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3 - The Need for New Descriptions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 March 2021

Roger Berry
Roger Berry
Affiliation:
Lingnan University, Hong Kong
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Summary

The chapter outlines five reasons behind the need for new grammatical descriptions: language change, misconceptions about grammar (often based on incorrect rules of thumb), the discovery of new phenomena, the extension of the scope of grammar, and alternative ways of looking at old problems. Then two problems hampering new descriptions are discussed: metalinguistic relativity (the claim that the current grammatical framework and associated terminology is too rigid and prevents novel insights), and poor transmission – a lack of communication between different constituencies of grammarian. Thus many ‘facts’ about English grammar have been known for some time, but have not reached the pedagogic domain.

Keywords

Keywords: language changemisconceptionsmetalinguistic relativity
Type
Chapter
Information
Doing English Grammar
Theory, Description and Practice
 , pp. 43 - 67
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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References

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