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You can break grammar rules and be understood. One of the points of some of the exercises was to show that communication is more complicated than the seemingly

You can break grammar rules and be understood. One of the points of some of the exercises was to show that communication is more complicated than the seemingly a priori rules. Human languages are not formal systems. It's actually pretty easy with spoken language to completely mangle the rules and not only be understood but be even more evocative; that's how languages evolve. It's more complicated with written words, but certainly possible. One trick is to make up a completely new rule and "teach" it to the reader. Another is to create a pattern and then break it for effect. The results can be nonsensical, but quite meaningful. Not something you might use in an everyday report or memo, but a good tool and a great way to de-provincialize language. BTW, your "Cat mouse mouse run run." sentence can be made intelligible by inflection rather easily. In English nouns and verbs can often double as adjectives and adverbs. With a little preparation a reader can be made to "hear" the inflection and understand the meaning. Try and puzzle this out: ((Cat mouse) (mouse run) run) Loose meaning is something like: The catlike mouse runs with a mouselike gait. Tarzan explaining something obvious to an idiot big game hunter... (The movie Tarzan, though. The Tarzan in the novels actually spoke excellent English, but with a French accent.) Another trick was to take grammars from other language and use English vocabulary. Or play Yoda like games. Sorry, I ramble, and I've got to get up early...

derleth 15y ago
OK, yes, you can break any grammatical rule if you invent new rules to replace it; you can also modify a C compiler to accept some Lispy constructs. My point is, style is fashion, but grammar is something deeper.
- TeMPOraL 15y ago
  Except that you don't really need any formalized grammar for communication and language to occur. Do you know the grammar of your native language well? I don't really known mine, and I'm certain I don't have to know it to use the language. Ditto for all the people I know. Grammar is a nice afterthought, but it's not a primary part of a language. It's just a snapshot of ever-evolving fuzziness that is language.
  - derleth 15y ago
    > Grammar is a nice afterthought, but it's not a primary part of a language. This is wrong, and it points up a fundamental problem with how we teach language. Grammar is language; it defines language. You know it at a deep level that is practically instinct for you; you don't know it in the same way you know how to type, but you still know it. If you didn't, you couldn't use language. Two different kinds of learning are both equally vital to how humans get along: By osmosis and by explicit instruction. Your mother tongue is learned via osmosis, tying your shoe is learned through explicit instruction. Both are vital methods, but only the second (explicit instruction) leaves you able to fully verbalize what you know in a cogent manner.
    - TeMPOraL 15y ago
      I agree with the importance of explicit learning. > Grammar is language; it defines language. Yet somehow if me says grammatically not correct sentence understand you me quite well. Language evolves by people constantly bending, breaking and rethinking rules of grammar. And language evolves constantly, it's not a static thing. Even contemporary English is very different from what was used 300 years ago. Maybe we have different understanding of the word "to know"? I "know" my language by having something I could describe by a mental bayesian probability model of the fuzzy structure that is "the language people use". Without any explicit grammar inside. I use both Polish (native) and English via "sounds OK to me = it's correct" heuristic, trained mostly on talking, reading and listening, and to the lesser extent on grammar exercises.
    - commieneko 15y ago
      The rules of grammar that we "learn" are an attempt to model a process that we don't understand very well. It's hard to say that grammar defines a language when a speaker/writer can at will break any rule and enhance their communication by creating new constructions and vocabulary on the fly. Rules are at best a simple description of some expectations. Context, observation, and additional communication can completely override any rule. Grammers are useful in communication, but they certainly don't define and constrain it; they are like standardization in tool making and manufacturing. But words combined together, in a context, can behave in ways that no grammar can describe. In fact I'd say that grammars are more conscriptive than they are descriptive. Literacy and education teach us to speak and write in grammars for formal, ritual use. But when we need to get work done or communicate important ideas, anything goes...

derleth 15y ago

OK, yes, you can break any grammatical rule if you invent new rules to replace it; you can also modify a C compiler to accept some Lispy constructs. My point is, style is fashion, but grammar is something deeper.

TeMPOraL 15y ago
Except that you don't really need any formalized grammar for communication and language to occur. Do you know the grammar of your native language well? I don't really known mine, and I'm certain I don't have to know it to use the language. Ditto for all the people I know. Grammar is a nice afterthought, but it's not a primary part of a language. It's just a snapshot of ever-evolving fuzziness that is language.
- derleth 15y ago
  > Grammar is a nice afterthought, but it's not a primary part of a language. This is wrong, and it points up a fundamental problem with how we teach language. Grammar is language; it defines language. You know it at a deep level that is practically instinct for you; you don't know it in the same way you know how to type, but you still know it. If you didn't, you couldn't use language. Two different kinds of learning are both equally vital to how humans get along: By osmosis and by explicit instruction. Your mother tongue is learned via osmosis, tying your shoe is learned through explicit instruction. Both are vital methods, but only the second (explicit instruction) leaves you able to fully verbalize what you know in a cogent manner.
  - TeMPOraL 15y ago
    I agree with the importance of explicit learning. > Grammar is language; it defines language. Yet somehow if me says grammatically not correct sentence understand you me quite well. Language evolves by people constantly bending, breaking and rethinking rules of grammar. And language evolves constantly, it's not a static thing. Even contemporary English is very different from what was used 300 years ago. Maybe we have different understanding of the word "to know"? I "know" my language by having something I could describe by a mental bayesian probability model of the fuzzy structure that is "the language people use". Without any explicit grammar inside. I use both Polish (native) and English via "sounds OK to me = it's correct" heuristic, trained mostly on talking, reading and listening, and to the lesser extent on grammar exercises.
  - commieneko 15y ago
    The rules of grammar that we "learn" are an attempt to model a process that we don't understand very well. It's hard to say that grammar defines a language when a speaker/writer can at will break any rule and enhance their communication by creating new constructions and vocabulary on the fly. Rules are at best a simple description of some expectations. Context, observation, and additional communication can completely override any rule. Grammers are useful in communication, but they certainly don't define and constrain it; they are like standardization in tool making and manufacturing. But words combined together, in a context, can behave in ways that no grammar can describe. In fact I'd say that grammars are more conscriptive than they are descriptive. Literacy and education teach us to speak and write in grammars for formal, ritual use. But when we need to get work done or communicate important ideas, anything goes...