[Why do you have the phrase intelligence is sexy, and yet most of the time your head isn't completely in the frame?]

i could state your argument very simply, i understand basic reasons for your position. i understand the benefits to teaching a “formal” grammar. i understand the reasons why societies have attempted to establish and maintain a “standard” language. however throughout this entire debate you seem unable to even fathom the basic rational for our position on the concept of a “standard” english or “good, bad” grammar. an indication that i have failed in explaining it to you in a manner that you could a least understand it, not agree with it mind you, just understand it.

i completely abandon every analogy or attempt to explain these concepts. every attempt seems to lead to further confusion. again just google the subjects discussed here and do some research, what you find will do better justice to these concepts than i have. they have been accepted by a large portion if not majority of the linguists and social scientist that i have studied under and read articles by. although this is not an indicator of the validity of an argument it does indicate that the positions are in some way comprehensible and their details can be compared and discussed beyond the limits of my ability to to do so. i have read very good articles criticizing descriptive linguistics, the authors seem to at least grasp the basis of the descriptive position and structural elements that aLx refers to. i don’t think they make a convincing argument but they do have an understanding of the underlying rationale. something that i have not been able to provide you with. so i must admit failure in providing this understanding to you.

the positions i have tried to explain and defend i acquired during my education and further study, perhaps with further reading you may come to understand why so many scientist have chosen the approaches we have discussed here. however, at this point i do not think that i am able to bridge this conceptual gulf that you are so interested in crossing. good reason why i didn’t become a teacher. perhaps, well, more than likely we will be returning to this subject again in the future. peace out dawg.

However, even the article to which you linked would not defend the sentence, “Buffy bringed the umbrella to John who are jumping in the rain.” Or, would it? What say you on that point?

I mean, do you really think the “Buffy” sentence is “just as right?” Don’t beat around the bush on it. Yes or no?

It seems to me that there is a difference in respecting a new dialect, and disbanding all rules of English grammar (except those that each individual invents in his own head and chooses voluntarily to impose on himself).

That’s not a different structure. That’s wrong.

Disclaimer: Depending on the context, it may be fantastic writing. Maybe it’s part of a larger poem and this line just makes it. Maybe it’s part of a novel, and the writer is quoting a character who said that. It’s not a moral judgment, and it doesn’t mean the writer is “wrong” (in the sense of being unrighteous). It’s just wrong in the sense of being incorrect English grammar. That’s “bad grammar.”

Nobody is arguing about whether “prescriptivism” or “descriptivism” is better or worse or even if rules are prescriptive or descriptive. It doesn’t matter for the purposes of the debate over whether there is or is not something called “bad grammar.” Similarly, it does not matter, for the purposes of this argument, whether we are talking about underlying or surface structures. While those are interesting and mind-numbing issues, they are irrelevant to the subject at hand.

It doesn’t matter whether the SVO rule you suggested is taught or learned by osmosis or whatever. It’s a rule of grammar. If it is a grammar rule, and it can be broken, then breaking it is “bad grammar.”

Can it be broken? If you’re answer to that is “yes” then what Marina and everyone else on my side (I am daring to speak for others, and apologize to anyone who might not want me to do that) is saying is that “bad grammar” means, in essence, “broken rule.”

That’s why I wanted you or buzz to write out a rule. Neither of you did though. Neither of you actually wrote out what the rule you were talking about was. He said “the rule about double negatives,” but didn’t explicitly state it. You proceeded into a discussion of SVO, but didn’t explicitly state a rule (you just discussed overarching concepts).