Martha Kolln, Understanding English Grammar, Fourth Edition
Do you remember the scene from Walt Disney’s Pinocchio when the Blue Fairy appears at Gepetto’s cottage and touches his newly carved wooden puppet with her magic wand? Pinocchio blinks his eyes and looks around. "I can move,” he says. Then, realizing what he has just done, he adds, “I can talk.”
“Yes, Pinocchio,” the Blue Fairy explains. “I’ve given you life.”
“Life?” he asks. “Am I a real boy?”
It turns out, of course, that Pinocchio is not yet a “real boy.” He must first prove himself brave, truthful, and unselfish. “To make Gepetto’s wish come true will be up to you,” the Blue Fairy tells him.
“Up to me?”
“You must choose between right and wrong.”
“How will I know?” Pinocchio wonders.
“Your conscience will tell you.”
“What are conscience?” he asks.
As you recall, Pinocchio and Jimmy Cricket, his official conscience, have their ups and downs before the Blue Fairy returns to pronounce Pinocchio a “real boy.” But from a linguist’s point of view, she has already done so-the moment she endowed Pinocchio with the gift of language.
Although we didn’t acquire our speech at the touch of a wand, there is still something almost magical in our human gift of language. Unlike Pinocchio, we grew up in a language environment; we heard our language spoken before we could begin to speak it ourselves. We listened for quite a long time—for most of us, close to a year or more—before we joined in the conversation. And we certainly didn’t begin the way Pinocchio did, with his well-formed sentences. We began with single words, naming the people and the objects in our environment. It took several months before we had devised a system for putting words together, following our own set of rules for forming sentences: “Cookie allgone.” “Mommy go bye-bye.” Gradually our language came to resemble that of the adults in our speech community.
By the time we started school, we were experts.
Well, almost experts. There were still a few gaps in our system. For example, we didn’t start using verb phrases as direct objects (I like reading books) until perhaps second grade; and not until third or fourth grade did we use although or even if to introduce clauses (I’m going home even if you’re not). But for the most part, our grammar system was in place.
The operative word in this drama of language development is system. Somehow children in every speech community in every part of the world develop a system of rules—an internal computer program of sorts— that enables them to process and to generate language. All of us are endowed with this internalized system, a linguistic marvel that can go into action without a moment’s hesitation, inventing sentences, putting together combinations that fit the occasion. In day-to-day situations, our inventions tend to be fairly predictable: “Hi, how’s it going?” “Sorry I’m late.” But other situations call for unique combinations, and we come up with those sentences automatically, too. We invent them all the time, original sentences that have never been said before. In fact, our computer-like system is so spectacular that we are able to generate an infinite number of grammatical sentences.
Underlying this almost magical language ability is the system of rules we call grammar. When you study grammar, you are bringing to a conscious level of awareness the rules of the language that you already “know” subconsciously.
This language ability is yours, of course, no matter what your native language happens to be. If your native language is not English, your knowledge of English grammar will be different from that of native speakers. Unless you began speaking English at a very young age, you will probably never have the extent of subconscious knowledge that a native speaker does. On the other hand, you can certainly develop just as much—if not more—conscious knowledge. It’s possible, in fact, that the level of your conscious knowledge may already exceed that of some native speakers in your class, especially if you were introduced to English through textbooks. In your English classes, when you learned the rules for constructing sentences, you also learned labels for their parts; you learned a language for talking about the language, something your classmates may not have learned—or may have forgotten.
Pinocchio’s conversation with the Blue Fairy illustrates the kinds of rules that native speakers of English have internalized and that nonnative speakers have to pay attention to and practice. For example, like all children, Pinocchio asked questions:
Am I a real boy?
How will I know [the difference between right and wrong]?
The first is what we call a “yes/no” question,’ one in which the expected answer is either yes or no. In order to ask it, Pinocchio reversed the subject and verb. The underlying statement looks like this:
I am a real boy.
The other question required another maneuver: Besides the subject-verb switch—actually the auxiliary, in this case—he added the interrogative word how in order to elicit particular information. Here the underlying statement is
I will know [somehow].
The unknown element, the “somehow,” is the information being asked for.
In English we elicit unknown information by using such interrogatives as how, who, what, when, where, and why. These words always appear at the opening of the question—even if the information being elicited appears elsewhere in the underlying statement:
What should we have for dinner?
We should have [something] for dinner.
At this point you may be wondering if in fact the questions in our language actually begin as statements and then get changed by some internal rule. We surely don’t go through a two-step process like that when we ask questions—or do we? To speculate in this way is to think about language the way that linguists do:
How do children develop this computer-like ability, this system of grammar rules that produces language?
