Fundamentals of Language and Linguistics

Assignment 1

Essay on descriptive approach

Submitted by:

M. Zeeshan

19L-2072

Submitted to:

Dr Zahida Mansoor

Date: 15/10/2019

National University of Computer and

Emerging Sciences

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Language is important for communication. All societies have complex language, and everywhere the

languages use the same kinds of grammatical pattern, such as nouns, verbs, auxiliaries and agreement.

Grammar is important. What is for some a straightforward rule may be for others a controversial issue. To

make matters worse grammar is defined according to whether we have a descriptive or prescriptive view

of language. We can talk about these different approaches to language

as descriptive grammar vs. prescriptive grammar.

"The child does not learn his language from his grammar. After he has learned it in other

ways, grammar steps in and furnishes him a scientific analysis of what he has been doing."

(Thomas R.Lounsbury 1991)

Grammar is one aspect of linguistics that includes both prescriptivism and descriptivism.

Linguistics favored both, Descriptive deals with socially correct utterances rather than focus on

rules and structure. More focusing on meaning, that is in our social circle. It is a theoretical

approach that has own fixed rules for language. It mainly focuses on communicative language. A

Non-native speaker may be confused for using the structure of foreign language because they are

Not having the same exposure for foreign language. Prescriptive grammar is more focusing on

language rules and its structure rather than its context. It deals with fixed rules and structure that

are inherited from generation to generation. Linguistic goes for both language structure and its

meaning. Both are important for learning a language or dealing with a language. In past

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prescriptive grammar start from 18th century and then changed into descriptive grammar. In

addition, their focus is mainly on everyday life speech. A descriptive grammar is a set of rules

about Language based on how it is actually used. In a descriptive grammar, there is no right or

wrong language.

Descriptive grammarians focus on the way a language is actually used by people. They believe

that language is neither correct nor incorrect and that grammar may follow certain patterns but

never rules. So descriptive grammar is the systematic study and description of a language and

refers to the structure of a language as it is actually used by speakers and writers, For example, A

descriptive grammar might include ‘He goes, meaning ‘He said'.

Halliday in article learning how to mean said that language is in its original

Form having problem using a language within a social context it is useful. For Halliday (1975)

Some rules of descriptive grammar are:

 Some English speakers end a sentence with a preposition (Who do you want to speak to?)

 Some English speakers use double negatives for negation (I do not have nothing.)

 Adjectives precede the nouns they modify (red book, nice guy)

 To form the plural of a noun, add -s (1 room, 2 rooms; 1 book, 2 books)

 The vowel sound in the word suit is produced with rounded lips.

As an example of our local area, Children learn through socialization of the language around them

they can learn without knowing the real structure and parents give them exposure in their language.

If a child doing a structural mistake but meaning is understandable then it must be descriptivism

and another example of illiterate people who never go to school to learn rules of their language but

still they can use a language in a commanding way. Even they do not know about the structures

and rules of that very language. Another example is a person who is illiterate and goes English

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country for job purposes, he did not know about the use of English language. Firstly, he is supposed

to face difficulties but after few years, he may become a fluent speaker of English language but

not with hypercorrection and its mainly base on just conveying meaning. It is all because of social

exposure. In addition, here is prescriptivism failed because it is related to hypercorrection.

There is another concept that is closely related to descriptivism is Psycholinguistics. It deals with

human mind that there must be ability to acquire a language. Shelden Rosenburg (1993) worked

on Chomsky theory of language, according to him; people are born with an innate ability that helps

them to learn a language. That means children have an innate abililty to learn a language. When a

child starts speaking firstly listens. Because a child is having a blank slate whatever you put it onto

it, it will follow it. When a child starts speaking, he does not go with prescriptivism. He always

starts speaking in a descriptive way. He, in this way, just tries to convey his massage and when its

massage is convenient for his communicative language and it helps him to learn more and

contribute in communication because of descriptive grammar is not judgmental and let them to

focus on meaning .while prescriptivism is judgmental and highly complex grammar because it

need correctness. The use of correct form of language so it is difficult for many people to acquire

this approach. If we have to follow the rules, what about creativity? What about the way real people speak

these days? What about the influence of television and texting and instant messaging? What about the way

we speak as opposed to the way we are taught to write? How can we deal with discrepancies there?

This is where the descriptive comes in. Descriptive grammar shows how language is used in the real world.

Linguists who study dialect and trends and social media can tell us all about how people actually use

language. And they can show how that use varies across a country or between generations or within the

tiers of a large company.

in English movies people use slangs that they did not bother the structural patterns. They just prefer

to convey their meaning in a simplest structure rather than ambiguity in language. Slangs use is

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very common even though we are not bothering it at all for example: I wanna eta apples instead

of using I want to eat apples, its use for just communicative method because it makes easiness and

fluency in speech. So slang is in descriptivism that mainly focuses on communication with others

and no matter what you use lexicon or syntactic structure in its descriptivism is more useful in

social context and admired by the people.

At the end of the essay, I conclude that both approaches are important for the grammar but

descriptive is more important because in this approach we do not need to follow any rules or

correctness of the usage of language. if you are writing a creative piece, such as a novel, poem or

short story, a descriptive approach to grammar can be extremely useful as it can help your

characters or language to communicate in a manner that mirrors the colloquial speech of real

people.

We all know that language changes over time and that what is "correct" in a language is how

people actually use language, yet there are still many people who adhere strictly to prescriptive

grammar. Will this always be the trend? Arguments about these and other aspects of grammar

instruction will no doubt go on into the far future, but one thing, at least, is clear. Both kinds of

grammar are concerned with rules--but in different ways. Specialists in descriptive grammar

(called linguists) study the rules or patterns that underlie our use of words, phrases, clauses, and

sentences. On the other hand, prescriptive grammarians (such as most editors and teachers) lay out

rules about what they believe to be the “correct” or “incorrect” use of language.

References

M. A. K. Halliday, Learning how to mean: explorations in the development of

language (2008). (Explorations in Language Study Series, edited by Peter Doughty
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And Geoffrey Thornton). London: Edward Arnold

Locher, M. A. The rise of prescriptive grammars in the 18th century (2008). In M.A. Locher & J.
Strässler (Eds.), Standards and Norms in the English Language.

Michael, Ian. English Grammatical Categories and the Tradition to 1800. Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 1970.

Baron, Dennis. Declining Grammar and Other Essays on the English Vocabulary. Urbana, IL:
NCTE, 1989.

Anthony Burgess, An Introduction to English Grammar, 2nd ed. Pearson, 2002

Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury". Obituary Record of Graduates of Yale University