Describing, Not Correcting
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. It describes what speakers actually do rather than prescribing rules.
| Prescriptive | Descriptive | |
|---|---|---|
| Question asked | What is correct? | What do speakers do? |
| Evidence | Style guide | Corpora, utterances |
| "Ain't" | An error | Ain't is a standard verb form in several dialects |
A speaker saying "I don't know nothing" is not illogical. They are using negative concord, a rule found across many varieties of English.
The levels of analysis
Linguists analyse language at six distinct levels:
- Phonetics: physical speech sounds.
- Phonology: sound systems and contrasts.
- Morphology: word structure.
- Syntax: sentence structure.
- Semantics: literal meaning.
- Pragmatics: meaning in context.
Competence and Performance
Chomsky introduced a key distinction:
- competence: a speaker's internalised knowledge of language rules.
- performance: actual language production, including speech errors.
Because competence is the primary object of study, linguists rely on grammaticality judgements. They ask native speakers whether a sentence sounds possible.
Usage-based linguists challenge this split. They argue that performance data from corpora provides the only genuine evidence.
Common pitfall: Believing descriptive grammar means anything goes. The rules are strict: no speaker of English says "the of house green".