The argument here is in effect that no vernacular variant of any language could possibly embody a mistake. Which is true for some definitions of mistake, and false for others.
The problem with the definitions that make it true is that there's a slippery slope from dialects to idiolects. How many people have to speak a dialect for it to count as a dialect? You can't have any threshold, or you get weird consequences in hypothetical cases, like all the speakers of a dialect dying off except one. So if you decide that no vernacular can embody mistakes, you're bound to conclude that nothing any individual does can be a mistake, so long as they do it consistently.
You can't have any threshold, or you get weird consequences in hypothetical cases, like all the speakers of a dialect dying off except one. So if you decide that no vernacular can embody mistakes, you're bound to conclude that nothing any individual does can be a mistake, so long as they do it consistently.
But lots of disciplines involving living things have problems like this. You can't "define" species. A species is a historical happenstance, which can only be precisely defined in retrospect with minute information we usually never have access to. You can spend all day coming up with corner cases and boundary conditions where any such attempt breaks down. But that's like deciding if a particular boulder in Panama is a North American one or a South American one. Just because those terms break down in boundary cases and are not like mathematics doesn't mean those terms aren't useful.
Things pertaining to human beings and culture are even more prone to this.
In the case of African American vernacular, there are sizable populations with high degrees of consistency in their patterns of speech. Quite far away from boundary conditions.
Another thing I've noted, since dating an African American woman and attending family gatherings with her, is that the manners and rules of social conduct of rural African Americans are more complex than I am accustomed to. When I am with her family, I have to think about how I'm going to excuse myself and navigate leaving a room. Otherwise, I never think about this. I reflected on this, and realized that it reminded me of watching Masterpiece Theater as a child. I'm probably witnessing throwbacks to French and English culture from centuries ago, still rippling though rural Louisiana.
Homo Sapiens are complex -- period. Even many so-called "country bumpkins."
I don't disagree with anything that you say here, and yet you seem to be disagreeing with me, which is odd.
You seem to think I'm naively making some argument that depends on the words breaking down at boundary conditions. Actually I'm not. I believe a language spoken by just two people (or even one) is just as real a language as one spoken by millions-- that the difference in the way they're treated is a matter of politics, not the intrinsic qualities of the language.
I believe a language spoken by just two people (or even one) is just as real a language as one spoken by millions-- that the difference in the way they're treated is a matter of politics, not the intrinsic qualities of the language.
I was also trying to provide support to the notion that, "the difference in the way they're treated is a matter of politics." Often, I'm replying to 3rd parties or countering common misconceptions in my "replies," which is probably trying to say too much in one post as well as leaving too much implicit.
In other words, I am grinding an axe here, but it's not directed at you.
A language spoken by exactly two would be very difficult to study. There are problems analogous to studying a species with only the last two individuals from which to draw data. I think there is some mechanism here that links the softer fields inextricably with politics. There is less academic "territory" to occupy, and so there is a handicap to the political power of academics who study that particular data, while at the same time, there's also often increased power that stems from scarcity. (Dead sea scrolls.)
EDIT: All human endeavors are linked with politics. "Softer" fields tend to be more encumbered.
> manners and rules of social conduct of rural African Americans are more complex than I am accustomed to
Is that increased complexity, or merely lack of familiarity? I imagine someone coming to a large gathering of your family would also feel like there were new subtle rules to learn, etc.
I know that I have to think more about myself when I'm stuck in an unfamiliar social setting than in one I've spent lots of time in.
Actual increased complexity. "Crossing in front of" someone is socially significant, where it usually isn't for me. Addressing people is absolutely required when leaving the room, not just a good idea. There are more manifestations of the difference between children and adults. There are more unspoken rules, not just different ones.
The argument here is in effect that no vernacular variant of any language could possibly embody a mistake.
This is the very epitome of attacking a strawman. The article didn't come close to arguing that "no vernacular variant of any language could possibly embody a mistake."
