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Grammaticality in English language teaching is treated as a binary property of sentences. This action research study puts that assumption under test. Eleven literature-trained teachers at an Indian tertiary institution judged ten sentences of sharply different formal status. The set ranged from Indian English contact features and a purely collocational deviation to an unparsable word string, and it included three passives with retained bare-NP complements that were standard in earlier English and that C. T. Onions records. Five items drew an identical profile: eleven rejections, no acceptances. Those five include the sole item with no possible parse and one historically standard sentence. Ninety-six of 110 judgements were rejections. Interviews show that judgement rested on familiarity and on inherited correction, not on structure. The paper names this response space flat grammaticality and traces its consequences for classroom correction and teacher education.
Mr. Sounak Das. “Banished the Realm: Obsolescence, Ill-Formedness, and Flat Grammaticality in Multilingual English Language Teaching.” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 17, no. 4, August 2026, pp. 530-553. DOI, https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n4.32.
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