
Grammar Without Grammaticality
Growth and Limits of Grammatical Precision
De Gruyter Mouton (Publisher)
Published on 1. January 2014
Book
Mixed media product
XVII, 341 pages
978-3-11-029002-8 (ISBN)
Article is exhausted; no reprint
Description
Grammar is said to be about defining all and only the 'good' sentences of a language, implying that there are other, 'bad' sentences - but it is hard to pin those down. A century ago, grammarians did not think that way, and they were right: linguists can and should dispense with 'starred sentences'. Corpus data support a different model: individuals develop positive grammatical habits of growing refinement, but nothing is ever ruled out. The contrasting models entail contrasting pictures of human nature; our final chapter shows that grammatical theory is not value-neutral but has an ethical dimension.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Berlin
Germany
Target group
Professional and scholarly
US School Grade: College Graduate Student
Illustrations
Includes a print version and an ebook
Dimensions
Height: 23 cm
Width: 15.5 cm
ISBN-13
978-3-11-029002-8 (9783110290028)
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Geoffrey Sampson, University of South Africa and Sussex University; Anna Babarczy, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary.