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Prescriptive Grammar

is normative. It tells us ( prescribes) what we should say, should write, and what we should not say or do or write. It gives us a set of norms to follow, and tells us which ``errors" to avoid. It tells us that somethings are ``bad" and some things are ``good". Prescriptive grammar fails to distinguish between style and grammar, often confusing the two. It condemns all styles or dialects of a language except the standard or classical or ``King's English" style and often characterizes non-standard language as corrupt or vulgar or even morally deficient. Examples from 8th-grade English grammar:

  1. do not split infinitives.
  2. Do not dangle participles
  3. Do not end a sentence with a preposition.
Linguistics is not prescriptive grammar.



Harold Schiffman
Fri Jan 17 09:48:04 EST 1997