Linguists have standardly assumed that grammar is about identifying
all and only the 'good' sentences of a language, which implies that
there must be other, 'bad' sentences - but in practice most
linguists know that it is hard to pin those down. The standard
assumption is no more than an assumption. A century ago,
grammarians did not think about their subject that way, and our
book shows that the older idea was right: linguists can and should
dispense with the concept 'starred sentence'. We draw on corpus
data in order to support a different model of grammar, in which
individuals refine positive grammatical habits to greater or lesser
extents in diverse and unpredictable directions, but nothing is
ever ruled out. Languages are not merely alternative methods of
verbalizing universal logical forms. We use empirical evidence to
shed light on the routes by which school-age children gradually
expand their battery of grammatical resources, which turn out to be
sometimes counter-intuitive. Our rejection of the 'starred
sentence' concept has attracted considerable discussion, and we
summarize the reactions and respond to our critics. The contrasting
models of grammar described in this book entail contrasting
pictures of human nature; our closing chapter shows that
grammatical theory is not value-neutral but has an ethical
dimension.
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