Re: Ron Garret considered harmful

On 2009-11-09, Raffael Cavallaro <raffaelcavallaro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 2009-11-09 14:42:52 -0500, Tamas K Papp <tkpapp@xxxxxxxxx> said:

You misunderstand how language works. You may think that the rule you
are referring to should be used to generate English, but apparently your
friends think otherwise. It could even be that your way of generating
English is more simple and "consistent" etc.

My friend doesn't "think otherwise" he doesn't think about it at all -
he just makes a mistake. Repeatedly making the same mistake does not
elevate that mistake to the status of correctness. I can actually
articulate a rule but those who violate the rule can't say why they do
so.

Tough luck - language
doesn't care, the "Joe and me" variant could still be an exception to
your rule and thus considered fine.

By this argument any utterance by a native speaker, no matter how
broken is "grammatically correct." At this point the terms "grammar"
and "correct" cease to have any meaning.

Precisely, they do not.

A speaker is simply a phenomenon. A grammar is a model. The phenomemon either
conforms to a model, or it does not.

The phenomenon cannot be correct or incorrect, only the model.
.

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