I tried submitting this as a comment, but it was disproved (even though another comment with incorrect information was approved *grumble, grumble*).
I wouldn't say this is accurate. Descriptive linguists certainly have methods of determining if a sentence is a valid or well-formed construction in a certain language, it's just that we don't think much of arbitrary rules invented by self-appointed language experts.D.A.R.E. wrote:Speaking as one of the linguistically-inclined peeps of the Board, I think you're actually looking for an English major rather than a linguist. Linguistics isn't concerned with the correctness of a construction so much as the process behind producing the construction.
For example, if you asked a descriptive linguist if the phrase "мне нравится" was a valid English construction, they would say no, based on the fact that it's not something English speakers produce or understand.
Likewise, if you present the construction "to me it pleases itself," a descriptive linguist will still be able to determine that it's not a valid English construction, even if it's more comprehensible than the first one. (How well a phrase is understood can be tested experimentally, or simply by trusting one's own judgment as a native speaker. How frequently a construction is produced can be tested by searching a relevant language corpus.)
These types of tests can proceed all the way to the type of construction mentioned in the original question, which is close enough to being a valid (American) English construction that the reader thinks it might be a dialectical issue.
Again, descriptive linguists absolutely have tools for testing the validity of a sentence construction (with the understanding that more precise terms like "valid" and "well-formed" are likely to be preferred to "correct").katydid wrote:And D.A.R.E., there are indeed some linguists who are concerned with the correctness of a construction. They are called prescriptive linguists, and tend to be old-fashioned. My linguistics professors spent many a happy hour mocking them in class, so clearly they aren't taken seriously.