"there" is a pronoun or adv?
Hiroshi Kakeda
when it express existence.
But others(such as Oxford or my Japanese English dictionaries) say
"there"
is an adv.
I want to know which one is correct or reason why pronoun or adv.
Thank you,
Mark Knipfer
The word "there" can be adverb, pronoun, or a noun.
Adverb usage:
The car is there.
Pronoun usage:
There is a book.
Noun usage:
Get away from there.
--
Mark Knipfer
Internet Addict
Neil Coffey
<URL:mailto:thea...@onenet.com> wrote:
> Pronoun usage:
>
> There is a book.
That's debatable. A Chomskyan would argue that it's an adverb that
happens, in the transformation from deep structure to surface structure,
to be placed in the 'slot' of the subject. Remember that 'a book' is
still functionally the subject of the above sentence (the verb agrees
with it in number).
> Noun usage:
>
> Get away from there.
What criterea are you using that tell you that 'there' is a pronoun
in "There is a book" but a noun in "Get away from there"?
Neil
Gary Williams, Business Services Accounting
<khir...@sj.bigger.net> writes:
>Some dictionaries(such as Webster or Heritage) say "there" is a pronoun
>when it express existence.
>But others(such as Oxford or my Japanese English dictionaries) say
>"there"
>is an adv.
>I want to know which one is correct or reason why pronoun or adv.
I think the facts on which your question is based simply illustrate that
classification by part-of-speech is at times an arbitrary thing.
English demands _something_ before the verb in a simple declarative sentence.
Consider the sentence "There are seven continents." No meaning is added by
"there"; it is simply filling the role of the _something_ that has to go in the
subject slot in the sentence. Since subjects are either nouns or pronouns,
some of the dictionaries have classified "there" as a pronoun.
Now consider the sentence "There are seven birds on that wire." One might
analyze "there" as simply filling the subject slot, and thus a pronoun; but one
might analyze the sentence as an inversion of "seven birds are there on that
wire", in which case "there" would be an adverb.
Does it make any difference whether "there" is a pronoun or adverb?
Neil, in your judgment does classification by part-of-speech serve any useful
purpose?
Gary Williams
shorts...@my-dejanews.com
> Neil
In "Get away from there," "there" is an adverb of place. In "There is/there
are," it functions as a pronoun as it indicates existence; it is, however,
best avoided completely.
For the criteria of authority, check the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary
English.
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Neil Coffey
Gary Williams, Business Services Accounting <URL:mailto:will...@ahecas.AHEC.EDU> wrote:
> Does it make any difference whether "there" is a pronoun or adverb?
Yes. A pronoun is a constituent which functions syntactically as
a noun phrase. An adverb is an invariable constituent which introduces
no new sub-phrase. OK, that's technical info that doesn't matter too
much, but the point is, they belong to different categories, with
different behaviour, and behavioural criterea defining these
categories are identifiable and attributable to one or other of
these words.
> Neil, in your judgment does classification by part-of-speech serve any useful
> purpose?
Yes. It's clear that language organises itself into different
lexical categories (I prefer this term to 'parts of speech'). Members
of each category have particular, identifiable syntactic and
morphological behaviour.
On the other hand, it is also clear that language does _not_ organise
itself into lexical categories accordining to criteria such as
"indicates existence".
Neil
Neil Coffey
<URL:mailto:shorts...@my-dejanews.com> wrote:
> In "Get away from there," "there" is an adverb of place.
We might argue about how necessary the 'of place' bit is, or whether
this is a syntactical critereon, but by and large this seems a reasonable
analysis.
> In "There is/there
> are," it functions as a pronoun as it indicates existence
This, however, not to put too fine a point on it, is complete gibberish.
Just sit back and think a moment about the line of logic you're
trying to adopt here. Basically what you're saying is "The function
of this word is to indicate existence; therefore it is/functions as
a pronoun". Now, first of all, what do you actually mean by "indicates
existence"? In the sentence "There's a man", why does 'there' indicate
existence but not 'is' or 'a man'? And what makes you think that words will
be so categorised that there's a category whose defining critereon
(or one of its defining criterea) is "indicates existence"? You've got
to admit, "indicates existence" isn't a particularly well defined
critereon, and is a critereon which has absolutely bugger all to do
with syntax.
Perhaps what I'd need to know is, in the statement:
"In '...', it functions as a pronoun AS it indicates existence"
what exactly you mean by:
'functions as'
'pronoun'
'indicates existence'
And how you arrive at this magical 'AS'.
