Come now. You're not really that literal-minded, are you?
I don't always take things literally, but I do it more often than most people. I just follow the grammar rules as I understand them, and arrive at a meaning accordingly. That's what I did the first time I heard someone say she missed not doing something (specifically, my wife saying, "I miss not seeing her."). I knew the meaning of miss; I knew the meaning of not seeing. Putting the two together, I figured that I miss not seeing her meant that my wife used to not see someone; now does see that person, and longs for the days when she didn't see her. I was wrong; it meant the same as I miss seeing her. Solution: I recognize a new rule, to the effect that miss not can mean the same thing as miss.
When I was younger, I would get confused by meanings that didn't seem to match up with what I knew; these days, it's not such a problem. But I still am aware of alternative interpretations of utterances, and comment on the funny ones. See these posts on the blog for more.
OK, why are you so literal-minded?
I don't know. Maybe my parents? I don't necessarily mean genetically, though it's possible (see next question). I learned at least partially by example from my mom and dad. I remember Mom seeing a commercial for some sugary cereal that concluded with "Part of this complete breakfast!" The complete breakfast shown included toast, bacon, milk, and orange juice. Mom said, in the same intonation as the commercial voiceover, "Next to this complete breakfast!" I'd seen commercials like that and wondered to myself why I'd have to eat so much other stuff along with the cereal, but it was Mom who latched onto the words in the commercial and commented on them.
Do you have Asperger syndrome, or something?
I've never been diagnosed as such, but after my son was diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder, I wondered. See this post on the blog.
Doesn't your literal-mindedness annoy people?
Sometimes. Luckily, my wife accepts it, and my family when I grew up was a bit on the literal-minded side, anyway. In my freshman year in college, before I was aware of my literal-mindedness, I remember one guy in my dorm asking me during a conversation, "Do you annoy yourself, too?"
Has your literal-mindedness gotten you into trouble?
It's led to some misunderstandings and arguments, but nothing too bad that I can recall. Except for that one time in fourth grade (see this post again).
Don't you hate when people say literally when they mean figuratively?
You bet I do! I don't know why I should object to this any more than I object to very, really and truly to mean "to a great extent" when they all started off with a meaning of "true" or "real", but I do. Maybe it's because literally still has its original meaning alongside the meaning of "to a great extent." There's an entire blog dedicated to literally abuse. For a history of the usage of literally, see this article on Slate by Jesse Sheidlower.
You're a linguist? How many languages do you speak?
Um, fluently, you mean? Just English.
Enough to get by with OK, and read pretty well? French.
Enough to get by with pretty badly, and read somewhat? Spanish.
Enough to read, if I have a dictionary by my side? Latin, Ancient Greek, Sanskrit, Old English.
A few phrases here and there? Russian, Japanese, Chinese.
What is linguistics, anyway?
I'll let the Linguistic Society of America answer that. (See also their introductions to specific areas of linguistics here.)
How did you get interested in linguistics?
It didn't start in elementary school, when I lived in El Paso, Texas, and many Spanish-speaking kids were in my class, and Spanish was a regular part of the curriculum. I hated Spanish! It's too bad that I had such a bad attitude toward it at the time when I would have found it easiest to pick up. Even so, I do remember noticing a difference between Spanish and English (aside from the different words). We would sometimes stand in a circle and each student would have a turn to say to the one on their right, "Yo me llamo [NAME]. ¿Cómo te llamas tú?" (My name is NAME. What's your name?) It was an easy exercise, until one day I suddently realized: In the first sentence we were saying llam-o; in the second one we were saying llam-as. Why? What was going on? But instead of letting that question pique my curosity enough to try to solve the mystery, I just got confused and frustrated.
During my last year of elementary school, however, I was looking at one of my dinosaur books and started paying closer attention to the English translations of the dinosaur names than I had before. Triceratops means 'three-horned face'? OK, so the tri- is the 'three' part, and the ceratops part must mean 'horned face.' So which part means 'horned' and which part means 'face'? Hey, wait: rhinoceros means "nose horn", so the cer- part must mean 'horn'. I started making a list of all the word roots I could identify this way, starting with my dinosaur books and then moving to other words as I thought of them. By the end of the summer I had five or six handwritten pages of what I called "Latin" words. My friend Greg was so impressed that he asked for a copy of the list to show his biology teacher. I sent one to him, and a few weeks later he wrote back to me: "Half of your 'Latin' roots turned out to be Greek!"
