Grammar Discussions

GPH said:
i am not sure if this has been covered, but misuse of That, Which and Who is really annoying me.

Inanimate objects (things) can be that , or which , but People are who.
Eg. I have a friend that went to my old school , should read "who" went to my old school.
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A way to decide whether to use 'that' or 'which':

'That' describes; 'which' defines.

'Which' tends to be commonly used for both.
 
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Works every other time then
 
Tongue in cheek maybe. However we have lots of instances where "rules" are made up by one or a few. Sport is a good example.
Rules help define and refine our ability to communicate clearly, and concisely.
I read an article the other day where it was suggested that "Grammar naz_'s" were on average more intelligent than those who don't bother with good grammar and spelling etc. Far be it from me to pass judgement on that one. :-).
 
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oz_mark said:
Nice little tongue in cheek opinion piece for our local custodians of the English grammar.

The 'rules' of grammar are made up, so why bother following them? - RN - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
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This is the grammatical equivalent of taking the post-modernist questioning of truth to an absurd extreme.
Just because all knowledge is subjective doesn't mean there is no objective truth.
Take physics for example. All our experience of physics is subjective. But we all share essentially the same subjectivity so it might as well be objective.
Newtonian physics worked until we expanded our empirical data - and hence our subjectivity - to the sub-atomic and interstellar levels.
Then we needed a new approach (quantum mechanics, Heisenberg, Einstein etc). But Newtonian physics still "works" within the lmiits of everyday human experience or subjectivity.
This is in stark contrast to the "social sciences" where we all have a different subjective position and it is not easy (or even possible) to determine objective truth.
That doesn't mean there is no objective social reality.

Similarly just because grammatical rules are arbitrary doesn't mean they are without function or value.
Language is arbitrary. There is no necessary relationship between words and their meaning.
Those relationships are only established through usage.
You can decide to use a word to mean something else entirely, but no one else will understand you if you do.
Similarly you can ignore the "rules" of grammar if you want to, but you risk being misunderstood if you do so recklessly.
However if you generally observe the rules, deliberately breaking them can be used for literary effect.
 
whatmeworry said:
Grammar shaming the POTUS.

...
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I would posit that if the POTUS was right here to hear you criticising his grammar, he would bite your head off, viz. same argument as most that why should mere grammar be the judgement of a person cf. what they have to say.

That looks like more a weird typo than a grammar stuff up.


I think the whole autocorrect thing on phones is affecting younger students and their grammar when they switch to full size keyboards on computers etc.. For example, I watched a couple of students today type and not even bother to correct some pretty glaring spelling errors. Had they typed the same words on iOS with autocorrect turned on, those typos would likely be corrected successfully by the system.
 
anat0l said:
I think the whole autocorrect thing on phones is affecting younger students and their grammar when they switch to full size keyboards on computers etc..
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Not just young students. I'm struggling as I've been relying on autocorrect far too long.
 
Try it if you use your iphone for more than one language.
The custom dictionary becomes a corrupted mess of (in my case) "espafranglais".
 

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