Grammar Without Grammaticality: Growth and Limits of Grammatical Precision (Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs [TiLSM] Book 254)

Linguists have standardly assumed that grammar is about identifying all and only the 'good' sentences of a language, which implies that there must be other, 'bad' sentences- but in practice most linguists know that it is hard to pin those down. The standard assumption is no more than an assumption. A century ago, grammarians did not think about their subject that way, and our book shows that the older idea was right: linguists can and should dispense with the concept 'starred sentence'. We draw on corpus data in order to support a different model of grammar, in which individuals refine positive grammatical habits to greater or lesser extents in diverse and unpredictable directions, but nothing is ever ruled out. Languages are not merely alternative methods of verbalizing universal logical forms. We use empirical evidence to shed light on the routes by which school-age children gradually expand their battery of grammatical resources, which turn out to be sometimes counter-intuitive. Our rejection of the 'starred sentence' concept has attracted considerable discussion, and we summarize the reactions and respond to our critics. The contrasting models of grammar described in this book entail contrasting pictures of human nature; our closing chapter shows that grammatical theory is not value-neutral but has an ethical dimension. Preface 5 Acknowledgements 9 Table of contents 11 List of figures 16 List of tables 17 Chapter 1. Introduction 19 Chapter 2. The bounds of grammatical refinement 44 Chapter 3. Where should annotation stop? 71 Chapter 4. Grammar without grammaticality 82 Chapter 5. Replies to our critics 113 Chapter 6. Grammatical description meets spontaneous speech 137 Chapter 7. Demographic correlates of speech complexity 154 Chapter 8. The structure of children’s writing 173 Chapter 9. Child writing and discourse organization 190 Chapter 10. Simple grammars and new grammars 202 Chapter 11. The case of the vanishing perfect 219 Chapter 12. Testing a metric for parse accuracy 236 Chapter 13. Linguistics empirical and unempirical 255 Chapter 14. William Gladstone as linguist 287 Chapter 15. Minds in Uniform: How generative linguistics regiments culture, and why it shouldn’t 314 References 338 Index 353 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.--Résumé de l'éditeur Grammar is said to be about defining only the 'good' sentences of a language, implying that there are 'bad' sentences. Corpus data support a different model: individuals develop positive grammatical habits of growing refinement, but nothing is ever ruled out. This book deals with this topic.