Survey of English Usage
During the early 1960s, Randolph Quirk and colleagues, among them Valerie Adams, Derek Davy and David Crystal, conducted an ambitious project known as the Survey of English Usage. This compilation of a large body of English language data (a corpus) comprised one million words as recorded in actual use in everyday life. Previous grammars had tended to overuse the canon of English Literature. The project was to be the foundation of A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, a reference grammar widely used around the world. This was the first grammar of English in real use rather than one based on rules handed down by teachers and scholars from Latin and Greek models. These had been considered to be "correct" models for living English. Instead of declaring what was correct grammatical usage, Quirk and his collaborators proposed a descriptive rather than prescriptive grammar, showing readers that different groups of English speakers chose different usages, arguing that what is correct is what communicates effectively. Basil Bernstein, sociolinguist, made his name from showing similar choices of variants of English usage.
Read more about this topic: Randolph Quirk
Famous quotes containing the words survey of, survey, english and/or usage:
“By contrast with history, evolution is an unconscious process. Another, and perhaps a better way of putting it would be to say that evolution is a natural process, history a human one.... Insofar as we treat man as a part of nature—for instance in a biological survey of evolution—we are precisely not treating him as a historical being. As a historically developing being, he is set over against nature, both as a knower and as a doer.”
—Owen Barfield (b. 1898)
“By contrast with history, evolution is an unconscious process. Another, and perhaps a better way of putting it would be to say that evolution is a natural process, history a human one.... Insofar as we treat man as a part of nature—for instance in a biological survey of evolution—we are precisely not treating him as a historical being. As a historically developing being, he is set over against nature, both as a knower and as a doer.”
—Owen Barfield (b. 1898)
“[He] didn’t dare to, because his father had a weak heart and habitually threatened to drop dead if anybody hurt his feelings. You may have noticed that people with weak hearts are the tyrants of English married life.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“...Often the accurate answer to a usage question begins, “It depends.” And what it depends on most often is where you are, who you are, who your listeners or readers are, and what your purpose in speaking or writing is.”
—Kenneth G. Wilson (b. 1923)