It was also adressed to you although your first post is fully understandable. What confuses me are the contradictory comments about this grammar stuff.
This is one from Goofy (Barzun thread):
"
If you don't think it reads well, that's fair enough, but it has nothing to do with the grammar of standard English. "
This is you:
"think of grammar as a set of rules for using a particular language. For me grammar consists of various sub-fields of study: phonology (the sounds used by a language), morphology (the basic units of meaning, which can be lexical items, i.e., words, or smaller bits, e.g., affixes), and syntax (how the various units of meaning are put together to form grammatical phrases or sentences). I do not think of orthography as a part of grammar. That is spelling and punctuation, which should be taught, are just not a part of grammar for me or most linguists I have talked with or read."You both seem (Fladage too I think)to exclude orthography from grammar. Yet these little next to nothings decide (to me) whether I choke on a text or not. Apparently in British English they count orthography in, as seen in Pummel's comments.
- "ungrammatical because of punctuation again: the final period has been carelessly omitted" -Scientists have counted approx. 6500 languages, half of which are, however, threatened to die off soon, as they are no longer passed on. Not counted in above figure are pure sign-languages or computer-languages. Non-linguists are often confused- as they consider the written language as the more important side of any language. However, the opposite is true amongst language-specialists: true linguists - masters in their trade - consider the sound of a language as the important part and treat its written representation with nonchalance.
Source:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Approximately_how_many_languages_are_spoken_worldwide
