The Grumpy Grammarian

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The Logic of English:  Part One

The first in a series, this article is an overview of why our language is logical (and why it often seems not to be so).  Subsequent articles will examine how errors in usage and grammar represent at least as much a breakdown in logic as they do simple ignorance of the "rules."

People often remark that the English language is illogical, that all its rules of grammar and usage derive from some parallel universe that has nothing to do with the world we inhabit.  Students in English classes may even suspect that grammarians and English teachers arrived here by spaceship with the sole purpose of enslaving humanity by imposing restrictions on the use of language so that no mere mortal human could ever master it.

Nothing is further from the truth.  Like all languages, English evolved from the grunts and gestures of prehistoric hominids into an orderly and (for the most part) logical system of integrating symbols, sounds, and meaning – that is, symbolic language.  What we have arrived at, with many changes along the way, is a major tributary in the river of human language – English.  Though complex, it is supremely logical.  If it were not, it wouldn't work, and we would have abandoned it long ago.

This is not to say that everything about the English language is logical.  Like every language, it has its quirks.  Sometimes it takes considerable research to discover how these oddities developed and why they stuck.  Even then, we may find no definite answers.  However, as the language evolved, we accepted and adopted various practices until they became conventional – so natural to those of us who are born into the language that we hardly ever think about them (although others, who are born into different languages, may still be mystified).  A large portion of what we know about our native language is intuitive; the rest must be learned.  Once more, however, if there were not a certain logic to our language, we could not learn it at all.

Let us put aside, once and for all, one of the main arguments used to refute the hypothesis that English is logical.  The argument goes that there is nothing logical at all about English spelling.  It is, in a word, nuts.  Though much of it is phonetic (take the usual sound of each letter and apply it in sequence, as in c-a-t, d-o-g, or m-a-n), a huge proportion is not.  Just running through the sounds attributed to the "ough" letter combination – tough, through, cough, bought, bough, and even the now nearly archaic hiccough – illustrates how strange English spelling can be.  If all the "ough" combinations sounded as they do in the first (tough = tuff), the rest would sound like thruff, cuff, buff (twice), and hiccuff.  If we add to this that we have words that sound alike but are spelled differently and have different meanings (to, too, two), we appear to have a complete breakdown of logic.

We could cite thousands of other idiosyncracies in English to reinforce the argument that it is insanely illogical.  Richard Lederer has devoted entire books (among then, Crazy English) to pointing out the logic-defying and sometimes laughable peculiarities of English.  ("If the past tense of teach is taught, why isn't the past tense of preach praught?")  These quirks can be amusing or aggravating, depending on one's point of view, but they are not proof that the entire language is crazy.  Numerous as these examples are, the fundamental structure of English is governed by logical principles.  Exceptions to basic syntax (sentence structure or the relationships between and among words) are variations, not violations of logic.

We refer to the principles of grammar (including those that govern mechanics such as punctuation) as "rules."  I prefer to call them "conventions."  Perhaps there's no real difference, but I tend to think of a "rule" as something decreed, sometimes arbitrarily, by a higher authority, who gets to make these rules simply because he has the authority to do so.  I avoid the term rule because it may make those who are learning grammar think that the principles they are being taught were made up arbitrarily by English teachers or by grammarians who issue decrees from some remote castle in never-neverland ("Never do this, and never do that").  Let's be perfectly clear – grammarians do not create grammar; they study what already exists.

Grammar consists of conventions that users of a language have agreed to follow so that we may more easily understand each other.  Like all conventions, they may change over time, but the change is comparatively slow.  The conventions of grammar change much more slowly than, say, fashions in clothes do.  They are not subject to the shifting whims of popular taste, partly because we can't afford to invent a whole new language with every generation.  (We limit such popular and generational whims to the subset of language called slang, some of which makes its way into conventional language but most of which has its moment and then fades like any fad.)

One reason that grammatical conventions change as slowly as they do is that we have recognized the need to entrust the safekeeping of these conventions to educated people.  This is not very democratic, but even a democracy is run by chosen representatives who are supposed to look out for the interests of all.  (I dare say that the "custodians" of language do a better job of that than the politicians do.)  We realize that we cannot have each person set up his or her own set of conventions because that would lead to linguistic anarchy.  Nobody could understand anyone else, or we would live in small tribes of people who are unable communicate beyond their tribal boundaries.  Therefore, we grant authority to those who are most able to preserve the conventions and to pass them on – that is, those who have read extensively, have studied how the established language works, and understand its logic.  In short, we have the common sense to recognize that those who understand how something works are the best qualified to ensure that it keeps working.

