> I have very definite ideas about what's proper
>English grammar and what isn't, but my problem
>has always been an inability to defend many my
>opinions in an objective sense.

My guess is that's because there's nothing at all objective about English grammar rules. They're all completely subjective. They change over time, reflecting not just common usage but in some cases (such as the split infinitive rule) crazy ideas that English should have rules that agree with some other language it's not even directly related to (Latin). Sure, there are rules that without which, the language would be incomplrehensible to us now, but that doesn't change the fact that even those rules could change in the future if common usage dictated they change. Look at Old English. It might as well be Latin for all I care, because it's fairly incomprehensible to me. But that's the language the English I speak came from. In another 500 years, the English I speak might be as incomprehensible to native English speakers of the day as Old English is to me.

You could do like the French try to do, and set up an administrative body that gets to "define" the French language. But even they have to bow to common usage and such "subjective" things quite often, so I'm not sure how it would help.

>
> Basically, it's this: because rules of grammar
>(at least to an extent) reflect usage and
>describe a language that already exists (as
>opposed to language being initially defined by
>rules, as with Esperanto or C++ or any other
>"artificial" language), then it seems to be that
>the division between grammatical correctness and
>stylistic correctness may really only be a matter
>of degree, with a thick gray area in between.
>

To what extent are grammar rules anything *but* descriptive, as opposed to prescriptive? Since the language wasn't designed, the rules of grammar can be nothing *but* a description of how the language is used. Sure, you can decide on a personal set of rules, or use some commonly used textbook as your own prescriptive guide, but that doesn't constrain anybody else.

I'm not trying to argue that everybody should just speak and write however they feel like. From an "ability to communicate" perspective, we all need to agree on at least SOME common rules. But that's still a descriptive grammar--it describes the rules commonly accepted to facilitate communication.

The whole "split infinitive" thing is one of those rules that always seemed silly to me, especially when I found out that the whole reason the rule exists is because some scholars back in the day arbitrarily decided that English grammar should be as close to Latin grammar as possible--because Latin was a "smarty-pants" language and so English should aspire to be like it, of course. Since Latin infinitives are one word and therefore *can't* be split, it was decided that English infinitives should not be split either. Which is the most silly way to come up with a rule of grammar that I can think of. Sure, sometimes splitting an infinitive can sound "wrong", but sometimes NOT splitting it sounds wrong too. I go back to the most famous split infinitive in American English: "To boldly go where no man has gone before." Would you have had Kirk say "To go boldly where no man has gone before" or "Boldly to go where no man has gone before"?

I say do what sounds right.

-- Dave