Someone called E has posted a question in the comments section of my last post—The VanDamme Academy, and why grammar is not about clarity—Part 2. I was going to answer it there itself, but I realized this had enough material to be a post, so here it goes.

First, his question:

So, what, according to you, is ‘unconditionally ungrammatical’ about _They is walking_? If it conveys all the information the speaker  intends to convey, unambiguously, the only thing wrong with it is the fact that it does not follow convention (the convention of conjugating a verb a certain way with certain subjects)

If that is ungrammatical, because it is nearer to the ‘core’ tenets of grammar, while not using split infinitives is just a _baseless, pedantic, rule with no rhyme or reason_, your choice for drawing the line is as arbitrary as any, innit?

The way the question has been framed betrays the writer’s assumptions or conclusions regarding grammar, and I guess it’s there that the problem lies. Let’s run through this.

If it conveys all the information the speaker intends to convey, unambiguously, the only thing wrong with it is the fact that it does not follow convention (the convention of conjugating a verb a certain way with certain subjects)

Because, as I have explained more than once on this blog, being grammatical is not the same as expressing information adequately. The rules of syntax for a particular language are acquired by children when they are pretty young (less than 3 years old), and this happens WITHOUT explicit instruction. These rules are acquired based on external information about how speakers of that language speak.

If that is ungrammatical, because it is nearer to the ‘core’ tenets of grammar, while not using split infinitives is just a _baseless, pedantic, rule with no rhyme or reason_, your choice for drawing the line is as arbitrary as any, innit?

Again, there are no _tenets_ in grammar. Grammar is not a dogmatic system of beliefs. It’s not The Holy Bible. It is not gospel truth, and, if you don’t mind my borrowing a line from The Da Vinci Code, it hasn’t come from heaven by fax. It’s a tragedy of our language education system that people pass through it believing that a language derives its syntax from Wren & Martin and it’s vocabulary from the Oxford Dictionary.

Wren & Martin is written (or at least, should be) based on what the English language is and based on how speakers use it, and the lexicographers over at the Oxford Dictionary still have a job because their work was not over after printing one edition of their dictionary. They observe language usage daily, so that they can continuously update and maintain the relevance of their dictionary so that it continues to be a true reflection of what YOU speak.

Likewise, conjugation, or subject-verb agreement, is not a tenet, no more than grammatical gender is, or the concept of grammatical number is. It so happens that speakers of English use the verb ‘to be’ in the form ‘_are’_ when the subject is ‘they’. ‘They is mad’ would be considered ungrammatical by native speakers of English, not because there is something inherently wrong with it, but because the correctness conditions of English mandate that you use ‘are’ with ‘they’. Now, this itself is not compulsory. In Mandarin, or Japanese, for example, the verb form does not change with the subject.  Sample this:

  • 我是学生 (Wǒ shì xué shēng) = I am a student = I be student (literally)
  • 他是学生 (Tā shì xué shēng) = He is a student = He be student (literally)
  • 他们是学生 (Tā men shì xué shēng) = They are students = He-plural be student (literally)

You can see that not only does the verb not change across subjects, but the word student also remains the same, i.e. it doesn’t go into a plural form. There’s nothing universally sacrosanct about verb conjugation; just that it’s a characteristic of English (and innumerable other languages).

Also, I am not drawing an arbitrary line about what I will consider grammatical and what I won’t. Whether something is grammatical or not is determined not by seeing whether the intended message was conveyed but by looking at things like these—

  1. Is the construction used by native speakers of that language consciously (i.e. they won’t retrospectively claim that it was a production mistake)?
  2. Is the construction well-attested in written language,  including, but not limited to, the works of authors whose writings are appreciated, and mass media like newspapers and magazines?
  3. Is the usage sufficiently widespread, or is it limited to a community?

If #1, #2 are true and the usage is widespread, you’ll usually conclude that it is grammatical.

If #1 is true and the usage is widespread, you’ll usually say that this construction is chiefly colloquial and is not standard in standard written English.

If  #1 is true, but the usage is not widespread, you will usually say that this usage is a dialectal variation.

“They is walking” is neither used by speakers of English (a speaker of English, if asked, will confirm that it is ungrammatical), nor is it attested in written language, and afaik, is not standard in any dialect (if it is, you can obviously say that it is a feature of that particular dialect). HENCE, it is ungrammatical in English, and NOT because it can’t convey information correctly.

On the other hand, split infinitives (that’s what they are called, though more detailed grammatical analysis says that the term itself is a misnomer) are not only widely used in everyday speech, but are also well attested in written English, and are frequently found in the works of the best authors of the English language, and are widespread. This is why they are grammatical, and not because I chose to draw the line there instead of somewhere else.

I hope this answers your question. If you are interested in this topic, I would very strongly recommend you to read the essay _Ideology, Power, and Linguistic Theory_, written by Geoffrey Pullum. It’s a bit long, but it’s totally worth the time. I will quote a small part of the essay here:

Suppose a linguist states it as a condition that in Standard English an independent declarative clause beginning with a preposed negative adjunct must have a tensed auxiliary before the subject:

(1) a. Never before had I seen such a thing.

b. *Never before I had seen such a thing.

(2) a. At no time did he leave the room.

b. *At no time he left the room.

The claim being made is not that speakers of Standard English OUGHT to position subjects of independent clauses before the tensed auxiliaries when there is no preposed negative adjunct, as in the (a) examples; the claim is that they actually DO position them thus (setting aside unintentional failures like typing or editing errors that sometimes prevent people from doing what they intended). This of course implies that you would be well advised to position them thus if you want to be regarded as using Standard English; but no one is telling you that you SHOULD speak Standard English.