Sniffnoy comments on Folk grammar and morality - Less Wrong

20 Post author: Emile 17 December 2010 09:20PM

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Comment author: Sniffnoy 17 December 2010 11:00:29PM 5 points [-]

That's not a contradiction. "Teach the correct rules of grammar at school" doesn't mean "teach people how to speak properly according to some prescriptive standard", it means "teach people (something approximating) the actual syntax of the English language so they can discuss it sensibly and understand something of what is actually happening when they put sentences together". (As opposed to the currently commonly taught "traditional grammar" which attempts to describe English but just gets it wrong.)