> For the criteria of authority, check the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary
> English.
Any particular reason for choosing this as your "criteria of authority"?
Is "it functions as a pronoun as it indicates existence" one of
their "authoritative" judgements?
Neil
Ranjit Mathews
> English demands _something_ before the verb in a simple declarative sentence.
> Consider the sentence "There are seven continents." No meaning is added by
> "there"; it is simply filling the role of the _something_ that has to go in the
> subject slot in the sentence.
Good observation. In my language (Malayalam), the above sentence would be "seven
continents are" and the sentence below would be "that wire on seven birds are".
Neil Coffey
<URL:mailto:ran...@austin.ibm.com> wrote:
> Good observation. In my language (Malayalam), the above sentence would be "seven
> continents are" and the sentence below would be "that wire on seven birds are".
The other thing to note, of course, is that in languages where
the subject slot is required to be filled, there may be a different
range of "fillers". The most common filler in English is 'there':
*Came floods.
There came floods.
though other things are sometimes possible:
In 1956 came floods.
Neil
Gary Williams, Business Services Accounting
Neil Coffey <neil....@st-annes.ox.ac.uk> writes:
>> Neil, in your judgment does classification by part-of-speech serve any useful
>> purpose?
>
>Yes. It's clear that language organises itself into different
>lexical categories (I prefer this term to 'parts of speech'). Members
>of each category have particular, identifiable syntactic and
>morphological behaviour.
OK; I'll buy that. Let me narrow the question. In a sentence like, "There are
seven continents," does it make any difference whether we classify "there" as a
pronoun or as an adverb. Is it really going to act like nouns usually act, or
act like adverbs usually act, when it is part of a structure that is really
pretty much an idiom?
Gary Williams
Gary Williams, Business Services Accounting
<neil....@st-annes.ox.ac.uk> writes:
>The other thing to note, of course, is that in languages where
>the subject slot is required to be filled, there may be a different
>range of "fillers". The most common filler in English is 'there':
Might "filler" be a lexical category?
Gary Williams
Robert Lieblich
>
I suspect that it is, whether so labeled or not. The customary term for
"There" and "It" as fillers at the beginning of sentences is
"expletive." These are not the expletives deleted from the Nixon tapes.
Bob Lieblich
Neil Coffey
Gary Williams, Business Services Accounting <URL:mailto:will...@ahecas.AHEC.EDU> wrote:
> OK; I'll buy that. Let me narrow the question. In a sentence like, "There are
> seven continents," does it make any difference whether we classify "there" as a
> pronoun or as an adverb.
It's not so much whether it makes a difference so much as what seems
the most likely analysis by the child acquiring the language. How
things such as "there's" are stored is not entirely clear -- it's
certainly probable, as you say, that this is stored as a fixed thing
rather than "calculated" every time from its constituent components. My
own view is that the lexicon probably allows whole syntactical
structures, but with certain elements, e.g. a subject/complement, to
be missing -- a bit like a fill-the-gaps template for speech.
> Is it really going to act like nouns usually act, or
> act like adverbs usually act, when it is part of a structure that is really
> pretty much an idiom?
It's stored as an idiom, but there's clearly a point at which it
can be recognised as being composed of separate components. For example,
in "There are three books, aren't there?", there's clearly some kind
of recognition/manipulation of individual elements "There" and "are"
going on.
Probably the main factor which sways 'there' towards adverb rather
than pronoun is the lack of concord between 'there' in subject position
and the verb for number/person.
Neil
Gary Williams, Business Services Accounting
<neil....@st-annes.ox.ac.uk> writes:
>Probably the main factor which sways 'there' towards adverb rather
>than pronoun is the lack of concord between 'there' in subject position
>and the verb for number/person.
I see the point.
Classifying "there" as pronoun has to be based on an analysis that says
The subject slot is filled by a noun or a pronoun
"There" fills the subject slot.
Therefore, "there" is a noun/pronoun.
What is wrong with this system of analysis?
Gary Williams
K1912
Robert Lieblich wrote:
>Gary Williams, Business Services Accounting wrote:
>>
>> In article <ant01095...@debussy.demon.co.uk>, Neil Coffey
>> <neil....@st-annes.ox.ac.uk> writes:
>>
>> >The other thing to note, of course, is that in languages where
>> >the subject slot is required to be filled, there may be a different
>> >range of "fillers". The most common filler in English is 'there':
>>
>> Might "filler" be a lexical category?
