But is it grammatically correct? (a short essay)

When asked what a sentence is, many students say something like "it's a group of words with a subject, verb and object." Pressed a bit, they might cut out the object and then the subject, while insisting on the need for a verb. But then we see that Charles Dickens, author of David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, and numerous other much admired classics of English literature, opens his novel Bleakhouse with these three sentences: "London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall. Implacable November weather" (2013, ch. 1, ¶ 1, loc. 97 - 98). There are no verbs here. And Dickens continues to write sentence after sentence with either no verb at all, or no main verb before eventually slipping back into the habit of including at least one main verb in his sentences. Is this recognised master of English incapable of writing an English sentence? Are the three sentences quoted really sentences? Similarly, as we saw in class this morning (AEP rw5, personal communication, May 22, 2013), in Grammar Scan, Michael Swan and David Baker ask us to decide whether the sentence "Each student wore what they liked best," is possible or not (2008, p. 93). When the the word grammar is correctly understood as meaning not a set of rules recorded in a book or anywhere else, but as the way in which a group of native speakers use their language, it follows that Swan's example sentence is both possible and grammatically correct, although unlikely in more formal contexts.

Just as many people resort to an unhelpful, and arguably wrong, definition of a sentence that comes from a grammar book, it is common to think that grammar means "the set of rules governing usage that are written down in a book or other medium to be taught to students in schools and other language learners". However, this must be wrong. Were it true, it would mean that native speakers could not learn the grammar of their own language unless they had been to school or otherwise taught the set of rules, and this is definitely wrong: every child learns their native language and is fluent before they start school at age five or six. For example, I did not study English grammar at all until I was in high school: I did not know about subject, objects, reporting verbs, gerunds or any such things. I was, however, a fluent and correct user of English. Similarly, children growing up in a Thai city or village have always, for centuries, managed to learn and use Thai perfectly well without ever studying grammar. Indeed, the rules in grammar books can be an obstacle to learning the correct and fluent use of one's native language. We see this in English with the traditional grammar book rule that we not split our infinitives. According to this rule, when the episodes of Star Trek open open with the words: "to boldly go where no man has ever gone before",  they should be saying "boldly to go where no man has ever gone before." The trouble is that the latter sounds weird. The grammar rule about split infinitives is wrong.

It might help if we ask what the purpose of grammar is, and the answer to this question explains why grammar books are so useful, especially among language learners. Grammar helps users to communicate their ideas among each other by ensuring that each uses the language in the same way. For example, in Latin, the three words leo Iohannem edit mean the same as Iohannem leo edit, and could also be written Iohannem edit leo, although this last is not the best style: they all mean "the lion eats John". Latin grammar tells us that the word order is far more flexible than that of English. In English, changing the position of the words changes the subject to the object, but in Latin, it is the form of the word that tells us whether it is the subject of object of the verb. In English, The lion eats John means something very different to John eats the lion. The Latin sentences: leonem Iohannes edit; Iohannes leonem edit; and Iohannes edit leonem all mean the same, that "John eats the lion". This pattern or way of using the words in Latin was not something taught from rules to two year-olds in the time of Julius Caesar, Marc Antony and Cleopatra; rather, they were the rules absorbed and unconsciously used by native speakers in Rome at the time. People who did not follow the same set of languages rules, the same patterns or ways of using the words, would not be understood by the members of the group, so communication would be impossible. It is very useful for language learners, especially learners of a non-native language to have a book of grammar rules to refer to: not because those rules make the grammar, but because they report on what the actual patterns or ways of using are among the group of native users of the language. A useful grammar reference is, in other words, an accurate record of how the language is actually used, just as a useful dictionary accurate tells us how a word is actually used. It doesn't matter whether the use reported is sensible or silly, high class or low class, formal or informal: what matters is that the use is accurately reported. The ways a language are used can include: word order, which is far more important in English and Chinese than it is in Latin;  word form, such as love, loves, loved, loving, lovable, lover, lovely and loveliness, something that is not in Chinese, is important in English, and crucial in Latin;  punctuation, and so on.  A record of these patterns is very useful, and it might include  recommendations for learners, but that record and recommendations are not the grammar of a language. The  grammar is the actual patterns of use among a group of native users of a language.

A little research shows that English users, especially in less formal contexts, regularly use a plural pronoun to refer to a grammatically singular noun phrase with each. When we search for the term each person on the Oxford University Corpus of English, 8 out of 20, or 40%, of the examples sentences on the first page have each person followed by a plural pronoun that refers back to it: they, them or their ("Example Sentences" 2010b). For the term each child, the figure is 10% ("Example Sentences" 2010c), and in the case of each student, 10% are followed by a plural pronoun ("Example Sentences" 2010a). Interestingly, in the case of each student, the proportion of his or her pronouns is higher than for the other two examples, presumably because the context is more likely to be formal in a discussion where the phrase each student occurs. The facts, however, are clear: native English language users, at least in some situations, do regularly use a grammar pattern where a singular noun phrase with each is referred to by a plural pronoun, which is therefore a grammatically possible and correct use in English. In particular, Swan and Baker's example sentence: "Each student wore what they liked best," (2008, p. 93) follows a pattern of actual use by native English speakers, and so that sentence is grammatically possible and correct, at least in some situations.

Grammar is the set of patterns, the ways of doing things, in a language that is shared among a group of native users. It serves to ensure that those users understand the patterns in the same way so that they can be used to effectively communicate ideas, which is the purpose of language, whether Thai, classical Latin, Chinese, or Klingon if you are attacking the starship Enterprise in a distant galaxy. In the case of English, native speakers, especially in less formal situations, are in the habit of using a pattern where a plural pronoun refers to a singular noun phrase with the word each. Because this pattern is an actual way of stating an idea among native English speakers, it communicates the intended idea correctly so that the example sentence "Each student wore what they liked best," is grammatically correct. Of course, amongst some groups of native English speakers in some contexts, such as those writing formal reports, a singular or compound pronoun such as he or she might be more correct. As with every language, we have to pay attention to the intended audience, the context and the purpose of the communication: the patterns of language use, the grammar, of academic English is very different to the  grammar and vocabulary of literary English, and even more removed from the vocabulary and grammar appropriate for an argument with friends in the local pub about which football team is best. Had Mr. Dickens followed the grammar rules appropriate for academic English, his great novels would not be so great. They are much better for having sentences without verbs, something that would almost certainly (but perhaps not always) be a serious mistake in an academic essay.

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Reference

Dickens, C. (2013). Bleakhouse [Kindle version]. Seahorse Publishing. Retrieved from Amazon.com (Originally published 1852 - 1853).

Example Sentences. (2010a April). Oxford Dictionaries Pro. Oxford University Press. Retrieved May 22, 2013  from http://english.oxforddictionaries.com/examplesentences?q=each+student

Example Sentences. (2010b April). Oxford Dictionaries Pro. Oxford University Press. Retrieved May 22, 2013  from http://english.oxforddictionaries.com/examplesentences?q=each+person

Example Sentences. (2010c April). Oxford Dictionaries Pro. Oxford University Press. Retrieved May 22, 2013  from http://english.oxforddictionaries.com/examplesentences?q=each+child

Swan, M. (2005). Practical English usage (3rd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.

Swan, M. & Baker, D. (2008). Grammar scan: diagnostic tests for Practical English Usage (3rd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.