Prescriptive vs. Descriptrive

Morning, all! Thanks for the comments!

Some of you mentioned prescriptive vs. descriptive grammar, which was the blog post I planned for today. Linguists often talk about descriptive vs. prescriptive grammar. Prescriptive grammar is what most people think of when they hear the word grammar--the grammar your English teacher taught you in grade school. Don't split an infinitive! Don't end a sentence with a preposition! Don't use object pronouns in a compound subject! Descriptive grammar is the grammar people actually use, what we hear on the streets. That is the refreshing part of language, where "right" and "wrong" is defined by what people do instead of what people "should" do. Descriptive grammar doesn't reflect the way people talk. This is proved in the fact that we have to learn it at all. For example:

Which of these sentences sounds wrong to you?

a) I am in love with.
b) I am in love with you.

Most people will say a). Did anyone ever have to teach you that? Did your English teacher have to say, "the expression 'in love' takes an object, in other words you have to be 'in love with someone.'" No. People just say "I am in love with [someone/something]." No one has to be told that.

How about these two sentences? Which sounds wrong to you?
a) It's me.
b) It's I.

Most people will say b). In second grade when someone in class knew the answer and wanted the teacher to call on them, did they say "I! I!" Probably not. Most people would say "Me! Me!" But descriptive grammar tells us that the verb "to be" takes the object pronoun, giving us "It's I." The fact that rules have to be memorized shows how unnatural prescriptive grammar is.

Why is it so unnatural?
A bunch of elitists men in the 1800's had nothing better to do than to come up with rules based on Latin. The problem is that their rules were based on properties of Latin that don't translate to English.

1) Don't split infinitives. Well, in Latin, infinitives are one word, so they can't be split. So applying that to English, which has two-part infinitive makes no sense.
2) Don't end sentences with prepositions. Latin uses cases to convey the same relationships we use prepositions for. So they change the endings of words, making it impossible to end a sentence with a preposition. Other Germanic languages, like German, end sentences with prepositions all the time.
Etc.

In short all those prescriptive grammar rules you learned in English class are based on an attitude from centuries ago where Latin was thought to somehow be an inherently better language than English, and so a bunch of these educated men (who usually studied classic Latin and Greek) made up rules to have English imitate Latin.

Now I am not the extremist type that doesn't recognize these rules are useful for writing or speaking when you need to impress somebody. Most people do have hang ups about phrases such as "where's he at?" so sometimes it is beneficial to say "where is he?". If you're interviewing for a job or writing an article for The New York Times it's probably best not to write/say "Me and him love kayaking." But that is just what those rules are. They are there to please a certain audience and no more! They do not speak to how language really truly should be. Hopefully with time more people will put those rules in their place instead of equating them with some superior form of language.

Now if you're still not convinced, take a look at the blog title. The title refers to the fact that most prescriptivists will tell you that when forming a question that requires an object as an answer, the form "whom" should be used.
Subject
Q: Who is that person in the blue shirt? A: That's my boss.
Object
Q: With whom are you going to the concert? A: I'm going with him.
Most people in natural conversation say: "Who are you going to the concert with?" which implies the answer should be "I'm going with he."
But let's take this for example:
Subject
Q: What is your name? A: My name is Horatio.
Object
Q: With what do you chop wood? A: I chop wood with an ax.
Here, "what" doesn't change form! It stays as "what." And yet prescriptivists say we should change "who" to "whom" in the case of a question that requires an answer in object form. Did there used to be an object form for "what?" There sure did. That is what that weird word in the title is--"hwam." (The wh- words used to be written hw-, so "who" was "hwo" and "whom" was "hwom" and "what" was "hwaet"--and the object form was "hwam.") Now it is easier to see just how arbitrary the prescriptivist rule requiring us to use "whom" is. Does anyone go around saying "with hwam do you chop wood?" So why should we say "with whom did you go to the concert?" Sure you can say it, but is it really all that important in the end?

Only if you're trying to impress a potential employer or your professor.