As a matter of fact, the author specifically and painstakingly drew a distinction between what he considers simply mistake-based variants of languages (which do exist) and new language dialects with different, but well-specified grammars (of which he considers AAVE to be one).
The author drew a distinction between making a grammatical mistakes, and a vernacular dialect. He didn't claim that there were some vernacular dialects that embodied mistakes and others that didn't. I can't imagine any linguist who would.
What I'm saying is that all vernaculars have consistently observed (surely you don't literally mean well-specified) grammatical rules. Their speakers couldn't understand one another otherwise. So if your definition of mistake = inconsistency, then (by definition) you'll never find a vernacular that embodies mistakes.
A linguist would argue that it's a mistake only if an adult speaker learned the language after the critical period and didn't manage to grasp all of the rules.
If a child (or someone who grew up in the language environment) made the "mistake" then it's an example of language change in action... unless the child is so young that it's simply a language learning artifact such as "I goed to the store today, daddy" (which, incidentally, is logically consistent with other past-tense forms yet ungrammatical b/c of social norms)...
The author drew a distinction between making a grammatical mistakes, and a vernacular dialect. He didn't claim that there were some vernacular dialects that embodied mistakes and others that didn't. I can't imagine any linguist who would.
Fair enough. When you said "vernacular variants" (as opposed to dialects) it sounded as if you were including all vernacular variants including simple grammatical mistakes, sporadic use of slang, etc.
What I'm saying is that all vernaculars have consistently observed (surely you don't literally mean well-specified) grammatical rules.
I agree that all vernacular dialects have consistent rules. And you're right, I did mean consistently observed, not well-specified.
A standard joke about that: a dialect is an ideolect with a history and body of literature. A language is a dialect with an army and a navy. Language is an instrument of politics like any other.
Where my father grew up, the dominant language was not Spanish but Caló, which is generally (incorrectly, in my opinion) considered a degenerate form of Spanish. Later on he had to catch up a lot in order to be taken seriously in international business.
He also learned Brasilian Portuguese, which started out as a regathering of various dialects of Lisbon Portuguese. It is a defacto language, and may become be widely recognized as such, given the political weight behind it.
"you're bound to conclude that nothing any individual does can be a mistake, so long as they do it consistently."
This is exactly how languages evolve over time, actually. A group of individuals makes changes ("mistakes"), and is consistent in the usage of the new ("mistaken") forms over a given period of time.
If you didn't accept that, you'd be forced to conclude that we're all just very bad speakers of our modern languages' predecessors.
pg: In linguistics a grammar is just a series of rules. "Proper English" is not a linguistic concept, it's a social concept.
If you were raised in a household and exposed to proper English input, your native language is proper English. You have accomplished nothing other than learning the language you were exposed to. Similarly, if you are born into a household that speaks Spanish or AAVE or Dutch (and are fed and otherwise not abused too significantly), you will learn one of those languages and become a fluent speaker without any conscious effort.
AAVE is no more "improper" Standard English than Spanish is improper Standard English.
Of course, if you're taking a course in school on Standard English and you choose to turn in a paper written in AAVE (or Spanish), you are likely not to get an A.
Well, I think the burden of proof is on you to show why language mistakes matter at all.
If I can understand what someone else said or wrote (or spelled!), then why do we need a central authority to determine what is correct vs incorrect? Isn't there a fairly significant incentive toward conformity for efficiency's sake?
It's as if there were a call for some central authority to critique the names people are given (which, incidentally, change over time just as languages do). It is my opinion that someone named, say, Shanikwa had about as much control over her name as anyone else does over his/her native grammar, and those who judge someone on the basis of their name are just as much playing the social judgment card as those who judge a person's native grammar. Doing so is purely a social status play, and has no useful/pragmatic significance or objective superiority.
The fact is, language changes over time like any other fashion. If you don't like a particular grammar or a particular fashion that is a matter of taste. I can look at someone's outfit and say "ooh, fashion mistake", but is there really any reason why I would find doing so useful?
