"There was two Mini Cooper parked in front of my house", or "there WERE two mini coopers"?

@JTT,

I don't disagree that language is marvelous and complex. It is no accident that esoteric philosophy has become so intertwined with linguistics. Humans obviously have an amazing innate language ability. (There has been some recent very intriguing research regarding the FOXP2 allele linked to some of this innateness). I don't expect YOU to have a complete understanding of genetics and protein expression to talk about language innateness, however.

It is more clear to me now, that you disagree with specific prescriptivist teachings.
Well then lets hear 'em.
What's the baby?
What's the bathwater?

2 Replies

@MattDavis,

Quote:

I don't expect YOU to have a complete understanding of genetics and protein expression to talk about language innateness, however.

I would expect ME to have a pretty thorough understanding of genetics and protein expression to talk about genetics and protein expression.

Quote:

Well then lets hear 'em.
What's the baby?
What's the bathwater?

Again, way, way, way too wide a request. There are ample discussions of these prescriptions here in the miserably archived A2K vault.

Let's try this. Pick any "rule" that you have learned in K-12 or from your friends/associates/parents/etc and then we may have a go.

But be prepared for the thread watchers who will come running in to yell at you, "Troll, troll"; "you're off topic"; "this is my thread"; ... .

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@MattDavis,

I don't think Wikileaks and Hacking are ethically equivalent.

I agree that the first attempts to justify itself on the basis of a naive view of "the democracy of information" and its naivity lies in the fact that the availability of information can have an unpredictable impact on a culture for whom "democracy" is de facto idealistic (I am thinking of "informational"rabble rousing episodes in the Arab Spring).

Hacking is just plain willful iconoclasm and vandalism usually for adolescent gratification, if not for criminal purposes.

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@JTT,

Is this a specific enough question?

How should the English language handle the relative placement of [noun],[verb], [adjective/adverbs] within a sentence?

English from my limited understanding seems more flexible than many other languages in this positioning; making English more difficult from an ESL point of view.

1 Reply

@fresco,

Quote:

And have you not yourself argued for the ubiquity of such structure ?

If I have I hadn't thought of it quite that way.

Is this it--that JT's eccentricty is on a par with the brother's and if Mother sees it she will just die from embarrassment? The Hopi dress is irrelevant. It might just as easy have been Father Christmas or an ostrich outfit from the Fancy Dress shop.

It's a Jewish mother joke? Orthodox? Am I anywhere near?

I like real intellectual movies like Laurel and Hardy or Emmerdale. (Has Chastity met her match?) Cary Grant. Forced ones I'm not so keen on.

One of the problems with soaps is that the writers are a bit prescriptivist, being fairly well educated, and the language of the sort of real life people who man those stations in the class hierarchy they are depicting is not very authentic. Especially in the conflict scenes which there are far too many of.

1 Reply

@JTT,

Should:

I slowly walk down the long hall.
-or-
I walk slowly down the hall long.
-or-
I walk down slowly the hall long.
-or-
The hall long slowly walk I down.

[plus many other permutations.]

What rule or which rules should be prescribed for deciphering meaning out of these sentences. (Assuming any such meaning exists.)

1 Reply

@MattDavis,

Quote:

Humans obviously have an amazing innate language ability.

There's nothing "amazing" about it Matt. What's amazing is what has been done with this ability in the last few thousand years by formalising language to carry more and more refined meanings. JT will have us back grunting and squeaking.

We humans have a jumping ability. By refining that ability we have a world record of 8.95 m (29 ft 4 1⁄2 in). Which is pretty amazing. The jumping ability itself is a natural outcome of evolution. Or design if you prefer. Like everything else.

