EIGHTEEN WEEKLY LESSONS FOR COMPETENT AND CREATIVE TEACHERS OPEN TO RECENT INSIGHTS CONCERNING THE GRAMMAR OF ENGLISH AND DESIROUS OF FINDING OUT 
HOW TO COACH PUPILS TO CONSTRUCT THE GRAMMAR 
SYSTEM FROM ITS FOUR BUILDING BLOCKS

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     In response to requests about how to cite pages on this site, the following is  suggested:

Bailey, C.-J. N.  2001a.  http://orlapubs.org/ORLAPUBS-L/L81.html  (updated 20020000).

     Do you know that there is a difference─of goals and of most of the current analytical methods─in linguistics and in scientific (i.e. explanatory-predictive) grammar?   N. Chomsky, the originator of truly scientific linguistics has from the outset worked toward understanding the universal (innate) language faculty in the human brain─its evolution and analysis for language and cognition.  Linguistics has accordingly evolved to become one of the main branches of cognitive science (the name of the department in many universities where linguistics is researched).  Idio-lectal data from many languages are used by Chomsky; language variation and variation within a language have often seemed of little interest to Chomskians, some of whom seem seem to have deduced from Chomsky's entirely valid assumption that language is in the brain (not "out there" in society or geography) is a premise that precludes studying variation (say of English) in the brain.  A virtual, invariant English or "my dialect" has sufficed for many researchers.  The Chomskian program is minimalist in the sense of getting rid of rules, or rather of subsuming them under--and predicting  them with--principles of the brain and of language and parameter settings.  (An interested reader can find a short summary in Science [published by the Association for the Advancement of Science; vol. 298/no. 5598 of 20021102], pp. 1569-1579.)
     Grammar has a different goal from that of the linguistics of the cognitive-science variety, though some scholars have specialized in grammar and linguistics.   The goal of grammar is to describe the grammar of, say educated speakers of English, and then to explain the structures and apparent inconsistencies in such a way that these could have been predicted in principle--the way one could have predicted that warmer water would rise above colder water if one had never seen the phenomenon.  Contrary to prevailing ignorance, one's grammar is the most complex system that one ever masters and hence is eminently systematic (coherent) and eminently amenable to scientific analysis.       
     Theories like markedness--ascertained through certain behaviors like reversals of forms, uses, and meanings in marked or non-default environ-ments (markedness is gradient, phenomena can be more less marked than others) have explained more than a score of hitherto inexplicable pattern-ings of grammatical strucctures.  Mayerthaler's principle of reversals in marked contexts is based on the way a figure reverses itself when the background reverses itself.  (In language, a fly ON the ceiling is really UNDER the ceiling.)  Changes of marked to unmarked sounds, rule-orders, etc. begin with a few "exceptions" before becoming more general, just as regular phenomena begin to fade out gradiently.  (Cf. the rule deleting //t// in soften (and moisten and hasten) than some ignore in often.) a language.  The temporal evolution (including changes of marked rule orders to unamarked or more-generally operative) rule orders of a living language creates implicational patterns among the phenomena in such a way that the variants of a language can be unified in a single grammar.  This should be is of general interest to cognitive studies.  A unified pattern of implicational arrays would seem to underly our ability to understand the many geographical, social, age, and stylistic variants of our language that we encounter.   Once differences have been accounted for, they are of course intrinsically predictable.
     New data from the birth of daughters languages of English in the Pacific, Africa, and the Caribbean in the last century have added to our understanding of how English got born in the eleventh centuryas a creole language with French structure whose expressions got calqued with words from Anglo-Saxon 
     In a valid grammar, the various ways of creating irrealis and factual modalities are examined in their own right.   For example, the modal verb should creates a factual modality (CLICK 93 FOR DETAILS) in a clause whose predication is (anti)desiderative or/and (anti)expective; e.g. "I'm disgusted but not surprised that they should be doing that"  Conversely, should  expresses non-expectative (dubitative) force in "If they should (have) put it there, . . ."   (Note the deletion of should, indicated by $ [virtual should], in "It was important they he should $ not leave early."  Other irrealis modalities are created by the temporal throwback (as in "If they had been here yesterday, . . ." and "If they were acting reasonably now, . . .") in certain environments (after "if, wish, I'd rather/prefer/just as soon as").  The modal may expresses possibility--epistemically in "They may arrive early," deontically in "You may leave early"--and wish (the optative use), with inverted verb-subject word order, in  "May they arrive on time."  This modal verb may be dropped entirely in archaic expressions like "God help us."   (See HERE for further information  on modal verbs and related matter .)
     We can get rid of Classical terms like dative and adverbial nouns by positing a virtual "at" or "to" in "We stayed @ home; they went @ home; I gave @ her a rose petal; I made it @ work."  The last now becomes systematic by appearing parallel with "I cause it to work."
     Grammatical analysis does not shy away from using items from logic in dealing with negation or in dealing with modal force (epistemic force  [cognitive force based on ontology] and deontic force ["moral" force based on volition] in the foregoing.  
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     *W. Mayerthaler's theory of reversal's in marked contexts has led to productive research and to making grammar systematic and predictive in ways not previously understood.  See examples in L86.html "Can you think grammatically?" as well as in Chh. 5 and 6 of Bailey, Essays on time-based linguistic analysis (Oxford University Press, 1996).
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A CRUCIAL CONCEPT IN SOME APPROACHES TO LANGUAGE

