Linguistic+Facts+for+PowerPoint+Presentation

Slide 1 Prescriptive Vs. Descriptive Grammar Slide 2 Prescriptive
 * Prescriptive Grammar enforces what we should say or write according to established notions of “good” and “bad” or “right” and “wrong”.
 * Often reflect a person or a group’s personal preference.
 * Prescribe how language should be used (Do’s and Don’ts).
 * Adhere to rules determined by some notion of authority for spelling, grammar, and syntax according to what is considered politically or socially appropriate.
 * Rules have to be taught.
 * We have all heard examples of prescriptive rules in the past as well as the present.
 * Here are a few:

1. Don’t split infinitives. 2. Never end in a preposition. 3. Use good and well appropriately. 4. Stay away from double negatives. 5. Use can and may correctly. 6. Use I instead of me (Josh and I vs. Josh and me). Slide 3 Descriptive
 * There are many disagreements about what should be a part of prescriptive grammar and what shouldn’t.
 * Descriptive Grammar attempts to model a speaker’s linguistic competence and performance.
 * What a speaker knows about a language and how they actually use it.
 * Ultimately, describes the natural form of language and how it works through scientific methods.
 * It is part of our natural language; therefore, it does not have to be explicitly taught.
 * Judgments about Descriptive beliefs are generally considered “facts” among all.
 * Here are a few:

1. A morpheme is the smallest piece of language that has consistent meaning or function. 2. To be considered a noun, verb, or adjective, the word must at least follow either the semantic, morphological, or distributional method of classification. 3. Functional shift-occurs when a noun that is usually used as a noun is used as a verb. For example: I’ll google it.