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@spendius,

I agree that culture/society has shaped and in many ways enhanced the innate language abilities of humans.
I do remember hearing about some very interesting cases of natural language development among deaf children in (I think it was) Uruguay. It was pretty amazing the amount of semantic meaning they developed "naturally", which followed very dissimilar semantic "rules" than the native verbal language of the surrounding culture.
My mother is a ASL interpreter, so I have some familiarity with the differences among sign languages and verbal languages. The natural sign language development was something of a rude awakening to those who felt that a language must be developed for the deaf. Apparently they do a pretty good job of developing it themselves.

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@spendius,

Could be "a Jewish mother joke" .Sellers was half Jewish via his mother and I think his character was a Jewish lawyer.(Echoes of Woody Alan's mother killing herself when he married a non-Jew)
The Hopi garb was specifically stated as "Hopi funereal" thereby playing with the concept of "appropriateness". I can imagine a JT class lesson aimed (well meaningly) at showing slides illustrating cultural diversity being swamped by the laughter of his teenage audience as they socially vie with each other to be king of the witty comment.

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@MattDavis,

Quote:

Is this a specific enough question?

How should the English language handle the relative placement of [noun],[verb], [adjective/adverbs] within a sentence?

It is, Matt.

Exactly how it does.

1 Reply

@JTT,

Very helpful. Could you maybe put that lesson on a CD for my non-native English speaking friends. They would sure like to get some work in the US and UK.

1 Reply

@MattDavis,

Quote:

Should:

I slowly walk down the long hall.
-or-
I walk slowly down the hall long.
-or-
I walk down slowly the hall long.
-or-
The hall long slowly walk I down.

[plus many other permutations.]

What rule or which rules should be prescribed for deciphering meaning out of these sentences. (Assuming any such meaning exists.)

There's no need to prescribe anything.

Quote:

To a scientist, the fundamental fact of human language is its sheer improbability. Most objects in the universe -- rocks, trees, worms, cows, cars -- cannot talk. Even in humans, the utterances in a language are an infinitesimal fraction of the noises people's mouths are capable of making. I can arrange a combination of words that explains how octopuses make love or how to build an atom bomb in your basement; rearrange the words in even the most minor way, and the result is a sentence with a different meaning or, most likely of all, word salad. How are we to account for this miracle? What would it take to build a device that could duplicate human language?

...

So when a scientist considers all the high-tech mental machinery needed to arrange words into ordinary sentences, prescriptive rules are, at best, inconsequential little decorations. The very fact that they have to be drilled shows that they are alien to the natural workings of the language system. One can choose to obsess over prescriptive rules, but they have no more to do with human language than the criteria for judging cats at a cat show have to do with mammalian biology.

1 Reply

@MattDavis,

Quote:

Very helpful. Could you maybe put that lesson on a CD for my non-native English speaking friends. They would sure like to get some work in the US and UK.

It's far far from being that simple, Matt. Lessons like that don't help ESLs learn English anymore than they help native speakers learn English.

2 Replies

@spendius,

Quote:

There's nothing "amazing" about it Matt. What's amazing is what has been done with this ability in the last few thousand years by formalising language to carry more and more refined meanings. JT will have us back grunting and squeaking.

That's the thanks I get for trying to wean you away from the teat of ignorance you seem intent on sucking, Spendi.

Tsk tsk tsk.

Which one of your style manuals did you say you wanted to compare to CGEL?

Your lack of focus rivals that of Frank Apisa. Not at all a good situation to be in, Spendius.

1 Reply

@JTT,

So is it your contention that there should be no attempt at translation for a non-native speaker.
The non-native speaker already has a language which they speak and in some sense think in.
Is the only way to learn the new language by immersion?
Learn the new language "as babe in the world".
The world of non-prescriptive English.

1 Reply

@JTT,

JTT wrote:

Quote:
Very helpful. Could you maybe put that lesson on a CD for my non-native English speaking friends. They would sure like to get some work in the US and UK.

It's far far from being that simple, Matt. Lessons like that don't help ESLs learn English anymore than they help native speakers learn English.

