Practice question · Sort into groups
Sort each statement about language: descriptive (how people speak) or prescriptive (how someone says they should)?
Groups: Descriptive · Prescriptive
- Younger speakers here are dropping the case endings
- Many Londoners pronounce "th" as "f"
- Never end a sentence with a preposition
- Double negatives mark emphasis in this dialect
- Say "whom" wherever it is grammatically licensed
- "Ain’t" is not a real word
Hints
- One kind of statement records usage, the other legislates it.
- Calling a form wrong is not a description.
Show the answer
Descriptive: Many Londoners pronounce "th" as "f", Double negatives mark emphasis in this dialect, Younger speakers here are dropping the case endings
Prescriptive: Never end a sentence with a preposition, "Ain’t" is not a real word, Say "whom" wherever it is grammatically licensed
Why
Linguistic anthropology is descriptive: dialects are data, not errors. Prescriptive rules are themselves data too, evidence about which groups hold the social power to define "correct."
Practise Language and Culture
The app has 7 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. History I is free to start.
More questions on Language and Culture
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- Order the stages in the recorded history of English.
- Match each unit of language to what it is.
- Why do linguists reject the claim that some languages are "primitive"?
- The strong Sapir–Whorf hypothesis says language determines thought; the weak version says it influences it.…