Language Readings

What did Sapir mean when he said "all grammars leak"?Answer (1 of 3): I wrote this: I’m pretty sure Sapir meant by “grammar” a set of rules concocted by linguists to describe a natural language. And what he meant by the statement is that we never get it exactly right. But then I went and looked up where he said it. It’s in a 1921 paper titled “An...

"All grammars leak": How modern use and misuse are changing the English language | OUPblogAnthropologist Edward Sapir once wrote, “Unfortunately, or luckily, no language is tyrannically consistent. All grammars leak.” Sapir was talking about the irregularities of language. For me, this leakiness is especially evident in what I think of as doppelgrammar words.

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