Sam Passmore, Australian National University; Olena Shcherbakova, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, and Simon Greenhill, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau
The idea a language should grow simpler if people need to learn it as adults has an intuitive appeal. But an analysis of more than 1,200 languages shows this doesn’t quite stack up.
Linguists have long considered grammar to be the glue of language, and key to how children learn it. But new prose-writing AIs suggest language experience may be more important than grammar.
It isn’t a matter of choosing between teaching grammar or teaching students to use their imagination in their writing. In fact, it makes sense to show them how grammar can enhance their creativity.
Our children should no longer be taught formulaic writing. Writing education should encompass skills that go beyond the capacities of artificial intelligence.
Grammar isn’t a way to bully people for making mistakes, says a longtime English instructor. It is a way to understand how our language operates, in all its many written and spoken varieties.
Grammatical metaphor is different to what we understand to be “metaphor”. It’s a way of converting words and shortening clauses, so more information can be packed into fewer characters.
A new book, which weaves fiction into the origin story of the Oxford English Dictionary, was declared a hit even before its release. Readers will judge whether it lives up to the hype.
The conventions used in texting and tweeting are fundamentally altering how people communicate, but many language apps still rely on old-school English-language grammar.