Descriptive grammar seeks to simply convey a message. In Kenya today, most people have a preference for descriptive English grammar over the prescriptive for being non-restrictive.

Descriptive grammar seeks to simply convey a message. In Kenya today, most people have a preference for descriptive English grammar over the prescriptive for being non-restrictive.

Geoff Pullum is locked in an intractable dispute with a colleague about whether so-called descriptive work on English grammar is in fact prescriptivism in sheep’s clothing.

This paper examines the goals of prescriptive grammar and the causes and consequences of the rift between prescriptive and theoretical linguistics. It also proposes a principle for guiding ...

Is it prescriptive grammar day, where we would mark people off for violations of standard English? Or is it descriptive grammar day, when linguists get all huffy about the ignorance and narrow ...

I mentioned the potential increase of prescriptive behaviour among young people, despite the introduction of a more descriptive framework for teaching English in schools in the 1990s.

Then, when it became a field of research—what we know today as linguistics—grammar became descriptive, too. Prescriptive grammar books for schools continue to be produced, but a new genre of grammar ...