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Prescriptive approaches to language are often contrasted with the descriptive approach of academic linguistics, which observes and records how language is actually used (while avoiding passing judgment). [6] [7] The basis of linguistic research is text analysis and field study, both of which are descriptive activities. Description may also ...
Linguistic description is often contrasted with linguistic prescription, [8] which is found especially in education and in publishing. [9] [10]As English-linguist Larry Andrews describes it, descriptive grammar is the linguistic approach which studies what a language is like, as opposed to prescriptive, which declares what a language should be like.
For example, the following footnote from his grammar is, in turn, descriptive and prescriptive: "Whose is by some authors made the Possessive Case of which, and applied to things as well as persons; I think, improperly." [5]
This method of teaching is divided into the descriptive: grammatical analysis, and the prescriptive: the articulation of a set of rules. Following an analysis of the context in which it is to be used, one grammatical form or arrangement of words will be determined to be the most appropriate. It helps in learning the grammar of foreign languages.
Descriptive ethics, also known as comparative ethics, is the study of people's beliefs about morality. [1] It contrasts with prescriptive or normative ethics , which is the study of ethical theories that prescribe how people ought to act, and with meta-ethics , which is the study of what ethical terms and theories actually refer to.
A prescriptive or normative statement is one that evaluates certain kinds of words, ... to mean relating to a descriptive standard: doing what is normally done or ...
Sometimes the same dictionary can be descriptive in some domains and prescriptive in others. For example, according to Ghil'ad Zuckermann, the Oxford English-Hebrew Dictionary is "at war with itself": whereas its coverage (lexical items) and glosses (definitions) are descriptive and colloquial, its vocalization is prescriptive.
The formal study of grammar is an important part of children's schooling from a young age through advanced learning, though the rules taught in schools are not a "grammar" in the sense that most linguists use, particularly as they are prescriptive in intent rather than descriptive.