上個禮拜的文法課討論到一些美國人會講，但是「不合傳統文法」的句子。
These are some of the sentences that native
Americans would say, but usually considered "ungrammatical" by
prescriptive grammarians.
* indicates words considered
"grammatically incorrect"
- We have *less jobs. [this is from the
presidential debate. Not sure from Obama or Romney]
- take a company's *bankrupt [also from the
debate]
- producing coal *clearner and *smarter
[also from the debate]
- between you and *I [some native American
school teachers teach this]
- Sarah and *myself were walking. [Some
native speakers insist it should be myself]
- This is between you and *myself. [this
may appear in formal business email]
這裡的人甚至有不同習慣的介系詞用法。
People here even have a variation on
preposition uses.
- Where are you *at?
- *at the street
- arrive *to school
雖然這些是不合傳統文法規定，但仍然是有些規則可循，只能說某些文法規則在轉型。但大家也說，雖然這些大部分目前是存在於口語，仍然有美國人認為自己這樣講很正確，也有的人認為這樣講很像沒受過教育。
我另外想到的是，學校英文老師不可能把所有口語語法都教到(畢竟這是變化很快的東西，老師可能還來不及學就消失了)，但是學校老師對於文法的「正確」、「標準答案」要這麼強調嗎。尤其是介系詞的用法，似乎存在地區方言(dialect)的差異，還前前後文的差異。介系詞的使用有時候甚至很主觀，是看作者要傳達的概念而定(像是in the part/at the park)。我還遇過有次把文章拿給美國人校稿後，他改了某些介系詞，後來我拿給另外一個美國人校稿，他又把某些介系詞改回去。所以有時候介系詞其實很難判斷對錯的。老師在教文法時，還要這麼要求「標準答案」嗎？
Although these do not confirm to
prescriptive grammar rules, but there are still rules to follow. We can only
say some rules are changing. In the discussion, some said some of these exist
only in casual conversation, some said some of those are grammatically correct,
and some said these don’t sound well-educated.
What came to my mind was: English as second
language (ESL) teachers could not possibly cover all the spoken grammar (After
all, it’s changing so fast. Some of the expressions are even gone before teachers
could learn them.), but do ESL teachers really have to give “correct answers” all
the time when teaching grammar? Take prepositions as an example. Some
prepositions have dialectal differences. Some prepositions are used subjectively,
depending on the writer’s “point of view”, such as in/at the park. Once I had a
native American proofread my article, he changed some prepositions. And later I
gave the revised article to another American, she changed some of the
prepositions back. Sometimes it is hard to decide which is the correct
preposition to use. So when teaching grammars, do ESL teachers still have to
insist on correct answers to every question?
