Originally Posted By: twosleepy
You are right, Fal; I meant descriptivism. I edited it so as not to confuse future readers. Thanks for catching that.


Grammatical descriptivism looks at the language as it is used by native speakers and derives the rules from that usage. Etymology is much the same in one respect. We look at the evidence and make our best guesses as to the history of a word. Folks can come up with all kinds of ideas about what the origin of a word is, but if an idea doesn't have good evidence to support it it remains suspect. Similarly with grammatical usages, people can make mistakes and they are not seen as "good grammar" just because someone spoke them. Someone can say, "I ain't got no problems" and that is perfectly good grammar in some speech communities. Someone says, "I no have problems" and that is just a mistake or something that came from a non-native speaker.

Grammar is variable from dialect to dialect and can change over time. Etymology is pure fact. We don't necessarily know what the facts are but wrong guesses are wrong guesses.