>
>I suspect that it is, whether so labeled or not. The customary term for
>"There" and "It" as fillers at the beginning of sentences is
>"expletive." These are not the expletives deleted from the Nixon tapes.
From _English Grammar_ , George O. Curme:
Anticipatory "It" and "There." When we desire to emphasize a subject, we often
withhold it for a time, causing the feeling of suspense and thus calling
especial attention to it. Here anticipatory _it_ , or in the case of a noun
subject also _there_ , serves as a provisional subject, pointing forward to the
real subject: _There_ once lived in this house _an interesting old man_. _It_
is necessary _to exert yourself_ , or _that you exert yourself_. _It_ is no
use, or of no use, or _there_ is no use, _to say anything_ , or _saying
anything_ .
George
K1912
Neil Coffey
Gary Williams, Business Services Accounting <URL:mailto:will...@ahecas.AHEC.EDU> wrote:
> Classifying "there" as pronoun has to be based on an analysis that says
> The subject slot is filled by a noun or a pronoun
> "There" fills the subject slot.
> Therefore, "there" is a noun/pronoun.
>
> What is wrong with this system of analysis?
The fact that it's clear that other things apart from a noun
phrase can end up filling the subject slot in the surface
structure of a sentence. For example, in the sentence:
Yesterday evening at around ten o'clock came the news that
Jonathan had comitted suicide.
the phrase filling the subject slot is "Yesterday evening at
around ten o'clock". I don't know about you, but I'd hesitate
to call this a noun or pronoun.
Incidentally, beware in any case of saying "noun or pronoun".
The subject slot is always filled by a _phrase_. And a pronoun
is syntactically equivalent not to a _noun_ but to a
_noun *phrase*_. Therefore, for "noun/pronoun" all you need
to say is "noun phrase".
Neil
shorts...@my-dejanews.com
Neil Coffey <neil....@st-annes.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> In article <3612DEDF...@austin.ibm.com>, Ranjit Mathews
> <URL:mailto:ran...@austin.ibm.com> wrote:
>
> > Good observation. In my language (Malayalam), the above sentence would be
"seven
> > continents are" and the sentence below would be "that wire on seven birds
are".
>
> the subject slot is required to be filled, there may be a different
> range of "fillers". The most common filler
aka: a dummy subject
>in English is 'there':
>
> *Came floods.
> There came floods.
>
> though other things are sometimes possible:
>
> In 1956 came floods.
>
> Neil
>
Better yet: Floods came.
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shorts...@my-dejanews.com
>
> >The other thing to note, of course, is that in languages where
> >the subject slot is required to be filled, there may be a different
>
> Might "filler" be a lexical category?
>
>
I don't know, but "dummy" is. It's called a "dummy subject," which, of
course, would be quite different than "bonehead English." Sorry, I just had
to sayu that.
shorts...@my-dejanews.com
k1...@aol.com (K1912) wrote:
>
> Robert Lieblich wrote:
>
> >Gary Williams, Business Services Accounting wrote:
> >>
> >> In article <ant01095...@debussy.demon.co.uk>, Neil Coffey
> >> <neil....@st-annes.ox.ac.uk> writes:
> >>
> >> >The other thing to note, of course, is that in languages where
> >> >the subject slot is required to be filled, there may be a different
> >> >range of "fillers". The most common filler in English is 'there':
> >>
> >> Might "filler" be a lexical category?
> >
> >"There" and "It" as fillers at the beginning of sentences is
> >"expletive." These are not the expletives deleted from the Nixon tapes.
>
What???? nor are they the expletives deleted from anywhere. So there!
> From _English Grammar_ , George O. Curme:
>
> Anticipatory "It" and "There." When we desire to emphasize a subject, we often
> withhold it for a time, causing the feeling of suspense and thus calling
> especial attention to it. Here anticipatory _it_ , or in the case of a noun
> subject also _there_ , serves as a provisional subject, pointing forward to
the
> real subject: _There_ once lived in this house _an interesting old man_.
_It_
> is necessary _to exert yourself_ , or _that you exert yourself_. _It_ is no
> use, or of no use, or _there_ is no use, _to say anything_ , or _saying
> anything_ .
>
> George
> K1912
>
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
shorts...@my-dejanews.com
Neil Coffey <neil....@st-annes.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> In article <6utoe5$reg$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>,
> <URL:mailto:shorts...@my-dejanews.com> wrote:
>
> > In "Get away from there," "there" is an adverb of place.
