or signs of low social status,
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and many people who had grown up speaking in these ways
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were forced to adopt the standardized form.
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More recently, however,
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linguists have understood that speech is a separate phenomenon from writing
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with its own regularities and patterns.
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Most of us learn to speak at such an early age that we don't even remember it.
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We form our spoken repertoire through unconscious habits,
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not memorized rules.
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And because speech also uses mood and intonation for meaning,
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its structure is often more flexible,
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adapting to the needs of speakers and listeners.
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This could mean avoiding complex clauses that are hard to parse in real time,
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making changes to avoid awkward pronounciation,
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or removing sounds to make speech faster.
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The linguistic approach that tries to understand and map such differences
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without dictating correct ones is known as descriptivism.
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Rather than deciding how language should be used,
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it describes how people actually use it,
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and tracks the innovations they come up with in the process.
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But while the debate between
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prescriptivism and descriptivism continues,
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the two are not mutually exclusive.
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At its best, prescriptivism is useful for informing people
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about the most common established patterns at a given point in time.
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This is important, not only for formal contexts,
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but it also makes communication easier between non-native speakers
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from different backgrounds.
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Descriptivism, on the other hand,
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gives us insight into how our minds work
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and the instinctive ways in which we structure our view of the world.
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Ultimately, grammar is best thought of as a set of linguistic habits
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that are constantly being negotiated and reinvented
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by the entire group of language users.
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Like language itself,
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it's a wonderful and complex fabric
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woven through the contributions of speakers and listeners,
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writers and readers,
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prescriptivists and descriptivists,
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from both near and far.
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