LIN204H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Linguistic Prescription, Preposition And Postposition, Infinitive
Document Summary
Grammar: broadly speaking, the rules determining how a language works. This knowledge is usually mostly subconscious you follow these rules in constructing words and sentences without being consciously aware of what most of the rules actually are. When we study grammar, we"re studying what these rules are. This is the main subject matter of the field of linguistics the scientific study of language. This is different from prescriptive grammar which is what the term grammar is often used to mean outside linguistics. Prescriptive grammar is a set of rules people are consciously taught, in order to make their use of language conform to some outside standard. Prescriptive grammar includes rules of language use like : don"t end a sentence with a preposition! . Say to whom are you talking? , not who are you talking to? : don"t split an infinitive! . Say to go boldly , not to boldly go : don"t use double negatives! .
