antithesis of their predecessors, for whereas rationalism proposes that all
knowledge comes from reflection rather than from the senses, empiricism pro-
poses that knowledge comes from the senses rather than from reflection.
Linked to this view was an equally important shift in the grammar away
from prescription todescription.Matters of correctness were replaced with
what Bloomfield (1933) referred to asacceptability,which is determined on
the basis of context. Thus, an utterance or a written statement might be gram-
matical but unacceptable. On this account, grammaticality judgments are
linked to attested utterances, not to a literary norm. An immediate consequence
of this view is that grammaticality becomes largely a matter of word order, not
usage conventions. Consider the following sentences:
- ?He don’t got no money.
- He doesn’t have any money.
- *Doesn’t money any he have.
The first two sentences are grammatical in this view because both conform
to the subject-verb-object (SVO) word order of English. The third sentence is
ungrammatical because it does not conform to that word order. The first sen-
tence is nonstandard, however, so in those situations that call for Standard Eng-
lish it will be deemed unacceptable. It is reasonable to assume that the same
would apply to the second sentence, that in those situations that call for
nonstandard English—for example, a conversation in the home of a
nonstandard speaker—this sentence would be unacceptable. There are occa-
sions in which that assumption is correct, but we cannot say that it always is
correct or even mostly correct. In general, nonstandard speakers are not critical
of standard speakers, even in those situations in which nonstandard English is
the norm. Standard speakers, on the other hand, generally are critical of non-
standard speakers in all situations and seldom will accept nonstandard English,
regardless of the context.
The goal, then, of phrase-structure grammar is to describe how people use
language. Grammatical sentences are those that conform to the standard word
order of English, SVO or subject-verb-complement (SVC), which is the second
major sentence pattern in English. It does not take a prescriptive stance regard-
ing language use but instead assesses language on the basis of acceptability, or
what in previous chapters was referred to as appropriateness.
The emphasis on description has led to widespread misunderstanding of the
goals and principles of phrase-structure grammar. The popular perception is
that the grammar takes an “anything goes” approach to language. The distinc-
tion between grammaticality and acceptability, which is the distinction be-
tween grammar and usage, clearly does not endorse such an approach. But the
100 CHAPTER 4