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Linguistics & Grammar vocabulary · Core Concepts

Prescriptive

Meaning in linguistics & grammar, with examples

/prɪˈskrɪptɪv/adjectiveCommon term

In linguistics & grammar, prescriptive means: Describes an approach that tells people how they should speak or write according to rules of 'correct' usage, instead of describing how they actually use the language.

In Turkish: kuralcı

How it is used

Usually contrasted with descriptive. Modern linguistics is descriptive, while style guides, usage manuals and some school grammars are prescriptive. The noun is prescriptivism, and its supporters are prescriptivists.

Example sentences

  1. 'Never end a sentence with a preposition' is a prescriptive rule that most linguists reject.

  2. A descriptive grammar records 'Who did you see?', while a prescriptive one insists on 'Whom'.

Common collocations

  • prescriptive grammar
  • prescriptive rule
  • prescriptive approach
  • descriptive versus prescriptive
  • grammarThe system of rules that shows how words change their form and combine into phrases and sentences in a language; also a book that describes these rules.
  • standard languageThe variety of a language used in education, government, the media and dictionaries, and generally accepted as the norm for formal writing.
  • linguisticsThe scientific study of human language: how sounds, words and sentences are structured, how meaning works, and how language is learned, used and changes over time.
  • corpusA large, organized collection of real written or spoken texts, stored on a computer and used to study how language is actually used; the plural is corpora.

More terms: Core Concepts

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