You can make the argument that using Standard English (and wearing a suit) are useful social conventions to adopt when going to a job interview, but I think the usefulness of either judgment ends there.
"Well, I think the burden of proof is on you to show why language mistakes matter at all."
Most importantly, because they inhibit efficient communication among parties. The lesser problem is that they might signal low educational status and/or incompetence: I know there is no such thing as "standard English," but you can get pretty close to it through guides like Diana Hacker's _Rules for Writers_. The further you get from this thing that's close to standard English, the more likely you are to sound incompetent or incomprehensible.
If someone comes into a job interview -- or YC interview -- speaking AAVE, or some wildly non-standard form of English, they're probably signaling that they haven't figured out how to speak, if not "proper" English, then a form of English that will allow them to communicate with high-level technical workers. They're not likely to get the job or the funding or the lawsuit won or whatever it is that they're trying to accomplish. _That's_ the problem.
There isn't a central authority because there doesn't need to be: as Foucault might argue, there are merely different loci of power or force that tend to create webs of what is acceptable or not in a given situation.
"The fact is, language changes over time like any other fashion. If you don't like a particular grammar or a particular fashion that is a matter of taste."
Which is all very interesting until you're applying for a job or writing a research paper and you can't write something very close to standard English, at which point you're not going to be able to achieve what you want to.
"You can make the argument that using Standard English (and wearing a suit) are useful social conventions to adopt when going to a job interview, but I think the usefulness of either judgment ends there."
I don't. The fundamental issue is what you signal and how efficiently you communicate. Whether you wear a suit or not has little to do with how you communicate verbally or in writing; whether you can speak something akin to standard English matters enormously.
>I know there is no such thing as "standard English," but you can get pretty close to it through guides like Diana Hacker's _Rules for Writers_.
The problem comes then when we try to say "this is Standard English <refer to guide on English>". The books many people feel represent "proper" English are often full of nonsense propagate mindlessly by people who learned what they were told was "proper" English. If I had a nickel for every time somebody regurgitated a "rule" derived from "A Short Introduction to English Grammar" by Lowth, I'd be a very rich man indeed.
Ultimately, setting a standard form of a language ends up devolving into Lowth style shibboleths designed to create an in-group and an out-group usable as a basis for discrimination but not necessarily useful for communication.
The ideas in my post are barely mentioned in the last paragraph of your post: that's why I wrote it. I think you underestimate the extent to which being able to speak and write in standard English is important. That's what pg implied in his original post, and he's right. Maybe standard English is a "fashion," as you put it, but that's not very useful: what's more useful is to note that being able to master this "fashion" is important in terms of communicating effectively.
I'd say it's no more important than, say, mastering the knowledge that showering before a job interview is useful. But because it's language people feel inclined to state the obvious.
What this argument doesn't account for is that there are universal rules that underlie all human languages -- even so-called "idiolects". When languages mutate, as they do constantly, they do so only within these rules. I'm speaking here of X-bar theory, bare phrase structure, and so on.
In effect, we're hard-wired to process language, and so are constrained by the limits of that wiring. A mutation ("mistake") that violates these rules will not 'stick', because the resulting language would be unintelligible to humans.
No linguist would ever call the way someone speaks a "mistake," in the same way that a purple swan isn't a mistake. It's something rare and worth studying!
This is simply a problem with definitions, though. Whether mistake or habit, or language, dialect, or idiolect, what matters is the part that comes after. People still study the Akkadian language, despite its lack of speakers.
The problem with the definitions that make it true is that there's a slippery slope from dialects to idiolects. How many people have to speak a dialect for it to count as a dialect? You can't have any threshold, or you get weird consequences in hypothetical cases, like all the speakers of a dialect dying off except one. So if you decide that no vernacular can embody mistakes, you're bound to conclude that nothing any individual does can be a mistake, so long as they do it consistently.