Grammar
Tenses
Present
Present Simple
Present Continuous
Present Perfect
Present Perfect Continuous
Past
Past Continuous
Past Perfect
Past Perfect Continuous
Past Simple
Future
Future Simple
Future Continuous
Future Perfect
Future Perfect Continuous
Passive and Active
Parts Of Speech
Nouns
Countable and uncountable nouns
Verbal nouns
Singular and Plural nouns
Proper nouns
Nouns gender
Nouns definition
Concrete nouns
Abstract nouns
Common nouns
Collective nouns
Definition Of Nouns
Verbs
Stative and dynamic verbs
Finite and nonfinite verbs
To be verbs
Transitive and intransitive verbs
Auxiliary verbs
Modal verbs
Regular and irregular verbs
Action verbs
Adverbs
Relative adverbs
Interrogative adverbs
Adverbs of time
Adverbs of place
Adverbs of reason
Adverbs of quantity
Adverbs of manner
Adverbs of frequency
Adverbs of affirmation
Adjectives
Quantitative adjective
Proper adjective
Possessive adjective
Numeral adjective
Interrogative adjective
Distributive adjective
Descriptive adjective
Demonstrative adjective
Pronouns
Subject pronoun
Relative pronoun
Reflexive pronoun
Reciprocal pronoun
Possessive pronoun
Personal pronoun
Interrogative pronoun
Indefinite pronoun
Emphatic pronoun
Distributive pronoun
Demonstrative pronoun
Pre Position
Preposition by function
Time preposition
Reason preposition
Possession preposition
Place preposition
Phrases preposition
Origin preposition
Measure preposition
Direction preposition
Contrast preposition
Agent preposition
Preposition by construction
Simple preposition
Phrase preposition
Double preposition
Compound preposition
Conjunctions
Subordinating conjunction
Correlative conjunction
Coordinating conjunction
Conjunctive adverbs
Interjections
Express calling interjection
Grammar Rules
Preference
Requests and offers
wishes
Be used to
Some and any
Could have done
Describing people
Giving advices
Possession
Comparative and superlative
Giving Reason
Making Suggestions
Apologizing
Forming questions
Since and for
Directions
Obligation
Adverbials
invitation
Articles
Imaginary condition
Zero conditional
First conditional
Second conditional
Third conditional
Reported speech
Linguistics
Phonetics
Phonology
Semantics
Pragmatics
Linguistics fields
Syntax
Morphology
Semantics
pragmatics
History
Writing
Grammar
Phonetics and Phonology
Reading Comprehension
Elementary
Intermediate
Advanced
Descriptive or prescriptive?
المؤلف: David Hornsby
المصدر: Linguistics A complete introduction
الجزء والصفحة: 17-1
2023-12-09
528
Descriptive or prescriptive?
You have learned that linguists see their task as describing language and attempting to find explanations for real language data, rather than telling people how they should speak: linguistics is descriptive, not prescriptive. In this connection we saw that there are two kinds of rule. It’s a descriptive syntactic rule of English that the house is grammatical, but not *house the1 (a structure which is fine in Swedish and Bulgarian), because no English speaker would naturally say this. Similarly it’s a descriptive rule of English phonology that no word can begin with the sequence *vdr-, which is a perfectly acceptable word-initial sequence in Russian.
Rules of the ‘don’t split infinitives’ kind, on the other hand, are prescriptive, in that they set out what purists think speakers ought to do. Prescriptive rules are generally associated with the usage of a dominant or prestige group, and are generally reinforced by the formal education system: that they need to be, of course, is a sure indication that they are often transgressed. A linguist’s first task is to describe the rules that a native speaker unconsciously obeys, whether or not these correspond to those of standard usage. In doing so, linguists accord primacy to speech because children acquire language through hearing and speaking before learning to read and write, and because conventional writing systems are at best an inconsistent and poor reflection of that speech. These two principles are fundamental to linguistics, and if you’ve grasped them, congratulations! You’re starting to think like a linguist.