I'm a lexicographer.
I make dictionaries.
And my job as a lexicographer
is to try to put all the words
possible into the dictionary
My job is not to decide what a word is
that is your job
everybody who speaks english
decides together what's a word and what's not a word
every language is just a group of people
who agree to understand each other
now sometimes when people
are trying to decide if a word is good or bad
they don't really have a good reason
they say something like,
"because, grammar!"
(Laughter).
and i don't actually care about grammar too much
don't tell anyone
but the word grammar--
actually, there are two kinds of grammar
there's the kind of grammar that kind of lives inside your brain
if you're a native speaker of a language or a good speaker of a language
it's the unconscious rules that you follow
when you speak that language
and this is what you learn
when you learn an language as a child
here's an example
this is a wog
right, it's a wug
Now there is another one
there are two of these
there are two
(audience): wugs
exactly! you know how to make
the plural of wug
that rule lives in your brain
you never had to be taught this rule
you just understand it
this is a experiment that was invented
by a professor
at boston college
named jean burco0gleesin
back in 1958
so we've been talking about this for a long time
now these kinds of natural
rules that exist in your brain
there's not like traffic laws
there more like laws of nature
and nobody has to remind you to obey
a law of nature, right?
when you leave the house in the morning
your mom doesn't say,
"hey honey, it's going to be cold
take a hoodie, don't forget to obey the law of gravity"
no body says this
laughter
now there are other rules
that are more about manners than they are about nature
so you can think of like
a word is like a hat
once you know how hats work
nobody has to tell you
don't wear hats on your feet
what they have to tell you is
can you wear hats inside
who gets to wear a hat
what are the kinds of hats you get to wear
those are more of the second kind of grammar
that linguists often call usage
as opposed togrammar
now, sometimes people use
this kind of rules-based grammar
to discourage people from
making up words
and i think that is, well, stupid
so for example,
people are always telling you,
"be creative, make music
do art, invent things
science and technology"
but when it comes to words,
they're like
"don't!"