>
> We might argue about how necessary the 'of place' bit is, or whether
> this is a syntactical critereon, but by and large this seems a reasonable
> analysis.
>
> > In "There is/there
> > are," it functions as a pronoun as it indicates existence
>
> This, however, not to put too fine a point on it, is complete gibberish.
> Just sit back and think a moment about the line of logic you're
> trying to adopt here. Basically what you're saying is "The function
> of this word is to indicate existence; therefore it is/functions as
> a pronoun". Now, first of all, what do you actually mean by "indicates
> existence"? In the sentence "There's a man", why does 'there' indicate
> existence but not 'is' or 'a man'?
>And what makes you think that words will
> be so categorised that there's a category whose defining critereon
> (or one of its defining criterea) is "indicates existence"?
It's a pronoun, or dummy subject here. We could say, but don't "Seven seas
are;" rather, we say "Seven seas exist."
>You've got
> to admit, "indicates existence" isn't a particularly well defined
> critereon, and is a critereon which has absolutely bugger all to do
> with syntax.
...and syntax is not grammar.
>
> Perhaps what I'd need to know is, in the statement:
>
> "In '...', it functions as a pronoun AS it indicates existence"
>
> what exactly you mean by:
>
> 'functions as'
> 'pronoun'
> 'indicates existence'
I mean ", as it...."--"it" being "there." Perhaps your time could be better
spent helping Clinton and members of the house define "is."
>
> And how you arrive at this magical 'AS'.
>
> > For the criteria of authority, check the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary
> > English.
>
> Any particular reason for choosing this as your "criteria of authority"?
It's a great book that explains grammar and syntax clearly to speakers of
English as a Second or Foreign Language. The person who initially introduced
this thread was asking as an EFL speaker.
> Is "it functions as a pronoun as it indicates existence" one of
> their "authoritative" judgements?
>
> Neil
>
>
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shorts...@my-dejanews.com
will...@ahecas.AHEC.EDU wrote:
> In article <ant01231...@debussy.demon.co.uk>, Neil Coffey
> <neil....@st-annes.ox.ac.uk> writes:
>
> >Probably the main factor which sways 'there' towards adverb rather
> >than pronoun is the lack of concord between 'there' in subject position
> >and the verb for number/person.
What????
>
> I see the point.
What?
"There" is both an adverb and a pronoun (or expletive used with "pronomial
force," depending on its usage. It also depends upon for whom the definitions
are being constructed: English learners, regular English users, or those of us
with nothing better to do than deconstruct the language.
(see below for definitions fitting into these three categories, respectively)
>
> Classifying "there" as pronoun has to be based on an analysis that says
> The subject slot is filled by a noun or a pronoun
> "There" fills the subject slot.
> Therefore, "there" is a noun/pronoun.
>
> What is wrong with this system of analysis?
>
> Gary Williams
Nothing at all. You've come to a logical and sensible conclusion. I agree.
Longman agrees. Webster *tends to* agree, saying it's used with "pronomial
force in impersonal constructions in which the real subject follows the
verb." Walter K. Smart says it's no more than "a rhetorical device used to
allow the subjects to be placed after the verbs," but "in parsing it is
"purely an introductory word" or "expletive" and "the word 'expletive' means
'a filler.'" --which means I stand corrected in saying it's not an expletive
and someone else's deprecatory comments about the use of the word "filler"
will have to stand corrected as well.
Smart goes on to say "The use of there as a regular adverb of place should be
carefully distinguished from its use as an expletive" and then points to it as
an expletive standing for the subject.
I'd prefer "pronoun" to "expletive;" I suppose we could borrow from Webster
and create a new lexical category for it as a "pronomial expletive."
All this is certainly more than poor Kakeda-san wanted to know in the first
place, but certainly was entertaining to think about!
--Shortstrokes
shorts...@my-dejanews.com
sentence.
> > Consider the sentence "There are seven continents." No meaning is added by
> > "there"; it is simply filling the role of the _something_ that has to go in
> > subject slot in the sentence.
>
> Good observation. In my language (Malayalam), the above sentence would be
"seven
> continents are" and the sentence below would be "that wire on seven birds
are".
>
> > some of the dictionaries have classified "there" as a pronoun.
