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Which English grammar rules are bogus? [W:243]

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In the article I just referenced to you, nota bene, Steven Pinker describes, AGAIN, how the silly rules came to be.

'Literally,' Emojis, and Other Trends That Aren't Destroying English

Experimental psychologist Steven Pinker talks about a few cherished grammar rules he'd prefer to see forgotten—and replies to critics of his book The Sense of Style.

...

Pinker: Nathan Heller’s an ignoramus. He really does not know what he’s talking about. He said that in the sentence “It is I” that “I” is the subject of the sentence, which is just a howler. Sentences don’t have two subjects. He is doing exactly what I said one should not do, which is to confuse meaning, case, and grammatical relations, which is what he does in that preposterous claim. If you were to say, “I think we should break up, but it’s not you; it’s I,” you’d sound like a pompous jackass.

Porch: He’s making an argument, though, that language needs committed rules to give writers a baseline, which is different than a writer knowing the rules and taking license with them.

Pinker: He’s wrong. That’s absolutely not what I say. As you and I have noted in this very conversation, I have motivated guidelines as to how one should or shouldn’t write. It’s not that good writers have chosen to flout a rule; it’s that the rule is not a rule in the first place. What Heller and many writers before him have never asked is: What makes a rule a rule? Who decides? Where does it come from? They write as if there’s some tribunal or rules committee who makes the rules of English, which there isn’t, or that it’s a matter of logic or objective reality, which it isn’t.


https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/12/steven-pinker-interview/384092/
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nota bene said:
You aren't interested in a discussion. This thread was begun by begging the question that some grammar rules are "bogus."

What you want to do here is taunt others into producing a rule that you can then dismiss. Why, I don't know. Perhaps you can explain why you're so very invested in all this.

Yes, there are many, many grammarians who are more expert than Pinker in grammar. Nice that he has an acolyte in you, but this isn't really his area.
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This bears repeating.
 
nota bene said:
From Dr. Pinker's CV:

Education

Doctor of Philosophy (Experimental Psychology), Harvard University, 1979.
Bachelor of Arts (First Class Honors in Psychology), McGill University, 1976.
Diploma of College Studies, Dawson College, 1973.

https://stevenpinker.com/files/pinker/files/long_cv_april_2014.pdf
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Look deeper, he is obviously an expert on the English language. What he says, notice how he blew apart Nathan, is echoed by knowledgeable language scientists the world over. Why can't you address what he discusses? The phony rules were concocted by folks simply to preen and to make money. They had no way of doing Corpus Linguistics in those days.

All the best writers flouted the rules because these made up rules were not of the grammar rules of English.

Pinker: Nathan Heller’s an ignoramus. He really does not know what he’s talking about. He said that in the sentence “It is I” that “I” is the subject of the sentence, which is just a howler. Sentences don’t have two subjects. He is doing exactly what I said one should not do, which is to confuse meaning, case, and grammatical relations, which is what he does in that preposterous claim. If you were to say, “I think we should break up, but it’s not you; it’s I,” you’d sound like a pompous jackass.

Why can't you or anyone bring forward one of the errant rules you knew I was talking about and defend it?
 
camlok said:
Look deeper, he is obviously an expert on the English language.
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No, you look at his CV and accept that his degrees are in psych...as I said pages ago.
 
camlok said:
Look deeper, he is obviously an expert on the English language. What he says, notice how he blew apart Nathan, is echoed by knowledgeable language scientists the world over. Why can't you address what he discusses? The phony rules were concocted by folks simply to preen and to make money. They had no way of doing Corpus Linguistics in those days.

All the best writers flouted the rules because these made up rules were not of the grammar rules of English.

Pinker: Nathan Heller’s an ignoramus. He really does not know what he’s talking about. He said that in the sentence “It is I” that “I” is the subject of the sentence, which is just a howler. Sentences don’t have two subjects. He is doing exactly what I said one should not do, which is to confuse meaning, case, and grammatical relations, which is what he does in that preposterous claim. If you were to say, “I think we should break up, but it’s not you; it’s I,” you’d sound like a pompous jackass.

Why can't you or anyone bring forward one of the errant rules you knew I was talking about and defend it?
Click to expand...

Find any "Grammar Rule Lies" yet?
 
nota bene said:
No, you look at his CV and accept that his degrees are in psych...as I said pages ago.
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Fledermaus, zyzygy, Quag seemingly are your partners in this ongoing charade that even you are involving yourself in, nota bene? Why? You, and they, know that Steven Pinker discusses these false grammar rules in the link, Grammar Puss.

Is this what DP is about? You are a moderator for dog's sakes!

Here, I'll even put a few for you to point out to these, what are they? denying realities put squarely in front of their noses.

Number 1 False Grammar rule: Of course, forcing modern speakers of English to not -- whoops, not to split an infinitive
because it isn't done in Latin makes about as much sense as forcing modern residents of
England to wear laurels and togas. Julius Caesar could not have split an infinitive if he
had wanted to.

Number 2 False Grammar rule: : No split infinitives
Space -- the final frontier ... These are the voyages of the starship
[Enterprise]. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life
and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before. To [go boldly] where
no man has gone before? Beam me up, Scotty; there's no intelligent life down here.