What, specifically, are the rules?
Linguists, scientists whose field of study is language, are looking for answers to basic questions like these about this human gift.
It’s clear that in addition to asking questions Pinocchio has also internalized the system for using pronouns. As we would expect, the Blue Fairy addresses Pinocchio as you: “I have given you life.” In responding, he refers to himself, correctly, as I: “Am I a real boy?” When she discusses his future, using the phrase “up to you,” he again responds with the appropriate pronoun: “Up to me?” Here the pronoun is the object of the preposition to, not the subject. These responses illustrate the rules determining the case of pronouns, the distinction between the subjective I and the objective me. Native speakers have internalized this particular rule. You’ve probably never heard anyone say “Is me a real boy?” or “It’s up to I.”
Another part of Pinocchio’s grammar system is illustrated by his response when the Blue Fairy refers to his conscience: “What are conscience?” This time his question doesn’t sound like one that a native speaker would ask. It sounds as if Pinocchio has made his first mistake. (And that, by the way, is the linguists’ definition of ungrammatical: something that a native speaker wouldn’t say.)
But listen carefully to the word conscience. Compare it with similar words that have a final s sound, such as talents. Not knowing the meaning of conscience, Pinocchio did what the rest of us do in acquiring our language: He analogized. Words such as talents are plural, he might have thought, so conscience must be plural too.
As you have just seen, verbs like eat and go and nouns like mouse are different from other members of their word classes in the way that the past tense of the verbs and the plural of the nouns are formed. You’ll discover, as we study the grammar of English, that even though the rules are highly systematic there are exceptions to almost all of them. If you are a native speaker of English, you have somehow internalized the exceptions along with the rules—and you pay no attention to them. Goed and eated and mouses dropped out of your system a long time ago. If, on the other hand, you are not a native speaker, if you have only recently begun your study of English, then you have to learn consciously such exceptions as the irregular noun plurals and verb tenses. In our study of the system, we’ll look at both the rules and the exceptions.
Not every child who learns English ends up with exactly the same adult language. Different parts of the country, different levels of education, different ethnic backgrounds—all of these situations produce differences in language communities. One of the positive contributions that television has made to our education is the demonstration of such differences. In less mobile, pre-electronic times, Americans, especially those in isolated small towns, could go through life rarely hearing dialects other than their own. (We define dialect as the variety of a language spoken in a particular region or community.) Now we regularly hear speakers from all parts of the country and all parts of the world. At times the English we hear is so different, in fact, that it can sound like another language. Some of the dialogue in British movies and TV programs, for example, can be downright indecipherable.
Sometimes the differences we hear sound like grammatical errors. What else are we to think when we hear people say “He just upped and left” or “I might could go” or “Y’all come back soon” or “He be working”? We don’t see such sentences in formal writing, nor do we hear them in television news reports or in presidential addresses to Congress. Are such sentences grammatical? Perhaps a personal anecdote will help you discover the answer.
Shortly after I moved to central Pennsylvania from the West Coast I heard people saying sentences I had never heard before: “My car needs fixed” and “My hair needs washed” and “Let the door open.” My grammar rules had never produced these sentences. I say instead, “My car needs to be fixed” or “My car needs fixing” and “Leave the door open.” However, in the central and western parts of Pennsylvania and in nearby areas of bordering states, children develop rules that do produce such sentences. So are they grammatical? They are part of the language system of a million or more people. Of course they’re grammatical. Who among us has the authority to declare the language of a million people ungrammatical?
Many of the sentences that get labeled “ungrammatical” are simply usages that vary from one dialect to another, what we sometimes call regionalisms. The Southern y’all or you all and the Philadelphia youse and the Appalachian you-uns (or y’uns) are all ways of pluralizing the pronoun you. It’s probably accurate to say that the majority of speech communities in this country don’t have a plural form of you—but some do, and these plurals are part of their grammar.
We don’t hear regionalisms like “I might could go” and “y’all” and “the car needs fixed” on the nightly news because they are not a part of what is called “standard English.” However, the word standard can be misunderstood. Modern linguists maintain that every dialect of English is standard within its speech community and that to label only one dialect as standard is to imply that others are somehow inferior, or substandard. Here, however, we are using the word standard as the label for the status dialect, the one that is used in newscasts, in formal business transactions, in courtrooms, in all sorts of public discourse.
In addition to regionalisms, ethnic influences, and differing levels of education—all of which contribute to variations among communities and individuals—the speech situation makes a difference. Even children understand that the language they use with their playmates is different from the language they use with adults. The negative “huhuh” on the playground is likely to become “no thank you” when the school principal is asking the question. And certainly the language that broadcasters use on the air or that lawyers use in the courtroom is not the same as the language they use at the breakfast table with their family or at the bowling alley with their friends. The situation makes a difference.
In written language, too, what is appropriate or effective in one situation may be inappropriate or ineffective in another. The language you use in letters to your family and friends is noticeably different from the language you use when applying for a job. Even the writing you do in school varies, depending on the situation. The language of the personal essay you write in your composition class has an informality that would be inappropriate for a business report or a history research paper. As with speech, the purpose and the audience make all the difference.
It’s important to recognize that these variations in language—dialect differences among speech communities or variations resulting from the speech or writing situation—are not distinctions between “grammatical” and “ungrammatical” language. The grammar rules of central and western Pennsylvania produce “The car needs washed”; the grammar rules of many Southern speech communities produce “Y’all come back soon.” Even though neither conforms to what we are calling the status dialect, both are grammatical.
So it’s important to understand the difference between rules of grammar and rules of usage—sometimes called “linguistic etiquette.” Rules of usage are imposed by society. Often a sentence that gets labeled “ungrammatical” is simply one that in a given situation may be inappropriate—or, in someone’s opinion, is unacceptable. You may recall how Professor Higgins, in My Fair Lady, changed Eliza Doolittle’s social class by changing her speech. “The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain” was a pronunciation lesson.
The well-known issue of ain’t provides a good illustration of the difference between our internal rules of grammar and our external— social—rules of usage. You may have assumed that pronouncements about ain’t have something to do with “incorrect” grammar—but they don’t. The word itself, the contraction of am not, is produced by an internal rule, the same rule that gives us aren’t and isn’t. Any negative bias you may have against ain’t is strictly a matter of linguistic etiquette. (And, as you can hear for yourself, many speakers of English harbor no such bias.) Written texts from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries show that ain’t was once a part of standard conversational English in both England and America. It was sometime during the nineteenth century that the word became stigmatized for public discourse and marked a speaker as uneducated or ignorant. It’s still possible to hear ain’t in public discourse, but only as an attention-getter:
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
And of course it’s used in written dialogue and in both written and spoken humor. But despite the fact that the grammar rules of millions of people produce ain’t as part of their native language, for many others it carries a stigma.
In summary, then, our attitude about ain’t is an issue about status, not grammar. If the network newscasters and the president of the United States and your teachers began to use ain’t on a regular basis, its status would eventually change. Teachers and presidents and newscasters don’t avoid ain’t because it’s nonstandard: It’s nonstandard because such people avoid it.
Can we really be saying that ain’t is “grammatical” English, that it’s “correct”? How about “She don’t like me” and “I don’t have no money” and “He be working”? Are they correct?
Where shall we turn for answers to questions about correctness? To grammar books? To dictionaries? There was a time when people did just that, when such reference books were written mainly for the purpose of instruction, to change the way people used language, to teach them to speak and write “proper” English so that they could move up the ladder of success. Today, however, the purpose of most grammar books and dictionaries is descriptive rather than prescriptive—to describe ‘how people actually use language, not how someone says it should be used.
The question of correctness implies a set of standards, and a set of standards implies an authority who sets them and regulates them and polices them. Who should we choose as our authorities? Or do the authorities get to choose themselves?
Our language has a great many words like snuck and ain’t that are judged ungrammatical even though the words are produced by our internalized grammar rules—and even though they are spoken by many people. So if we accept the linguists’ definition of grammatical— “language produced by the rules of a native speaker”—then we obviously cannot label these words as “ungrammatical.”
“Is it correct?” is generally the wrong question—or, at least an incomplete one. A more accurate question would be “Is it correct in this situation?” or “Is it appropriate?” Remember, there are many variations in this language of ours. Standard Written English, the version that has come to be the standard for written public discourse—for newspapers and books and for most of the writing you do in school and on the job—is the version of our language that this book describes, the written version of the prestige dialect.
Where did this description of Standard Written English come from? Is it the work of “prominent American critics,” like the one referred to in the dictionary’s discussion of loan? In fact, that’s exactly what it is. It is the work of many such critics and grammarians and authors of dictionaries through the years who have taken it upon themselves to describe—and sometimes to prescribe—the prestige dialect, the version of English used by the respected writers and speakers of their day. Those writers and speakers don’t say “I don’t have no money” and “She don’t like me” and “He be working” and “They snuck in”—at least not in their public discourse. They say “I don’t have any money” and “She doesn’t like me” and “He is working” and “They sneaked in,” and these forms are the ones that get included in the grammar books as the “standard.”
