FRANK R. PALMER AND GRAMMAR

 

In my time it was necessary to own a good set of reference books to aid our researches. Not so now when we only have to possess a good computer and internet connection. Today I was perusing one such book in my library; Frank R. Palmer´s Grammar, 1978 edition, Pelican Books. Professor Palmer (1922-2019) lived to be 97 probably because of his life-long interest in language. 

I am in the habit of underlying or highlighting passages I find of interest, the quiddity of my reading. Let me share what I underlined years ago, please.

--"Few areas of our experience are closer to us or more continuously with us than our language. We spend a large part of our waking life speaking, listening, reading, and writing. The central part of a language... is its grammar, and this should be of vital interest to any intelligent educated person."

--"We have very little idea of the steps by which men came to speak and, indeed, no accurate assessment of the time at which speech began."

--"Language is complex, productive, and arbitrary."

--It is a mistake to see grammar as a set of normative rules."

--"What is correct and what is not correct is ultimately only a matter of  what is accepted by society, for language is a matter of conventions within society."

--"Speech is ephemeral, while writing is permanent."

--"If we take the number of letters of the alphabet used for English we find they are insufficient to represent all the possible pronunciations..."

I hope the above quotes will whet your intellectual appetite, and read the book by the Oxford professor of linguistics.