That's a matter of perspective.
It's about that simple if you want to get a job at Google.
Not that simple if you want to wax poetic about a subject.

1 Reply

@MattDavis,

Quote:

So is it your contention that there should be no attempt at translation for a non-native speaker.

Did I say that?

Quote:

The non-native speaker already has a language which they speak and in some sense think in.

That they do. To effectively become a new speaker, those connections with the mother tongue shouldn't be encouraged.

Quote:

Is the only way to learn the new language by immersion?

Not the only way, but certainly the best way.

Quote:

The world of non-prescriptive English.

The world of English.

1 Reply

@MattDavis,

Quote:

That's a matter of perspective.
It's about that simple if you want to get a job at Google.
Not that simple if you want to wax poetic about a subject.

I think that your understanding of teaching a language is as full as your understanding of the issues surrounding prescriptivism/descriptivism.

Since there are billions of possible permutations do you consider it wise to show ESLs all the impossible ones as a way to get them speaking the possible ones?

1 Reply

@JTT,

Matt wrote:

So is it your contention that there should be no attempt at translation for a non-native speaker.

JTT wrote:

Did I say that?

Sorry I meant for that sentence to end in a '?' not a '.'
It was meant to clarify your position.

Matt wrote:

The non-native speaker already has a language which they speak and in some sense think in.

JTT wrote:

That they do. To effectively become a new speaker, those connections with the mother tongue shouldn't be encouraged.

I find this an odd over-generalization, which will depend on the degree of some nebulous (in my mind) concept of fluency. How functional do you aim to be? Do you plan on using English as your primary language, or just the lingua franca for your global profession.

Matt wrote:

Is the only way to learn the new language by immersion?

JTT wrote:

Not the only way, but certainly the best way.

Again, obviously "best" will require some agreement about what the value is.
What is one asking English to do for them.

Matt wrote:

The world of non-prescriptive English.

JTT wrote:

The world of English.

Do most people who use a language really care if it's definition is a descriptive or prescriptive one?
You seem to rail against prescriptivism from some social justice platform, but you gloss over some very real pragmatic "on the ground" social realities. I have a lot sympathy for your position actually. It is an idealism. You could, I think, make a strong case if you grounded it in some factual evidence. Evidence of social ills.

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@JTT,

Quote:

To a scientist, the fundamental fact of human language is its sheer improbability.

There you go JT. Quoting us something that is sheer tripe. How can something be improbable when it happened. No scientist would say such an idiotic thing.

Quote:

Most objects in the universe -- rocks, trees, worms, cows, cars -- cannot talk.

Blimey!! Who is this expert addressing?

Quote:

Even in humans, the utterances in a language are an infinitesimal fraction of the noises people's mouths are capable of making.

Infinitesimal is a bit of a stretch.

Octopussies don't make love. They copulate. And there is no possibility of anybody building an atom bomb in an ordinary basement or even one under a palace. So there's no chance of explaining how to do either.

Where is the miracle? There is no possibility of building a device which could duplicate human language.

Quote:

So when a scientist considers all the high-tech mental machinery needed to arrange words into ordinary sentences, prescriptive rules are, at best, inconsequential little decorations.

How on earth can a scientist come to such a definite conclusion on the basis of the gibberish which preceded it?

Quote:

The very fact that they have to be drilled shows that they are alien to the natural workings of the language system.

So also with techniques of husbandry, metal working and energy delivery systems. And much else. We are drilled now how to copulate.

Quote:

but they have no more to do with human language than the criteria for judging cats at a cat show have to do with mammalian biology.

Never been to a cat show eh?

You, JT, totally failed to deal with the S&W quote in that way. You contented yourself with some evasive blather about me trying to impress people. People have a choice whether to be impressed or not.

Would you prefer chlorine to replace oxygen in the atmosphere?

0 Replies

"There was two Mini Cooper parked in front of my house", or "there WERE two mini coopers"?

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