That leads us to the logic of English (of any language, really, but here we are concerned only with English).  If English were completely capricious and devoid of logic, nobody – not even its educated caretakers – could begin to figure out how it works.  The simple matter of word order illustrates the point.  If we took all the words that constitute a sentence (a complete thought) and scrambled them in random order, the meaning would be hard to grasp.  The more words we needed to express the idea, the more confusung random arrangement would be.  Word order is one of the basic grammatical conventions – so basic, in fact, that native English speakers do not give it much conscious thought.

Quite logically, almost all English declarative sentences put the subject (the actor) before the verb; we place the words that complete the thought (objects, complements, and so on) after the verb.  We put articles before some nouns, modifiers as close as possible to the words they modify, linking words such as conjunctions and prepositions in the logical places to make the connections.  The sequence of subject —> verb —> rest of idea is what we have come to expect as a convention for expressing (and understanding) a declarative thought.  We may not think of something that basic as "grammar," but it is, and we have accepted it as the logical arrangement.

To be sure, variations exist.  Sometimes, even with declarative sentences, we invert the subject and verb for stylistic reasons ("Beyond those mountains is [verb] a valley [subject] of infinite beauty").  If the purpose of the sentence is to ask a question (interrogative), we place the verb before the subject or split the verb into two parts with the subject between them ("Are you coming tomorrow?").   If the purpose is to state a command or request (imperative), we omit the subject ("Do your homework!").  These are not illogical quirks but purposeful variations – it is perfectly logical to use a different structure when the purpose of the sentence is different.  [Note:  The logical principles that apply to any given language may, of course, apply to it and not to another language.  For example, despite their close family relationship, German and English differ because German tends to place verbs at the end of the sentence ("We to New York tomorrow are going").]

Each unit of thought, therefore, has a logical arrangement, the purpose of which is to advance comprehensibility.  Although acceptable variations exist (after all, we need to be flexible), violations of logical word order result in an incomprehensible muddle.  That is why those of us who teach grammar should put more emphasis on how ignoring the conventions of grammar prevents understanding and less emphasis on rules for the sake of rules.   It's a lot easier to "sell" the merits of correct grammar on the grounds that it helps us to be better understood than on the grounds that "these are the rules, and you better follow them."  Most of us want to be understood; many of us, especially the young, look upon rules as restraints to be stretched or broken.

Logical patterns also apply to the words that make up the units of thought.  We vary word forms and endings (commonly called inflections) according to the meaning or function of the word.  Inflections tell us when a noun is plural or when it is used in a possessive sense.  Changes in form (often of a highly irregular nature) do the same with pronouns.  Endings, changes in form, or the addition of auxiliaries provide important clues to the meaning of verbs and the time frame (tense) of the action that the verb describes.

Irregularities exist, of course.  Given the complexity of thought that language must convey, it cannot be simplistic.  Also, given that language has undergone changes over hundreds of years, some old patterns may remain in place while new ones emerge.  Consequently, we have some inconsistencies.  Not every noun forms its plural by adding s or -es.  We have both "regular" and "irregular" verbs (that's why the past tense of preach is preached while the past tense of teach is taught).  However, irregularities and inconsistencies in the grammar of a language do not mean that the language is devoid of logic.  There is still a logical foundation, and the variations that we have are exceptions that we have adopted by convention and consensus.

It's quite reasonable to argue that those who assert that English is utterly illogical are short-sightedly focusing on the irreguiarities and inconsistencies so that they are blind to the overwhelming number of logical patterns that do exist.  They cannot or will not, to use an old metaphor, see the forest for the trees.  They want language to be more like checkers, in which the pieces move in a relatively simple and straightforward manner, than like chess, in which the pieces have more flexibility.  The greater complexity of chess does not make it less logical than checkers, though the versatility of the chess pieces makes it a more difficult game to master.

Thus, we suggest that those who are most vocal about the absence of logic in English are sometimes looking for an excuse not to learn it well.  To return to the previous metaphor, they have no interest in chess as long as a very basic knowledge of checkers gets them by – and they probably are not even good at that.  Before we decide that something is too complicated and illogical for us to comprehend, we must determine whether such a conclusion is based on fact or on an unwillingness to meet the challenges of complexity.  Ironically, only those who thoroughly explore, study, and learn the English language will come to understand its fundamental logic.

READ PART TWO OF THIS COLUMN