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Subject:RE: In Defense of Bourgeois Pedants From:Rick Kirkham <rkirkham -at- seagullscientific -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Mon, 4 Dec 2000 16:20:06 -0800
> From: Bruce Byfield [mailto:bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com]
asserts:
> it is also true that a speaker from the early Thirteenth
> century could communicate fairly easily with a speaker from the
> Eighth Century.
A speaker of Middle English (early 1200s) communicate with a speaker of
Anglo-Saxon (that is, Old English -- 750 AD)? Not a chance. Not at all.
(Still less "fairly easily".) The vocabularies were almost totally
different, and the grammar was different too. Anglo-Saxon was a
Scandinavian-Germanic language with a grammar of inflected word endings.
Middle English had the relatively uninflected grammar of modern English. And
I believe that contemporary French and contemporary English share more
vocabulary that middle and old English did.
I'm willing to be convinced otherwise, however, if you can cite a reliable
source for your claim.
By the way, talking about "speakers" loads the dice unfairly against us
bourgeois pedants. The values I see in prescriptive grammar involve
communication across broad times and spaces; in other words, *written*
communication.
> I suspect that the
> relative stability of the last 500 years has more to do with a lack
> of major influences on the language since that time.
Interesting theory, but has there really been a lack of influence, or does
it only appear that way because our prescriptive grammars have been so
successful in resisting it? And when we are influenced, it is mainly by new
vocabulary instead of new grammatical structures. In other words, the parts
of the language which are least controlled by prescriptive grammar/style
rules are the most likely to change.
Here's a way to test your theory: Find a language in which prescriptive
grammars became widespread (among the literate, at least, if not among mere
speakers) and *subsequently* that language was powerfully influenced by
another language (the way English was by French after the Norman conquest).
Was the original language changed to the same degree or did the prescriptive
grammar dam hold back the deluge? Does anyone know a language that meets
this description? The Gaelic spoken in Ireland before the English conquest
was wiped out. But did the Gaelic literates use grammars? I don't know.
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