Number 3 False Grammar rule:
As for outlawing sentences that end with a preposition (impossible in Latin for reasons
irrelevant to English) -- as Winston Churchill would have said, it is a rule up with which
we should not put.

https://homepages.wmich.edu/~hillenbr/204/GrammarPuss.pdf
 
camlok said:
Care about what, preserving meanings for words lost in time. It's a grand endeavor, for the field of Etymology and some others but why on Earth would most language users give a fat fig?
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Most language users don't. Of course, most language users also don't name-drop 18th-century refs.

Your 18th-century name-dropping and then being caught short about a meaning familiar to anybody interested in 18th-century language and literature (oh, and 16th and 17th too) and trying to cover by dismissing what you don't know as "lost in time" is funny.
 
zyzygy said:
If you Google "errant rules of grammar" you get no results, only "did you mean arrant?"
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And is it beyond your capabilities, zyzygy, to try some similar phrasing? You do know that English has more than one way to say pretty much anything, don't you?

Like maybe, "false rules of English grammar", which yields 316,000 hits. And lo and behold the first page has lots of links to sites where, wonder of wonders, people are discussing "false rules of English grammar".
 
nota bene said:
Most language users don't.
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Of course they don't for the simple reason that the meanings of words then are not the meanings they hold today, for English speakers of today, which includes you and me.

So why might you think it is important?

nota bene said:
Of course, most language users also don't name-drop 18th-century refs.
Click to expand...

What are you trying to say? Isn't the prescriptive mantra all about using language to be clear and concise? Are you talking about zyzygy "name-drop[ping] 18th-century refs"? Do you mean soccer refs or hurling refs or ... ?

nota bene said:
Your 18th-century name-dropping and then being caught short about a meaning familiar to anybody interested in 18th-century language and literature (oh, and 16th and 17th too) and trying to cover by dismissing what you don't know as "lost in time" is funny.
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Please explain clearly what you mean.
 
nota bene said:
Most language users ...
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Are you going to address the folks who are outright lying, saying that no false grammar rules have been presented? They are all in a row, right before Sweden's two excellent posts, on this page. I notice that you didn't join in in their lies, to your great credit, but how can you let such arrant lies be advanced?
 
I often say that nothing surprises me anymore and then this thread happened. I've never met a militant grammarist until now. Hell, I didn't even know such a thing existed. This has to be one of the dumbest threads in the history of the internet.
 
camlok said:
Fledermaus, zyzygy, Quag seemingly are your partners in this ongoing charade that even you are involving yourself in, nota bene? Why? You, and they, know that Steven Pinker discusses these false grammar rules in the link, Grammar Puss.

Is this what DP is about? You are a moderator for dog's sakes!

Here, I'll even put a few for you to point out to these, what are they? denying realities put squarely in front of their noses.

Number 1 False Grammar rule: Of course, forcing modern speakers of English to not -- whoops, not to split an infinitive
because it isn't done in Latin makes about as much sense as forcing modern residents of
England to wear laurels and togas. Julius Caesar could not have split an infinitive if he
had wanted to.

Number 2 False Grammar rule: : No split infinitives
Space -- the final frontier ... These are the voyages of the starship
[Enterprise]. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life
and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before. To [go boldly] where
no man has gone before? Beam me up, Scotty; there's no intelligent life down here.


Number 3 False Grammar rule:
As for outlawing sentences that end with a preposition (impossible in Latin for reasons
irrelevant to English) -- as Winston Churchill would have said, it is a rule up with which
we should not put.

https://homepages.wmich.edu/~hillenbr/204/GrammarPuss.pdf
Click to expand...

These are RULES.

rule
ro͞ol/
noun
noun: rule; plural noun: rules; noun: Rules

1. one of a set of explicit or understood regulations or principles governing conduct within a particular activity or sphere.


And how are they LIES?

lie
[lahy]
Noun

1. a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood.
 
RedAkston said:
I often say that nothing surprises me anymore and then this thread happened. I've never met a militant grammarist until now. Hell, I didn't even know such a thing existed. This has to be one of the dumbest threads in the history of the internet.
Click to expand...

It is a very odd bee in a very odd bonnet.
 
RedAkston said:
I often say that nothing surprises me anymore and then this thread happened. I've never met a militant grammarist until now. Hell, I didn't even know such a thing existed. This has to be one of the dumbest threads in the history of the internet.
Click to expand...

nota bene is not a militant grammarist, which isn't even a word in English. He does seem to be pretty steadfast in defending the false prescriptions without any actual defense.

He is just one of the many folks, [possibly even an academic] who were taken in by the lies which were concocted about English grammar in the 18th century.
 
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camlok said:
Are you going to address the folks who are outright lying, saying that no false grammar rules have been presented? They are all in a row, right before Sweden's two excellent posts, on this page. I notice that you didn't join in in their lies, to your great credit, but how can you let such arrant lies be advanced?
Click to expand...

You were saying Grammar rules were LIES.

Do I sense a massive movement of goalposts?
 
camlok said:
nota bene is not a militant grammarist, which isn't even a word in English. He does seem to be pretty steadfast in defending the false prescriptions without any actual defense.

He is just one of the many folks, [possibly even an academic] who were taken in by the lies which were concocted about English grammar in the 18th century.
Click to expand...
She wasn't the one I was referring to...
 
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