      The concept of what is unmarked (default) or marked (not default) is both conceptualized on the basis of linguistic change and, conversely, makes predictions.  The fundamental principles are:

m → u / u      &      u → m / m

where m is "marked"; u is "unmarked; the arrow means "changes into" or "becomes"; and what follows the slash represents the environment.  A doubly marked environment reverse the direction of the arrow, but this re-reverses in a triply marked environment--one marked with respect to three factors.  (Sometimes a logical curl is used for "not," so that ~ m ≡ u & ~ u ≡ m.)  When we observe so-called neutralizations of lexical differences--the loss of the distinction between trash or litter and garbage in favor of the latter--the change of the former to the latter indicates that the latter is in some way less marked.  (In classical languages, this kind of example is called pars pro toto; cf. referring to the number of "heads" of cattle tat someone has.) 

     The principle can be overridden by "higher-level" considerations.  The change of lie ("place") to lay does not seem to make a grammar better until one considers that lie also means "tell an untruth".  This semantic interference combines with the formal oddity of changing lie to lay−−attested by the replacement of lay by laid, as in "I was so tired that I laid down for a couple of hours to catch up on lost sleep"−−leads to the more regular patter of lay : laid.  Normally, a past form (more marked than the default infinitive) would dominate, but the factors just mention created a marked situation in which the directionality of change seems to get reversed.  Actually, in a marked situation what is marked and what is unmarked get reversed in the sense that the change remains one in which the principle of what is more marked becomes less marked is maintained.

     Neutralizations of lexical items can also be illustrated in the reduction of woman to lady (i.e. replacing the difference between woman and lady with lady except in expressions like scrub woman) or of die with pass away--which (unlike the merger of human being with man) is more marked in terms of bulk alone!) because of social reasons.  A taboo that marks a form may cause a change, as when cock is replaced by rooster--except in peacock.  The common replacing of lie by lay is puzzling because the latter is more marked; a semantic interference from the other sense of lie may be operative.  The use of good in place of the adverb well (as in They worked good and hard (there is no comparable difference, as expected by the theory, with marked badly occurs for grammatical reasons; The way irregular comparatives like better are replaced by superlatives like best reduces an irregularity (see below on markering) and makes the grammar more systematic (less irregular), but also indicates that the superlative is less marked than a comparative; cf. how some languages that have a (marked) subjunctive mode use it for comparatives but not for superlatives.  Since plurality includes two as well as three, four, etc.,  the dual, ternal, and quartal numbers of the grammatical forms of nouns (and adjectives) some languages are increasingly marked and increasingly rare.    The frequent replacement of whether by if shows that the latter is the less marked, seeing that the clauses begun by the former, an indirect question, and that begun by the latter (an assumption) are equally marked.

      Markedness should not be confused with markering--say, an inflection--though what is more marked is often more markered.  Details must be left to be read in the reference above.

WHAT IS A GRAMMAR? 

     The narrower import of the term has reference to syntax, the way words are put together in grammatical structures (normally represented by a tree with branches and sub-branches).  I also includes how certain inflections match and indeed signal the structure. 

CLICK HERE FOR THE NOTION OF CORRECTNESS   
CLICK HERE FOR THE CORRECT USE THE TERM DIALECT

CLICK HERE FOR MEDIA GOOPHASMS

SPEAKERS ON THE MEDIA WOULD BE WELL-ADVISED TO
CONSIDER:  IN CULTIVATED ENGLISH, LATIN "g" AND "æ"
ARE TREATED EXACTLY LIKE HISTORICAL "g" and "ē":

Algæ is "aljee"―not "algee" or "aljay," let alone "algay"!

     You cannot understand grammar unless you know how to build it up from its four building blocks.   (See the button above for Eighteen weekly lessons, &c.)
     You cannot understand it if you believe that English is a lineal (Germanic) descendent of Anglo-Saxon—something sociolinguistically impossible at the birth of Middle English.  (The erroneous lineage is based on the errors (i) that functor words are not calqued from the language of the lower classes into the grammar of the upper classes--as we see going on languages being born in bi- or multi-lingual cultures; and (ii) on using etymologies rather than structures to determine the parentage of a language.  (See Ch. 10 of Bailey, Essays on time-based linguistic analysis (Oxford University Press, 1996).
     The foregoing teachers' grammar showing how to build English grammar from its four building blocks in eighteen lessons is based on the extensive analyses in Chh.5-6 of the book cited above.  

    Consider the difference between in and into in:

--I put my money in my safe, but she put hers into stocks and bonds.
--When the ball flew in the window, he flew into a rage.

In typical examples, into signals an ontological or situational change—something very different from the change of place found in Germanic usage but not entirely lacking in affinities with French dans and en. 

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