Phaedrus
Banned
- Joined
- Jul 19, 2012
- Member Type
- English Teacher
- Native Language
- English
- Home Country
- United States
- Current Location
- United States
I think that when we are discussing word classes/parts of speech, or indeed any aspect of English grammar, it's probably best to start with words/phrases/sentences that have actually been produced by native speakers.
Unfortunately, that approach would rule out most arguments from ungrammaticality, so we'd have to throw out an untold number of findings from modern syntax. Say goodbye to Huddleston and Pullum's The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language and to much of Quirk et al. Both of those grammars feature sentences that the grammarians themselves invented for the sake of grammatical analysis. At least we'd still have Jespersen and Poutsma. They stuck to sentences actually produced by native speakers.
But, then, if I am a native speaker, as I am, and I produce a sentence for the sake of analysis, is it not a sentence actually produced by a native speaker?