> >
> > Now consider the sentence "There are seven birds on that wire." One might
> > analyze "there" as simply filling the subject slot, and thus a pronoun; but
one
> > might analyze the sentence as an inversion of "seven birds are there on that
> > wire", in which case "there" would be an adverb.
>
excellent!
John Davies
<neil....@st-annes.ox.ac.uk> writes
>In article <6v2pr0$c61$1...@news.cudenver.edu>,
>Gary Williams, Business Services Accounting <URL:mailto:will...@ahecas.AHEC.E
>D
>U> wrote:
>
>> Classifying "there" as pronoun has to be based on an analysis that says
>> The subject slot is filled by a noun or a pronoun
>> "There" fills the subject slot.
>> Therefore, "there" is a noun/pronoun.
>>
>> What is wrong with this system of analysis?
>
>phrase can end up filling the subject slot in the surface
>structure of a sentence. For example, in the sentence:
>
> Yesterday evening at around ten o'clock came the news that
> Jonathan had comitted suicide.
>
>the phrase filling the subject slot is "Yesterday evening at
>around ten o'clock". I don't know about you, but I'd hesitate
>to call this a noun or pronoun.
Isn't it an adverbial phrase?
>
>Incidentally, beware in any case of saying "noun or pronoun".
>The subject slot is always filled by a _phrase_. And a pronoun
>is syntactically equivalent not to a _noun_ but to a
>_noun *phrase*_. Therefore, for "noun/pronoun" all you need
>to say is "noun phrase".
>
>Neil
>
Forgive me if you've already dealt with this point, but I'm finding it
hard to see the usefulness of the term "the subject slot". Does this
simply mean the first phrase in the sentence? I can see that in the
simpler kind of sentence this often is the subject, but in real life the
exceptions to the rule must be almost as numerous as the sentences which
obey it. It seems to me that the first phrase might be better named
"the focus slot" or something similar, since it is where we put the
element that we want to draw particular attention to.
Isn't it also useful to distinguish between the example you gave, in
which we have for the sake of emphasis a fairly simple inversion of the
normal order "The news came yesterday evening..."; and those sentences
in which there's no alternative to deferring mention of the real
subject to later? Eg: "There is a green hill far away."
--
John Davies (jo...@redwoods.demon.co.uk)
shorts...@my-dejanews.com
John Davies <jo...@redwoods.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> In article <ant02162...@debussy.demon.co.uk>, Neil Coffey
> <neil....@st-annes.ox.ac.uk> writes
> >In article <6v2pr0$c61$1...@news.cudenver.edu>,
> >Gary Williams, Business Services Accounting
<URL:mailto:will...@ahecas.AHEC.E
> >D
> >U> wrote:
> >
> >> Classifying "there" as pronoun has to be based on an analysis that says
> >> The subject slot is filled by a noun or a pronoun
> >> "There" fills the subject slot.
> >> Therefore, "there" is a noun/pronoun.
> >>
> >> What is wrong with this system of analysis?
> >
> >The fact that it's clear that other things apart from a noun
> >phrase can end up filling the subject slot in the surface
> >structure of a sentence. For example, in the sentence:
> >
> > Yesterday evening at around ten o'clock came the news that
> > Jonathan had comitted suicide.
> >
> >the phrase filling the subject slot is "Yesterday evening at
> >around ten o'clock". I don't know about you, but I'd hesitate
> >to call this a noun or pronoun.
>
> Isn't it an adverbial phrase?
Yes. The subject is "news" and the verb "came;" their inversion necessitates
placing the adverbial phrase at the beginning of the sentence (without a
comma).
> >Incidentally, beware in any case of saying "noun or pronoun".
> >The subject slot is always filled by a _phrase_. And a pronoun
> >is syntactically equivalent not to a _noun_ but to a
> >_noun *phrase*_. Therefore, for "noun/pronoun" all you need
> >to say is "noun phrase".
> >
> >Neil
> >
>
> Forgive me if you've already dealt with this point, but I'm finding it
> hard to see the usefulness of the term "the subject slot". Does this
> simply mean the first phrase in the sentence? I can see that in the
> simpler kind of sentence this often is the subject, but in real life the
> exceptions to the rule must be almost as numerous as the sentences which
> obey it. It seems to me that the first phrase might be better named
> "the focus slot" or something similar, since it is where we put the
> element that we want to draw particular attention to.
>
> Isn't it also useful to distinguish between the example you gave, in
> which we have for the sake of emphasis a fairly simple inversion of the
> normal order "The news came yesterday evening..."; and those sentences
> in which there's no alternative to deferring mention of the real
> subject to later? Eg: "There is a green hill far away."
