Is Honorary Professor Of Linguistics At The

David Crystal is Honorary Professor of Linguistics at theUniversity of Bangor. His many books range from clinicallinguistics to the liturgy and Shakespeare. He is the authorof The Story of English in 100 Words, Spell It Out: The SingularStory of English Spelling and Making a Point: The Pernickety Storyof English Punctuation, all published by Profile. His OxfordDictionary of Original Shakespearean Pronunciation was publishedin 2016. His Stories of English is a Penguin Classic.Making Sense.indd 123/06/2017 15:35

By David Crystal in this seriesThe Story of English in 100 WordsSpell It Out: The Singular Story of English SpellingMaking a Point: The Pernickety Story of English PunctuationAlso by David CrystalThe Gift of the Gab: How Eloquence WorksThe Oxford Dictionary of Original Shakespearean PronunciationWordsmiths and Warriors: the English-language Tourist’s Guide toBritainEvolving English: One Language, Many VoicesThe Cambridge Encyclopedia of LanguageBy Ben and David CrystalOxford Illustrated ShakespeareShakespeare’s Words: a Glossary and Language CompanionMaking Sense.indd 223/06/2017 15:35

Making Sense:The Glamorous Story of English GrammarDavid CrystalPROFILE BOOKSMaking Sense.indd 308/11/2016 17:44

This paperback edition published in 2017First published in Great Britain in 2017 byPROFILE BOOKS LTD3 Holford YardBevin WayLondon wc1x 9hdwww.profilebooks.comCopyright David Crystal, 201710 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1Typeset in Iowan by MacGuru LtdPrinted and bound in Great Britain byCPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon cr0 4yyThe moral right of the author has been asserted.All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reservedabove, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introducedinto a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), withoutthe prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisherof this book.A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from theBritish Library.ISBN 978 1 78125 602 2eISBN 978 1 78283 230 0Cert no. TT-COC-002227Making Sense.indd 423/06/2017 15:03

ContentsPreface ixIntroduction xiiiNot knowing grammar: a student’s tale xiiiNot knowing grammar: a child’s tale xvi1First steps in grammar Interlude: The first grammarians 2Second steps: the big picture 103Second steps: the small picture 194Third steps: combining big and small 235Inside the words 29Interlude: The first English grammarian 386Talking about mouses Interlude: Learn by heart 41497What sentences do Interlude: The first modern English grammarian 51568Sentence building Interlude: Grammatically precocious 58669Story time 67Connecting Interlude: Did the teddy bear chase the elephant? 758010Making Sense.indd 51708/11/2016 17:44

11Talking about grammar Interlude: Victorian playfulness 828812Up with which we will not put Interlude: A shocking faux pas 909913Clarity and weight Interlude: Redistributing weight 10210714Clarity and order 10915Grammar and meaning 117Interlude: Real and unreal ambiguity 12416Grammar and effect 17Structure and use together 133Interlude: Define dog 13918A sense of style 14119Grammar on the job 15020Explanations 15921Grammatical change – now 166Interlude: Pluralsy 17222Grammatical change – then 174Interlude: Thou vs you 18523Into living memory (almost) 24Going transatlantic 194Interlude: Another pretty little Americanism 20225Going global 203Interlude: A good good example 20926Grammar online 21027Back from the grave 218Making Sense.indd 612618708/11/2016 17:44

28Why the delay? 224Interlude: Do as I say – government level 23429A top ten for the future Epilogue236 239An appendix on teaching and testing 241References and further reading 263Illustration credits 268Index 269Making Sense.indd 708/11/2016 17:44

PrefaceAs with the earlier titles in this series, on spelling (Spell ItOut) and punctuation (Making a Point), my aim in this bookis exactly what its title and subtitle suggest: to explain howthe subject of grammar has evolved since classical times toreach the position it is in today. All three books – to coin aphrase, S, P a[nd] G – bring to light the complex history ofthe English language, which is calling out for description ata point when our present-day sensibilities are struggling tograsp the realities of language variation and change, and theimplications this has for children’s education.Grammar presents a special challenge, because – far morethan in the case of spelling and punctuation – there is somuch abstract terminology to take on board, and the subjectis burdened with a centuries-old history of educational practice that many readers will recall as being anything but glamorous. The obvious questions therefore are: Where did it allcome from? Why is it needed? What is its value? How can itbe taught – and tested? And where on earth could glamourpossibly lie?I address all these questions in this book, while bearing inmind that my readership will range from those who alreadyhave considerable expertise to those with little or no grammatical knowledge. The opening chapters have two parts,accordingly: an opening section that is introductory in character; and an explanatory section that explores each issue inMaking Sense.indd 908/11/2016 17:44

