Kinds of Grammar

From: Timothy Mason

To: Foreign Language Teaching Forum FLTEACH@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU

Kenneth Udut argues :

Regarding grammar - I think there's two different types of grammar being talked about here...

I'd prefer to think in terms of a continuum between formalized and non-formalized grammars. That's probably not the only way of doing it, but it's the one we have on our plates here. Most members of linguistic communities will, I surmise, have access to and use several grammars. Kenneth goes on :

There's grammar, as in an established set of accepted guidelines for producing and understanding a well thought out, logical, comprehendable sentence that is meaningful, understandable, and concise. Then there's grammar, as in a set of internal guidelines for producing and understanding language. One is what you'll find in grammar books The other is something that is invisible and can only be inferred, perhaps, through poking and prodding.

I suspect that you are here reproducing the 'literate'/'non-literate' divide with a Nature/Culture gloss. But that's the point I was trying to make : all sequencing rules are 'out there', even if they are not immediately available for collective scrutiny. (They become available for close and continuing scrutiny in literate societies.) So the guidelines are not 'internal' ; they are 'internalized'. Linguists are then astonished by their odd appearance - their non-linearity - once they have been 'poked and prodded', and declare that this is proof of their being innate. Perhaps they should try looking at the folk-tales of pre-literate societies. (If you're interested, do a trawl for 'Hausa folk-tales'). Kenneth also writes :

I think the grammar found in the grammar books came from observation of usage, and so, in a sense, teaching the grammar also teaches the logic of a language, of a particular culture and people, of their general way of thinking etc.

Although there has long been a tension between descriptive and prescriptive grammars, most of the early grammars of English were 'How-to' books for those who aspired to social betterment. They were based upon (very partial) observation of the usage of one section of the linguistic community, and upon the denigration of that of others. By canonizing certain usages and outlawing others they contributed to the creation and dissemination of what is often referred to as the 'standard' form of the language. A useful place to look would be 'Images of English ; A Cultural History of the Language', by Richard W. Bailey, University of Michigan Press, 1991. Baugh & Cable's 'A History of the English Language' is also worth reading.

It is like a map of the mind - sort of an averaged out set of a linguistic society's neural network.

I'm having a hard job unpacking these metaphors. But it does seem to me that you have fallen for what I'll call the 'naturalistic illusion'. (You are, of course, in very good company. Such heavy-weights as Chomsky or Levi-Strauss are on your side.) While brain and mind-structuring certainly are involved in our conversing with one another, they do not tell the whole story, by any means. Grammar is to a very large extent out there rather than in here. Agreement as to ways of speaking is achieved through similar processes to those by which agreements are reached on other matters. Grammar is a social reality before it is a psychological one. The 'averaging out' of which you write here is a matter of power and social distinction quite as much as - if not more than - of logic.

Best wishes

Timothy Mason

IUFM de Versailles