> --
> John Davies (jo...@redwoods.demon.co.uk)
>
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
John M. Lawler
>John Davies <jo...@redwoods.demon.co.uk> writes:
>>Neil Coffey <neil....@st-annes.ox.ac.uk> writes:
>>>Gary Williams <will...@ahecas.AHEC.EDU> writes:
>> >> Classifying "there" as pronoun has to be based on an analysis that says
>> >> The subject slot is filled by a noun or a pronoun
>> >> "There" fills the subject slot.
>> >> Therefore, "there" is a noun/pronoun.
>> >> What is wrong with this system of analysis?
>> >The fact that it's clear that other things apart from a noun
>> >phrase can end up filling the subject slot in the surface
>> >structure of a sentence.
More importantly, I'd say that what is wrong are the unspoken assumptions
that go along with the spoken ones Gary has outlined:
Every word belongs to one and only one lexical category.
Therefore, every use of a word is an example of the
use of the lexical category it belongs to.
More useful would be the observation that lexical categories and syntactic
categories are different and should not be confused, and that the
constituent that is the subject of some sentence is functioning as a noun
in that sentence (i.e, it's a "Noun Phrase"), without regard to how it
might function in some other sentence.
This is particularly important in English, which doesn't inflect its words
much, and therefore doesn't mark lexical class sharply. That is, most
English words can be used in several ways that would correspond to several
different lexical classes.
Note, though, that this leaves open the question of precisely what the
subject of a given sentence is. "Subject" is not a simple, single
concept -- it's a fuzzy concept that's very clear in simple cases,
but since it derives from a number of different criteria, it's quite
variable.
>> >For example, in the sentence:
>> > Yesterday evening at around ten o'clock came the news that
>> > Jonathan had comitted suicide.
>> >the phrase filling the subject slot is "Yesterday evening at
>> >around ten o'clock". I don't know about you, but I'd hesitate
>> >to call this a noun or pronoun.
>> Isn't it an adverbial phrase?
>Yes. The subject is "news" and the verb "came;" their inversion necessitates
>placing the adverbial phrase at the beginning of the sentence (without a
>comma).
Actually, the phrase you want to identify as the subject is "the news that
Jonathan had committed suicide". "News" is the head noun of that phrase,
which is of course a noun phrase. Though it's not entirely clear that
this *is* the subject; the initial temporal phrase doesn't score all that
badly on a few of the tests for subject, aside from its initial position.
For instance, Subject-Raising (in this case feeding Passive) is not
totally out:
Yesterday evening at around ten o'clock is believed to have come
the news that Jonathan had comitted suicide.
It might also be more correct to say that the decision to place the
adverbial phrase at the beginning of the sentence necessitates the
subject-verb inversion, much the same way placing an interrogative word at
the beginning necessitates inversion:
Where did they go yesterday?
Vb Subj
An extremely strong constraint in English is that the verb should be the
second constituent in the sentence, even if we have to go and get another
verb (in this case, "did") to put there. Deviations from this are highly
marked.
>> >Incidentally, beware in any case of saying "noun or pronoun".
>> >The subject slot is always filled by a _phrase_. And a pronoun
>> >is syntactically equivalent not to a _noun_ but to a
>> >_noun *phrase*_. Therefore, for "noun/pronoun" all you need
>> >to say is "noun phrase".
>> Forgive me if you've already dealt with this point, but I'm finding it
>> hard to see the usefulness of the term "the subject slot". Does this
>> simply mean the first phrase in the sentence? I can see that in the
>> simpler kind of sentence this often is the subject, but in real life the
>> exceptions to the rule must be almost as numerous as the sentences which
>> obey it. It seems to me that the first phrase might be better named
>> "the focus slot" or something similar, since it is where we put the
>> element that we want to draw particular attention to.
"Slot" (matched with "filler") is a common slang term among linguists,
left over from Immediate Constituent and Tagmemic theories, that speaks
only of the linear (in speech, earlier-to-later, but in writing
left-to-right) ordering of constituents. It's a fact that most sentences
in English have the subject as the first constituent, and deviations from
that rule are used conventionally as signals (i.e, in questions), and a
term like "slot" is sometimes convenient to memorialize this fact, as
shorthand for "the subject constituent".
