What is Grammar?

We all know the "Grammar Nazi" -- and can laugh along with parodies such as College Humor's take on the famous scene from Inglorious Basterds. But why is this notion so persistent? I think it's because those of us who have anxieties about our grammar and usage have them because we've been called out somewhere -- in a classroom, on a stage, by a seeming friend -- for some real or purported usage error. The grammar guardians have that same smugness that we fear from the enforcers of some imaginary authoritarian regime: the law is on their side, and they will show no mercy. But how did we get to this state of affairs, with a language that most of us have been speaking since before we were two years old? How did we come to feel not at home in our own home language?

Part of it is that English is notoriously filled with inconsistencies. Compared with either Romance languages (Spanish, Portuguese, Italian) or Germanic ones (German, Norwegian, Icelandic), we have dozens of exceptions to the rules, all of which someone learning English as a second language must contend with. On top of that, we have quite a few "rules" which the grammar correctors are convinced are rooted in stone, which are in fact not rules at all, but merely conventions (see the previous sentence for how we're not supposed to end things). Perhaps most significantly, we tend to confuse these conventions -- which are those of formal written English -- with rules about everyday, informal speech.

I have good news though: as Dante Alighieri noted about his childhood acquisition of Italian, if English is your first language, then you learned it by imitation, and sine omni regula (without any rules). Rules come later, and after, and actually have nothing whatsoever to do with how we actually learn to speak, or do speak. Which is not to say English has no structure, but rather that the structures which help us generate speech are not the same as those external after-thoughts with with grammarians have measured and examined speech. When one thinks of language in generative terms, one realizes the sad futility of the rule-followers: to follow rules is not the same thing as grasping a principle.