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  3. For half a century, language experts have fallen into two camps, with most lexicographers and academic linguists on one side, an

For half a century, language experts have fallen into two camps, with most lexicographers and academic linguists on one side, an

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问题    For half a century, language experts have fallen into two camps, with most lexicographers and academic linguists on one side, and traditionalist writers and editors on the other. Should language experts aim to describe the state of the language accurately? Or should they prescribe how the language should be used? 【F1】Over the decades, the two sides have traded insults; prescribers are authoritarians in denial about the real world and describers are random with no standards.
   Two authors in the past two years have made clear that it is time to move on. Steven Pinker is a describer, a linguist and cognitive scientist. But two years ago he published "The Sense of Style", a guide to good writing that ended with a section of prescriptions: do this, not that. Now come two new books by Bryan Garner, a proud prescriptivist who reaches the same point from the opposite direction. Mr. Garner has tangled with Mr. Pinker and other descriptive linguists. His explicit aim is to tell people what they should and shouldn’t do. But he has also called himself a "descriptive prescriber", and this is clearer than ever before in the fourth edition of his masterly usage dictionary and a new book.
   The conflict between description and prescription should never have become so bitter. Mr. Pinker is a fine English stylist; it is no surprise that he has opinions on whether some words and formations are better than others. And Mr. Garner is a deeply read man and a lawyer, so it should come as no surprise that he gathers evidence. But both camps were ill-served by less thoughtful standard-bearers. 【F2】Many clueless prescribers really did push faulty rules: the ban on split infinitives, the ban on ending sentences with prepositions, the notion that "since" cannot mean "because" and so many more. These were passed down from teachers to students over generations. 【F3】When academic linguists began systematically investigating English by looking at texts and listening to speakers, they found that many such "rules" were anything but, and some began teasing the rule-promoters.
   In the pushback against a history of prejudices, prescription represented authority and tradition, and description represented democracy and progress. 【F4】But sensible writers on both sides have come to agree, however implicitly, that there is a variety, called standard English, with rules that can be found by looking at large volumes of the stuff. 【F5】The best prescribers are becoming ever more informed, and the describers more comfortable with the idea of giving people "right" and "wrong" judgments on standard English.
【F5】
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答案最优秀的规范性论者知道的越来越多，描述性论者也更加允许民众对标准英语进行“正确”或“错误”的判断。
解析 ①本句为and连接的并列简单句。两个分句分别介绍prescribers和describers的情况。②分句1为主系表结构。表语informed作形容词时意为“见闻广的，消息灵通的”。③分句2中的谓语是be comfortable with sth．结构，原文省略了be动词are，意为“对……感到舒服”。idea后的of介词短语说明idea的具体内容。
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