Help Us Diagram This Sentence by Donald Trump!

[Igel]

4. You've never transcribed real speech before, have you?

You're confusing competence and performance. They're different things and have different rules.

Once transcribed a kind of presentation my boss gave. He was incensed and wanted to know why I'd written down all kinds of ums, ohs, and ungrammatical sentences or part sentences. I didn't know the rules of transcription or the levels of transcription.

And that was him speaking from prepared notes.

Try transcribing Obama's unprepared comments some time. It'll be an eye-opener. Self-interruptions and other dysfluencies are common. (In fact, it turns out they are also sometimes part of the grammar: They often serve very clear purposes for both speaker and audience, right down to the ums and ohs. But if your view of "grammar" is prescriptive school grammar, then I guess there's just no room for that in your philosophy, Horatio.)