Despite that embarrassment, I still liked puzzling out the common meaning of word roots that occurred in different words, and I'd say that was when I started to get interested in linguistics. Several things happened during high school that magnified this interest:
I could say more, but that wouldn't be how I got interested in linguistics anymore; it would be stuff I did after that happened.
What are your favorite ambiguous song lyrics?
Check the blog posts under this category.
You're one of those linguistic liberals, aren't you?
You mean one of those relativists, for whom nothing is ever wrong? No! There are plenty of sentences that are definitely ungrammatical English; for example, Kids of sit addition over sometimes can which mitochondrial.
But what about, say, You shouldn't have did that? Am I seriously going to claim that that sentence is good, grammatical English? Well, before I answer that, let's take another sentence: Tu n'as pas du faire ça. Is that grammatical English? Of course not! But that doesn't mean it's ungrammatical. It's perfectly grammatical French. If someone said, "Tu n'as pas du faire ça," you wouldn't correct them and say, "No, it's You shouldn't have done that." Conclusion: Something that's ungrammatical as English can be grammatical in some other language.
Yes, but You shouldn't have did that isn't some other language. It's English, and it's ungrammatical. Right? Well, the assumption here is that English is only one language. It's actually many different languages. How many? Theoretically, as many as there are speakers of English. Of course, these languages are much, much more like each other than any of them is to French, but don't let that fool you. They're different languages, and though they have many grammar rules in common, there are areas where the rules are different.
Let's step aside for another analogy. Golf balls and cell phones are different things. You wouldn't expect a golf ball to be able to make calls or receive text messages, and you wouldn't try to hit a cell phone onto the fairway. How about golf balls and ping-pong balls? They're a lot more alike: they're both small, round, and (usually) white. But you still wouldn't expect to a ping-pong ball to be dense and covered with dimples, or complain that a golf ball needs to be smaller and hollow.
You shouldn't have done that and Tu n'as pas du faire ça are like the golf ball and the cell phone. You shouldn't have done that and You shouldn't have did that are like the golf ball and the ping-pong ball. They're both recognizable as the same basic thing (English, or a ball intended for a kind of game), but still different. In the case of the English sentences, they're sentences from different varieties of English. You shouldn't have done that is grammatical in one variety, which we'll call Standard English, and is not grammatical in the other variety, which we can call Some-Other-Kind English. You shouldn't have did that is not grammatical in Standard English, but is grammatical in Some-Other-Kind English. And Kids of sit addition over sometimes can which mitochondrial is not grammatical in either kind of English.
Isn't that a cop-out? You shouldn't have did that is grammatical, just in a nonstandard kind of English? Shoot, if we're going to say that, can't we just say that any sentence that's not "good English" is grammatical in the English of whoever said it? No. There are plenty of sentences spoken by young children, or speakers of other languages who are just learning English, that will be ungrammatical in any variety of English. And even native speakers of any variety of English can and do make mistakes. The tricky part is figuring out which odd sentences are really mistakes, and which ones consistently follow a rule that is different from the rule(s) of Standard English.
But still, you may object, we're left with lots of sentences like You shouldn't have did that that I say are grammatical in nonstandard versions of English, with potentially millions of versions of English out there. That's ridiculous, isn't it? Don't we need to have one version that everyone learns so we can all understand each other? Yes, it's useful and convenient to have one version that everyone learns. That's called the standard version, and I will agree that every English speaker should learn it, including the fact that You shouldn't have did that is ungrammatical in Standard English. But just because you learn Standard English, why should you have to renounce other languages that you're lucky enough to have grown up with? You can know Standard English and still speak French when you're among French speakers (if you know French), and whatever nonstandard version of English you picked up from your family and peers as you grew up when you're speaking informally with them. Can't you?
No, you can't, some might object. If you get in the habit of saying You shouldn't have did that, you'll end up saying it when you need to be using Standard English. Well, yes, if you're not careful. And if you get too used to talking loudly when you're at a sporting event, you might accidentally talk too loudly when you're at a funeral, so everyone should always talk quietly, right?
So in short: No, not just anything goes! Grammar mistakes do exist. But the things you do all the time in your language probably are grammatical -- in your version of the language. And you should be proud to be able to speak your version of the language, and be even prouder if you can also master the standard version, and be able to communicate with that many more people in that many more situations.