And the concept of "focus", while correct, is *not* a grammatical term,
but rather a pragmatic term (pragmatics is a different level yet from
grammar and semantics; sorry, language is *complicated* if you look
closely at it). It's also true that the first part of a sentence is a
particularly important place to put focussed constituents (as is the last
part) in every language, for perceptual reasons, and therefore that in
prototype English sentences the subject winds up being focussed, since
it's first.
In prototype sentences the subject is semantically an agent, pragmatically
focussed, and has the internal structure of a noun phrase. In English,
all this comes first in the sentence. Except when the sentence is not a
prototype (i.e, simple) one, in which case all these functions split and
vary differently, according to the rules of their respective levels.
Leading to phenomena like alt.usage.english.
>> Isn't it also useful to distinguish between the example you gave, in
>> which we have for the sake of emphasis a fairly simple inversion of the
>> normal order "The news came yesterday evening..."; and those sentences
>> in which there's no alternative to deferring mention of the real
>> subject to later? Eg: "There is a green hill far away."
They do indeed need to be distinguished, and so do many more, e.g,
There is, far away in a distant land where we can never see it, a
green hill that will nevertheless concern us greatly in this story.
Linear order is only one dimension. There are several others.
Once again, let me refer you to Jim McCawley's books on English syntax
("The Syntactic Phenomena of English", 2nd edition), and logic, semantics,
and pragmatics ("Everything Linguists Have Always Wanted to Know About
Logic */* But Were Ashamed to Ask", 2nd edition), both from University of
Chicago Press.
- John Lawler University of Michigan Program in Linguistics
-------------------------------------------------------------
"Using Computers in Linguistics: A Practical Guide" Routledge 1998
http://www.routledge.com/routledge/linguistics/using-comp.html
Mark Odegard
1998 15:48:07 GMT, jla...@qbert.rs.itd.umich.edu (John M.
Lawler) in <XMMR1.6066$F7.22...@news.itd.umich.edu> wrote
|Once again, let me refer you to Jim McCawley's books on English syntax
|("The Syntactic Phenomena of English", 2nd edition), and logic, semantics,
|and pragmatics ("Everything Linguists Have Always Wanted to Know About
|Logic */* But Were Ashamed to Ask", 2nd edition), both from University of
|Chicago Press.
I have the first book. It is formidable, mostly because of the
rather ferocious set of abbreviations and symbols McCrawley
uses. McCrawley warns you about what might happen to you stomach
when you encounter his chapter on English auxiliary verbs. For
myself, I'm still wallowing in the first two chapters, trying to
master his abbreviational nomenclature, with peeks ahead to see
what the fuss is all about.
I will say this. He calls your attention to everything,
including things so 'obvious' that no one probably ever called
your attention to them.
--
Mark Odegard. (Omit OMIT to email)
Emailed copies of responses are very much appreciated.
Neil Coffey
> "There" is both an adverb and a pronoun (or expletive used with "pronomial
> force," depending on its usage. It also depends upon for whom the definitions
> are being constructed: English learners, regular English users, or those of us
> with nothing better to do than deconstruct the language.
The point about analysing words into lexical categories such as 'adverb',
'pronoun' etc is that we're trying to get at how the language is stored
and how it operates in the brain. From this point of view, it shouldn't
really make much difference who the definitions are being constructed for.
> > Classifying "there" as pronoun has to be based on an analysis that says
> > The subject slot is filled by a noun or a pronoun
> > "There" fills the subject slot.
> > Therefore, "there" is a noun/pronoun.
> >
> > What is wrong with this system of analysis?
>
> Nothing at all. You've come to a logical and sensible conclusion. I agree.
> Longman agrees. Webster *tends to* agree
There's nothing wrong in the logical steps of this analysis, but there are
problems with its initial assumptions. (a) it assumes that the 'subject
slot' is filled by a noun or pronoun, when we can see quite clearly that
this 'subject slot' is in some sentences filled by other things; (b) it
assumes that this 'subject slot' is simpler than it is. In terms
of syntactical structure, there are at least _two_ positions -- Spec CP
and C positions in Chomsykan analysis -- before that filled by the subject
in "normal" sentences. In the sentence "There's a boy here", the form
'there' may not be filling the "subject" (Spec IP) position at all but
could well be placed syntactically elsewhere. It's quite possible that
ultimately the form 'there', like French 'il' and 'ce', ends up fusing
with the verb (and thus "there's" occupies a single syntactic position).
Or it could be that "there" occupies not Sepc IP ("subject") position but
Spec CP position.
