6 ms·

Wow! My premature reaction was "Nonsense. You can't just make up rules no one knows and call them grammar" but then I noticed how unnatural changing the order

• Evbn 14y ago
  That's what linguistics is. Grammar is as natural as walking. Almost everyone does it, and no conscious understanding of the rules is required.
  • deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  • pekk 14y ago
    Linguistics is a lot more than just syntax.
  • jonnathanson 14y ago
    "no conscious understanding of the rules is required" I hate to nitpick, but this is not entirely true. First, there is no innate, specific grammar or syntax in the human brain. Any given language -- even one's first language -- is learned. It's learned in stages, and true, one tends to pick up the rules by immersion before studying them consciously. But conscious study of the rules is extremely beneficial to improving one's understanding of, and facility with, a given language. To say that "no conscious understanding of the rules is required" is a little like saying "Kobe Bryant is a naturally born basketball genius." True, Kobe Bryant may have certain athletic gifts and mental wiring that enable him to exceed 99.999999% of the world at basketball skill. But he learned the rules of the game, just like everyone else. And he practices daily. In fact, he probably practices harder than many of his less talented peers. Even someone of his natural endowments couldn't have risen to his level without conscious and repeated effort. It's true that grammar and syntax start to seem natural and subconscious over time, especially as one improves in linguistic fluency. That's a good sign, in fact. But I've never met a writer who couldn't benefit from conscious study of the rules and fundamentals, even if only occasionally.
    • Evbn 14y ago
      I agree with everything after your unsupported first sentence. I think we have differing interpretations of "required"
      • jonnathanson 14y ago
        "I agree with everything after your unsupported first sentence." What about my first sentence bugs you? The brain is certainly wired for language, but not for a specific language. English, for example, is not instinctive. A newborn baby will not spontaneously develop English; he will need to pick it up by being around others who are speaking it. Same goes for French, or Mandarin, or Russian, etc. I'm not going to spend all morning looking up and linking research papers on this topic, so I'll just need you to take a flyer on this. Either you're going to agree with me or disagree with me, and that's cool either way. "I think we have differing interpretations of "required" Perhaps, though it's probably not a semantic rabbit hole worth a deep dive. But sure, learning the rules of a language isn't technically "required" in order to attain basic fluency with the language. But conscious study of the rules is certainly required to break through plateaus in one's facility. I guess this ultimately boils down to what one's desired goals and outcome with a language are. Either way, the statement "no conscious understanding of the rules is required" is overly reductive and sweeping.
        • derefr 14y ago
          > The brain is certainly wired for language, but not for a specific language. Can you explain how the brain is "wired for language?" Naively, I would imagine language is just one instance of the general pattern "things Hierarchical Temporal Memory models (e.g. the neocortex) get for free given a large-enough training corpus." Is that what you meant, or is there actually some part of our brains that is specifically "language" and couldn't be repurposed for something else?
          • aaimnr 14y ago
            It's not that the parts responsible for language couldn't be repurposed for something else (although I don't know whether it's true). It's the fact, that more general learning skills cannot substitute dedicated language learning capabilities. It's hard to come up with different hypothesis once you know that children not exposed to language at all for some time (up to 4-6 years, but I don't remember) lose the ability to acquire it forever.
• rplacd 14y ago
  I wonder how long the list of exceptions to the rules we've managed to come up with are.
• tel 14y ago
  Look into Lojban for what it's like to specify these kinds of rules prescriptively. Adjective ordering was something I had never given a moment's thought to before reading about Lojban, but in order to specify it formally takes pages.
• stevekemp 14y ago
  That always reminds me of Tolkien's complaint that he was told one could not say "a green great dragon", but had to say "a great green dragon".
  • kijin 14y ago
    That's when a fantasy novelist just goes ahead and creates a species called "greatdragon" so he can say "a green greatdragon" with impunity.
    • jcrites 14y ago
      And indeed, "a green greatdragon" sounds quite fine :-)
  • elbear 14y ago
    The most voted answer on StackOverflow mentions Tolkien.
• kyrias 14y ago
  Every rule of grammar you know have been made up by someone after watching how people speak.
  • kbenson 14y ago
    Tell that to the person commenting about Lojban in this thread...
    • kyrias 14y ago
      Well of course conlangs are an exception >,>
  • yew 14y ago
    "Every rule of grammar you know is a fuzzy reference to a referent embedded in someone's brain." sounds better, though ;)
  • nollidge 14y ago
    Or been invented out of whole cloth by someone who needed another reason to look down their nose at others.
• B-Con 14y ago
  Probably just because that's how you've heard it done. The rules are likely made-up, they just sound funny to break. Note that other languages have completely different grammars, and they make sense to them.