So the issue of correctness and the issue of standards are determined by the situation. On the nightly news and in the Senate chamber, ain’t and he don’t and the double negative would be inappropriate; they would violate the standards of those institutions. In the opinion of many language observers, of course, those usages are grammatical errors no matter where they are spoken. Dear Abby isn’t the only self-proclaimed authority on “proper English.” But remember that every dialect in every speech community includes ways of speaking that some critic somewhere would call improper.
And how about the classroom? Should teachers call attention to the nonstandard words and phrases in their students’ language? Should teachers “correct” them? These are questions that the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) has addressed in a document called “Students’ Right to Their Own Language.” The resolution reads, in part,
We affirm the students’ right to their own patterns and varieties of language—the dialects of their nurture or whatever dialects in which they find their own identity and style. Language scholars long ago denied that the myth of a standard American dialect has any validity.... A nation proud of its diverse heritage and its cultural and racial variety will preserve its heritage of dialects.
But teachers also have an obligation to teach students to read and write Standard English, the language of public discourse and of the workplace that those students are preparing to join. There are ways of doing that without making students feel that the language spoken in their home, the language produced by their own internal grammar rules, is somehow inferior. Certainly one way is to study language differences in an objective, nonjudgmental way and to discuss individual and regional and ethnic differences, the differences in levels of formality, and the differences between speech and writing.
Another important aspect of our language that is closely related to the issue of correctness is language change. A great many of the usages that bother language critics, including Abby and her irritated readers, are simply new ways of using words, the introduction of new meanings, or new forms that are starting to take over. The verb sneak, for example, seems to be going the way of dig and stick: The irregular dug and stuck have completely replaced digged and sticked. Another verb to keep our eye on is drag. The irregular drug (“Look at what the cat drug in”) is sneaking in, too—but not quite as fast as snuck.
Among the changes that language critics deplore is the -ize ending that gets added to adjectives and nouns to produce verbs like finalize and prioritize. According to Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage (Merriam-Webster, 1989), such newly coined words have been raising hackles since 1591, when -ize as a word-forming suffix was first mentioned. Apparently, every -ize word has had to go through its probationary period:
Critics were upset by Noah Webster’s inclusion of demoralize, Americanize, and deputize in his 1828 dictionary.. . . [T]he issue roared into the 20th century, wherefinalize replacedjeopardize as the object of the most heat and least rationality. (568)
In summary, the Dictionary asks, “Who today blinks at popularize, formalize, economize, legalize, politicize, terrorize, or capitalize?”
Change is inevitable in a living organism like language. The change is obvious, of course, when we compare the English of Shakespeare or of the King James Bible to our modern version. But we certainly don’t have to go back that far to see differences. We can see and hear change happening all around us, especially if we consider the new words required for such fields as medicine, space science, and computer technology. Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary reports that biofeedback arrived as recently as 1971. As for linguafeedback—you witnessed its arrival back on page 1.
Another place we can find evidence of change is Pinocchio—not in Walt Disney’s version this time, but in translations of the original, an Italian children’s book, written in the 1880s by Carlo Collodi. The following passages are from two different translations of Collodi’s Pinocchio, written almost sixty years apart. You’ll have no trouble distinguishing the language of 1925 from the language of 1983:
la. Fancy the happiness of Pinocchio on finding himself free!
1b. Imagine Pinocchio’s joy when he felt himself free.
2a. Gallop on, gallop on, my pretty steed.
2b. Gallop, gallop, little horse.
3a. But whom shall I ask?
3b. But who can I possibly ask?
4a. Woe betide the lazy fellow.
4b. Woe to those who yield to idleness.
5a. Hasten, Pinocchio.
5b. Hurry, Pinocchio.
6a. Without adding another word, the marionette bade the good Fairy good-by.
6b. Without adding another word, the puppet said good-bye to his good fairy.
In both cases the translators are writing the English version of 1880 Italian, so the language is not necessarily idiomatic 1925 or 1983 English. In spite of that constraint, we can recognize—as you’ve probably figured out—the first item in each pair as the 1925 translation. Those sentences include words that we simply don’t use anymore, that would sound out of place in a conversation-or even a fairy tale-of the 1990s: betide, hasten, bade. The language of 1925 is simply not our language. In truth, the language of 1983 is not our language either, but it’s a great deal closer.