Talk:Descriptive linguistics

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Synchronic linguistics redirects here, but the term is never mentioned in the article. Is it just a synomym (in which case it should be mentioned in the lead) or is there a difference in meaning (in which case we should define it). -- Jmabel 23:03, Oct 1, 2004 (UTC)

Descriptive linguistics has its own article, but prescriptive linguistics gets redirected to prescription and description. Was ist los!!!!!!!!!!!!!1112edv,, -Branddobbe 09:03, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)

It's because descriptive linguistics is not merely the antonym of prescriptive linguistics, but rather refers to a much broader aspect of linguistics of which "descriptive linguistics in English" is only a tiny part, if even related. - Mustafaa

Orthography is not an essential part of descriptive linguistics; in fact, it's not even part of descriptive linguistics also except as a time-saving tool so that the descriptor need not exclusively use IPA. It should not be included as one of the criteria for a "good" (good? should this be "useful"? "Rigorous"? something less subjective?) linguistic description-- there are plenty of languages lacking orthography which can be described in a "good" fashion.

Barring any sort of objection or explanation, I'm going to go ahead and remove the orthography reference. variable 19:35, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] This article should not exist

"Descriptive linguistics" is an oxymoron. Linguistics is descriptive. There is no such thing as "prescriptive linguistics."

Open up a high school grammar book. That is prescriptive linguistics.siafu 19:46, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

And you meant to say "Descriptive linguistics" is redundant, not that it is an oxymoron. (Unless the use of 'oxymoron' to mean 'redundant expression' is for some strange reason prevalent in use among those who don't know better, in which case I'll quickly flee from the descriptivists here!)

[edit] Merge

Should this be merged into prescription and description? - SimonP 19:42, July 29, 2005 (UTC)

No, why do you say that? This shouldn't be merged with linguistic descriptivism either, though I can see merging the latter with prescription and description. Descriptive linguistics is not an antonym to "prescriptive linguistics", they are orthogonal at best. Descriptive linguistics is about describing languages (as they actually are), just as a subset of biology is about describing animals, what they look like, where they live, what they eat etc... Prescriptivism (in English) is something that happened because some pedants read too much latin in the 19th century and wanted to improve English. In other languages it is also a symptom of nationalism and the then just starting attempts at educating the unwashed masses. Quite different beasts! Kaleissin 14:05, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] List of Descriptive Linguists

I removed Bill Croft, who has not described any language afaik. Jasyjatere 12:28, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

His article mentions he tried to “compare and contrast the grammatical features of different natural languages”. That wouldn't be possible if he didn't describe them at the same time. --Kjoonlee 12:31, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Excuse me, but you seem to be mistaken here. It is perfectly possible to compare languages without describing them. To do that, you take a number of grammar books from the library, look up the description of a particular phenomenon and compare them. None of the books has to be written by you. Actually, this is a subdiscipline of linguistic which is called Linguistic typology. I agree that many typologists have also done some descriptive work at a certain point in time of their carreer, but this is not always so. AFAIK, Joseph Greenberg or Matthew Dryer, which are two very important typologists, have not written descriptive stuff. Same goes for Bill Croft.

The other authors in the list at the bottom of the article are known for the grammars they have written. I ask you to point out a grammar that has been written by Bill Croft. Jasyjatere 07:05, 8 September 2006 (UTC)