xMaking sensegreater depth. Taken together, I hope these will provide a satisfying answer to the question I am most often asked: ‘Whyis there such a fuss about grammar?’I am most grateful to those who read a draft of the bookfrom various points of view: to Professor Richard Hudson,especially for providing me with extra perspective on recentUK trends in language in education; to Hilary Crystal, foradvice on my general level and approach to the subject; and toJohn Davey (who commissioned the work on behalf of ProfileBooks) for guidance on matters of content and organization.Chapters on the political background to grammar- teachingin the UK were felt by the publisher to be too parochial foran international readership, so I have made these available onmy website as an essay entitled ‘The recent political historyof English grammar in the UK’: www.davidcrystal.comMaking Sense.indd 1008/11/2016 17:44

grammarfrom Old French gramaire,which was an adaptation of Latin grammaticawhich in turn came from Greek grammatikimeaning ‘pertaining to letters or literature’which later narrowed to mean just the language of textswhich in the Middle Ages meant chiefly Latinand so took on the meaning of ‘special learning, knowledge’and then ‘secret knowledge’ as in magic and astrologywhich is how it was first used in Scotland in the 18th centurywhen the word was pronounced with an l instead of an rand the meaning developed of ‘enchantment, spell’and later became the word we know today, meaning‘charm, attractiveness, physical allure’spelledglamour (British English)glamor (American English)Making Sense.indd 1108/11/2016 17:44

IntroductionNot knowing grammar: a student’s taleI was giving a new intake of undergraduates their first lectureon English grammar. It was the early 1970s – a few years afterthe formal teaching of grammar had disappeared from theschool curriculum in the UK, and I was about to experienceone of the consequences.I’d given this course several times. The main aim of myopening lecture was to make students aware of the contrastbetween the ‘old’ ways of learning about grammar they hadexperienced in school and the new approaches they wouldencounter at university. To do this, I would take an exampleof a rule I knew they would all have been taught: ‘Never enda sentence with a preposition.’ Many older readers will recallhaving had that rule dinned into them.I’ll explain where the rule came from in Chapter 12. In myclass I simply illustrated what the rule did. They would havebeen told that the first of the following two sentences was‘incorrect’, and the second was ‘correct’:This is the man I was talking to.This is the man to whom I was talking.I would then go on to show how sentences with prepos itions at the end have been used in English since AngloSaxon times, give some examples from Shakespeare (‘ToMaking Sense.indd 1308/11/2016 17:44

xivMaking sensebe or not to be and fly to others that I know not of’),and point out that today the difference is one of style: thesecond sentence is much more formal than the first. Bothare acceptable in standard English, but the first is morelikely to be found in informal speech and the second informal writing. Today I’d add that you don’t see the secondone much on Facebook.Anyway, on that day in the early 1970s, I was halfwaythrough my usual explanation when I noticed that my audience had begun to fidget (more than usual). Some were whispering to each other. I stopped what I was saying and asked:‘Is there a problem?’One student put her hand up. ‘Please,’ she said, ‘What’sa preposition?’I was, as I used to say in Liverpool, gobsmacked. I hadnever been asked that question before. It had never occurredto me that someone, now aged 18, could have gone throughschool without learning what a preposition was. I asked theaudience: ‘How many of you don’t know what a prepositionis?’ Most put their hands up. I couldn’t believe it.‘I think I know,’ said another student. ‘Thank goodness,’I thought, and asked her to continue. Then she said: ‘Is itsomething to do with getting on a horse?’There is no single word in Liverpudlian slang for a greaterdegree of gobsmackedness. I think I croaked, ‘How do youmean?’‘Well,’ she said, ‘I was always told that a pre-position waswhat one had to adopt when preparing to mount.’ She pronounced it ‘pree-position’.It was the first time I realized how great the change hadbeen in schools. Within just a few years – less than a decade– many students were leaving school with no knowledge ofgrammar at all. It seems that the teaching of grammar justMaking Sense.indd 1408/11/2016 17:44

Introduction xv– stopped. I discovered later that it wasn’t just a Britishthing. A similar disaffection had taken place in other mothertongue countries where ‘English’ was a classroom subject. Afew schools kept it going, especially in relation to the teaching of Latin or a modern language – which is why some of myclass smugly knew what a preposition was – but in relation toEnglish, it was as if grammar had never been.I’ll talk later about why all this happened and what replacedit. But the consequences of this radical change of directionwere long-lasting. When grammar began to re-emerge inschools in the 1990s – in Britain, as part of the National Curriculum – there was a widespread uncertainty among teachers about how to handle it, for the obvious reason that theseteachers had never had any grammatical training themselves.That uncertainty continues today.It isn’t just teachers. Parents too – those who have neverhad any grammar training either – are nonplussed when theirchild now turns to them for homework help and asks ‘What’sa preposition?’ – or an adverb, or a noun phrase, or a subordinate clause And indeed, anyone who tries to speakor write clear and effective English can be nonplussed whenthey try to take on board the misleading advice offered bypedants who reduce grammar to a simple set of rights andwrongs and then insist on everyone else doing the same.Pedants need to make sense of grammar too.We all do. Even little children.Making Sense.indd 1508/11/2016 17:44