What I read
"The ban on split infinitives is an idea whose time never came" (2018) is about a revision in the latest edition of The Economist's style guide. Among other less controversial changes, the latest edition for editors of this weekly magazine drops the traditional grammar rule against splitting infinities by putting an adverb between to and the verb. As The Economist tells us, there was never any good grammatical reason for this unnatural rule that often made language awkward or imprecise, or both. It was, rather, merely pedants arguing that grammar must follow dictated rules rather than actual usage who complained when native users of English split their infinitives.
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My response
As soon as I saw this article, I thought it would be a good choice to blog on for our class, for which grammar does matter. And I immediately started thinking of titles that would give an example of what it's all about. The current one, "To democratically rule is good grammar", is about version four, or perhaps five. The idea of slipping in democratically was attractive. I tried to get dictatorship in as well for a pleasing contrast, but those versions of my title didn't work so well.
The democracy versus dictatorship comparison came to me as I was reading The Economist's article because I think the controversy over things like split infinitives reflects two approaches to understanding what grammar is and how is works. On one side are people who think that grammar is a set of rules made up by some authority that must be mindlessly obeyed: this is what I call the dictatorship model of grammar. On the other side, the democratic modal accepts that it is the people using it who rightly determine the form of a language's grammar. In case my emotionally loaded terms haven't already made it clear, I'm in the democratic camp, even though it sometimes causes me a bit of discomfort.
I think that grammar is whatever the users of a language make it, and this naturally changes over time. We expect living languages to evolve, unlike classical Latin for example, which was largely the same when I learned it forty years ago as it had been 2,000 years earlier when Caesar and Cicero spoke it. But although Classical Latin, with some modern vocabulary thrown in, is a surprisingly popular language among some groups (don't worry if you've never come across them — things like Nuntii Latini, the daily news in Latin complete with audio files, from Radiophonia Finnica Generalis are not known to most of my friends either), it is definitely a dead language.
It seems to me that one of the great strengths of English is that it has never had anything like an academy with official authority to dictate what is right and wrong. This freedom has contributed to the great versatility of English, although it also makes it a difficult language to learn since it's such a mix of conflicting rules and vocabulary from different sources that are constantly evolving to meet he demands of users around the world in different groups. And this evolution can be fast. When I was at university, we did not start sentences with coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, so, for, yet and nor). But that is common these days, even in academic versions of English. I have to confess that although I feel comfortable starting sentences with and or but in less formal contexts, I still tend to avoid it in academic writing. However, I don't normally mark it wrong when students start sentences with these words. It worries me more when I see so staring a sentence, and I would not normally do that myself, but again, if it seems consistent with modern usage, I don't make a fuss about it.
I think that messily democratic English has a large advantage over neatly dictatorial French, which suffers from having the official l'Académie française say what is correct or incorrect French. Fortunately, however, most French people are sensible enough to ignore the official dictates.
The democracy versus dictatorship comparison came to me as I was reading The Economist's article because I think the controversy over things like split infinitives reflects two approaches to understanding what grammar is and how is works. On one side are people who think that grammar is a set of rules made up by some authority that must be mindlessly obeyed: this is what I call the dictatorship model of grammar. On the other side, the democratic modal accepts that it is the people using it who rightly determine the form of a language's grammar. In case my emotionally loaded terms haven't already made it clear, I'm in the democratic camp, even though it sometimes causes me a bit of discomfort.
It seems to me that one of the great strengths of English is that it has never had anything like an academy with official authority to dictate what is right and wrong. This freedom has contributed to the great versatility of English, although it also makes it a difficult language to learn since it's such a mix of conflicting rules and vocabulary from different sources that are constantly evolving to meet he demands of users around the world in different groups. And this evolution can be fast. When I was at university, we did not start sentences with coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, so, for, yet and nor). But that is common these days, even in academic versions of English. I have to confess that although I feel comfortable starting sentences with and or but in less formal contexts, I still tend to avoid it in academic writing. However, I don't normally mark it wrong when students start sentences with these words. It worries me more when I see so staring a sentence, and I would not normally do that myself, but again, if it seems consistent with modern usage, I don't make a fuss about it.
I think that messily democratic English has a large advantage over neatly dictatorial French, which suffers from having the official l'Académie française say what is correct or incorrect French. Fortunately, however, most French people are sensible enough to ignore the official dictates.
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My question
How do you decide what makes a sentence in your language grammatically correct or incorrect?
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Reference
- The ban on split infinitives is an idea whose time never came: To boldly go where grammarians have feared to tread. (2018, April 26). The Economist. Retrieved from https://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21741127-boldly-go-where-grammarians-have-feared-tread-ban-split-infinitives
Although it did not fit my own piece of work, I liked The Economist's clever titles. It plays on two well known phrases with infinitives: "fools rush in where angels fear to tread" by Alexander Pope; and "To boldly go where no man has gone before!", which famously split an infinitive in the very popular Startrek TV series when I was in primary school. It caused a great outcry from people thought that such carelessness must signal the end of civilization and of good morals. The last time I checked, Western civilization seemed to have survived this attack from Hollywood.
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