Making Sense by David Crystal

Author:David Crystal
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Profile

Interlude: Define dog

Danish professor Otto Jespersen (1860–1943) has been described as ‘the first descriptive grammarian’. In 1910, he wrote an article on ‘Modern English grammar’ for The School Review. Here are the opening two paragraphs.

A great many people seem to think that the study of grammar is a very dry subject indeed, but that it is extremely useful, assisting the pupils in writing and in speaking the language in question. Now I hold the exactly opposite view. I think that the study of grammar is really more or less useless, but that it is extremely fascinating. I don’t think that the study of grammar, at least in the way in which grammar has been studied hitherto, has been of very material assistance to any one of the masters of English prose or poetry, but I think that there are a great many things in grammar that are interesting and that can be made interesting to any normal schoolboy or schoolgirl.

The chief thing is not to approach grammar from the side of logic or abstract definitions. What is wanted is to show that language is a living thing and what that means. When children begin to learn about cats and dogs they don’t start with the definition of what a cat is or what a dog is, but they learn that this animal, which is very interesting to them, is a cat, and that this other animal, which is perhaps even more interesting to them, is a dog, and then perhaps after many years they will advance so far in their study of zoölogy that they would be asked in an examination the question: ‘How would you define a cat?’ or ‘How would you define a dog?’ – though I don’t believe that even in the case of zoölogy you would think of asking that sort of question. Now, then, why should we start with definitions of nouns, adjectives, and verbs, and all these things? I don’t see that there is any reason for that.

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