Why sticklers for grammar really do take errors to heart

EVEN the sound of bad grammar can make language lovers wince.

And now experts have revealed it does cause indeed a physical reaction – and even affects our heart rate.

Instances of bad grammar can include mixing up tenses within a sentence, confusing the singular and plural, using a double negative or misusing a comma.

Examples include ‘we don’t need no education’, ‘I ate porridge for breakfast and drink milk’ or ‘Anna and Mike is going skiing’.

Researchers from the University of Birmingham recruited 41 British English-speaking adults who listened to 40 speech samples, half of which contained grammatical errors. Their heart rates were recorded throughout.

The more errors a person heard, the more their heartbeat showed signs of stress. The team said such errors appear to activate a ‘fight or flight’ response in the body. They explained that knowledge of a first language is largely implicit and doesn’t require much thought. And this could mean that our body reacts to bad grammar even if we cannot pinpoint exactly what is wrong.

Professor Dagmar Divjak, principal investigator of the study, said: ‘Learning your mother tongue did not require you to sit and study.

‘You will find it hard to pin down what exactly is right or wrong about a sentence and, even worse, explain why.’

The report, in the Journal of Neurolinguistics, said it had ‘confirmed a cardiovascular response to grammatical violations’. This was, it said, ‘a new dimension of the intricate relationship between physiology and cognition’.