WHAT IS CORRECTNESS
IN PRONUNCIATION 
AND SYNTAX?

© 2005 by Orchid Land Publications
20050821-b

What is the CRITERION OF CORRECT GRAMMAR?

     The criterion in question is the need to preserve the consistency of the system, despite the allowance of a few exceptions in lexical categories (like feet as the plural of foot) but not in the formation of new words.  A few anomalies in pronunciation will probably always exist—like the inconsistency in American English of deter : deterrent and err : error. The "ur" pronunciation should occur where "r" is not directly followed by a vowel, but not when a vowel directly follows "r."  Some principles are so simple

that one could hardly fail to understand why we pronounce //t// in central but not, in normal conversational style/tempo, in center.

     In syntax, the focus of this web page, there are many people (include writers of treatises on grammar!) who are unable to grasp the notion of a system.  That does not mean that it is hard to grasp, simply that some people's brains do not seem to perceive abstract symmetry and parallelism as well the converse of these..  One can illustrate a system either by writing A : B :: a : b (it would be less systematic or even unsystematic if one posited a : b :: c : x.  One can picture it thus:  

Since a system is a pattern of relations—something a list mentality has a hard time with—it will be predictably difficult (or impossible) for an asystematic mind to discern a grammatical pattern.  Since school grammars of English have much that counterfactually assumes that English grammar is Germanic (like Anglo-Saxon), in place of a discernible system, they offer a LIST of rules scrambled with a hodgepodge of principles taken from Latin on the counterfactual theory the Latin offers a better principle than any other language, despite the systematic nature of all natural language.  The schoolbook rules for shall were never correct (for the correct pattern, cf. Bailey  pp. 216-220).  I use the word only interrogatively in the first person to make a polite suggestion or offer and, otherwise, only for peremptory
predications like "You SHALL eat your spinach!" and "They SHALL be sent to prison for this crime."

     It ruins the system to use criteria, phenomena, and the like as singulars (I even heard a scientists say "this algæ"!) or to invent false plurals like rhinoceri (correct rhinocerota).  But a reader able to comprehend what a system is will understand why using media as a singular does no harm when I point out that mass nouns do not have plural forms.  In fact, during the history of Latin (where both neuter plurals and the singular of some femine nouns ended in -a) a few neuter plurals and feminine singulars (which were not seldom used for abstract or group concepts) switched their declension classes.
     GRAMMAR in its wider sense refers to the sound system, the morphological system (how one part of speech is derived from another, how inflections are dealt with); in a narrower and frequent sense, the term refers to syntax  The difference between the sound system and syntax is characterized below.
     The non-systematic mind thinks of a grammar as a list.  (The old positivist grammars were just lists.)   For this outlook, novelty is just adding something new, or perhaps subtracting something old.   Those who think that popular usage is all it takes to make a language "correct" do not realize how narrowly one can deviate from the system.  If you go very far, you will be unintelligible in syntax:  Try saying "Me saw you" to mean "You saw me" and see how far you get; or try saying "May it not happen!" for "It may not happen!"  Usage cannot by itself make a language usage correct. As for pronunciation, certain principles obtain.  For example, a heavy vowel like that of eye, site, and sight gets lightened (to the sound of "i" in lick) before two unstressed syllables; cf. the second "i" in divide and divisibility.  (Since the underlying form of -tion, -sion,and -cion is dissyllabic, i.e. at the time the rule or principle operates, even though the surface output is monosyllabic, the second "i" of division is light.)  The second "i" in divisive is heavy.  However, the system is fading for certain speakers, viz. those analogize the form with divisibility and make the "i" light. The sound system is a marvel of a system, though it is analysed as a list of ordered rules.
     Far from being a list, syntax is just a salient marvel of a SYSTEM as phonetology is.  The most systematic thing a human ever accomplishes is one's native language; and even the most ignorant develop a systematic grammar (though the system may differ in some ways from that of the educated).  A language is so complex that few past the age of puberty can learn a grammar well.  (Is that why schools teach languages after the language-window has closed--and the social sciences before the social window has opened?)  Without a system, we could not invent sentences we had never heard before.  This is novelty.
    An example of an aspect of grammatical system that can be cited is something easy to conceptualize, though it is dying out in English; it is now rarely heard on the media.  It is the principle of the TEMPORAL THROWBACK, which forms a counterfactual present and a past and a counterfactual past as a past-anterior.  
--PRESENT:  Neutral: If they are doing their job and If it is ready now; counterfactual:  If it were/was ready now.
--PAST:  Neutral:  If they were ready; counterfactual:  If they had been ready.
[ The WAS/WERE in the present counterfactual example refers to the fact that many older speakers respell was as were; this is not optional where if is dropped, as in "Were they now ready, we could leave at once."

    To build on the earlier diagram, notice:

Notice the symmetry of the table; it is encapsulated in the systematic generalization.
     Since futures are unreal to begin with, so the throwback in If they are ready by then, . . . simply expresses irreality rather than counter-factuality.  See the EXCURSUS below for doubtful and expectative if-clauses in conditional sentences.)  
     There are no few problems with using the time forms.  One example is that modalities built on have can be either present-anterior or exochronous-anterior.  They act differently in that the latter allows a time reference (e.g.They've always gone to bed at nine p.m.).  This is not possible with a past-anterior; They have gone to bed at nine p.m. is ungrammatical in English; it is an error that many foreigners are prone to. It illustrates how tight a system syntax is.  The marvel is that children learn it perfectly without effort.  It's sad that modern languages are taught after the language window has closed.  One usage formerly regarded as an error is eminently systematic, viz., the replacing of (ha)ve just done with just did.  This is justified by the consideration that the have form should refer to a block of time continuing up to the reference time—something that the expression under scrutiny does not do, since the event in this example has actually ended an instance before the reference time.     

     Many would-be grammarians have list minds (the idea that grammar is a list of [unordered] rules) and have no concept of the SYSTEM of English; they just use the categories of Latin grammar, pretend English is Germanic (like Anglo-Saxon), and cannot see how Romance-like our grammar is—or the historical reasons why it is.  They have learned little from what has been learned in recent decodes about how new languages are "born."    
      Without a notion of what conforms (or doesn't conform) to a given system, it is impossible to confirm what is correct or not.  It may be of use to put one misconception to rest--the idea that calling something correct is an attempt to take away anyone's FREEDOM  to be incorrect.  Correctness of English has nothing to do with authority (there is no academy to define correct English, and past school grammarians have done a wretched job of obviating this idea as well as of providing a reasonable approximation to English.  (This is clear from the grammar that is accessible from the button below.)  If authority doesn't create correctness, neither does usage by any level of society--other than on the trivial level of saying acquiesce to for acquiesce in.  Try saying Dogs hate cats to mean "cats hate dogs"!   It is difficult to see how anyone with a systematic mind could confuse authority with system-conform correctness any more than one could confuse practice with theory.

    Correctness in pronunciation and syntactic correctness are different matters.  For one thing, the sound system is a list of ordered rules, whereas the syntax is a system of structures based on general principles (universal principles with certain aspects of them set for a given language) that can easily be displayed as trees.  A few pronunciation examples can be given (since they may be easier to grasp) before 

[TO BE COMPLETED]