Grammar Without Grammaticality: Growth and Limits of Grammatical Precision

Grammar is said to be about defining only the 'good' sentences of a language, implying that there are 'bad' sentences. Corpus data support a different model: individuals develop positive grammatical habits of growing refinement, but nothing is ever ruled out. The contrasting models entail contrasting pictures of human nature; grammatical theory is not value-neutral but has an ethical dimension.