Now again, this stuff about Specs and CPs and IPs is technical details
that doesn't matter that much to most people. But the point is, there are
serious problems with the assumptions made by e.g. Longman, Webster etc,
and we should beware of assuming that the situation is quite as simple as
they'd like to make out.
Neil
K. Edgcombe
Neil Coffey <sann...@sable.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
>> force," depending on its usage. It also depends upon for whom the definitions
>> are being constructed: English learners, regular English users, or those of us
>> with nothing better to do than deconstruct the language.
>
>The point about analysing words into lexical categories such as 'adverb',
>'pronoun' etc is that we're trying to get at how the language is stored
>and how it operates in the brain. From this point of view, it shouldn't
>really make much difference who the definitions are being constructed for.
But "we" aren't! (trying to get at how the language is stored and how it
operates in the brain). You are; your colleagues are; John Lawler is; many of
the rest of us also regard this as a fascinating subject of enquiry. But there
are hosts of other people using words like "adverb", "pronoun" and so on for
the purpose of, for instance, teaching English as a foreign language,
discussing stylistic aspects of writing, explaining to a student how a given
sentence could be made clearer, and so on.
The definitions we use are sloppy, by your standards, and we don't always agree
on them; sometimes they are positively misleading even for the simple uses we
require. But they are usable within the community of non-specialists for a
great deal of the time. The sorts of classification that you want to make, and
particularly the sorts of classification you do *not* want to make, mean that
your scheme of definitions may not be nearly as useful to those people as the
ones already in use.
The language used by car mechanics, and car owners, and car enthusiasts, has
certain terms in common with the language of modern advanced physics. It is
neither necessary nor desirable (let's leave "sufficient" out of this) for the
car mechanic to use the terms with the precision and sophistication of
understanding demanded by advanced physics. And if the professor of physics
engages in a dialogue with the local car mechanic, communication will be
improved if both recognise this fact.
It's very helpful and interesting when you tell us how you, in the profession,
use certain words, and particularly when you tell us why. But if you take it
for granted that for all
purposes and to all speakers your criteria of definition are the only ones of
any merit, then we shall learn less from you than we otherwise might.
Gary Williams, Business Services Accounting
jla...@qbert.rs.itd.umich.edu (John M. Lawler) writes:
Much interesting stuff, which I will have to read several times to see if I
have the tools to understand, and, if not, then to buy the recommended book.
I would not ordinarily return to what is by now a minor point, but it was _my_
minor point:
>>> >> Classifying "there" as pronoun has to be based on an analysis that says
>
>>> >> The subject slot is filled by a noun or a pronoun
>>> >> "There" fills the subject slot.
>>> >> Therefore, "there" is a noun/pronoun.
>
>>> >> What is wrong with this system of analysis?
>More importantly, I'd say that what is wrong are the unspoken assumptions
>that go along with the spoken ones Gary has outlined:
>
> Every word belongs to one and only one lexical category.
>
> Therefore, every use of a word is an example of the
> use of the lexical category it belongs to.
I was not saying that every word belongs to one and only one lexical category.
I was saying that the lexical categories to which a word belongs are determined
by the roles it may play in a sentence. In the instant sentence, "there" is
serving as the (dummy) subject. Subjects are nouns or pronouns. (OK, they're
noun phrases, but every noun phrase contains a noun or pronoun, so the only
word in a one-word phrase must be a noun or pronoun.) Therefore, noun/pronoun
is one of the lexical categories of "there".
>
>>> > Yesterday evening at around ten o'clock came the news that
>>> > Jonathan had comitted suicide.
>
>>> >the phrase filling the subject slot is "Yesterday evening at
>>> >around ten o'clock". I don't know about you, but I'd hesitate
>>> >to call this a noun or pronoun.
I'd hesitate to say that "yesterday evening at around ten o'clock" is filling
the subject slot in this sentence. I don't know why I'd reject that notion,
but, since the example was from Neil, I am free to say that my native speaker's
intuition entitles me to.
>It might also be more correct to say that the decision to place the
>adverbial phrase at the beginning of the sentence necessitates the
>subject-verb inversion, much the same way placing an interrogative word at
>the beginning necessitates inversion:
>
> Where did they go yesterday?
> Vb Subj
>
>An extremely strong constraint in English is that the verb should be the
>second constituent in the sentence, even if we have to go and get another
>verb (in this case, "did") to put there. Deviations from this are highly
>marked.
But I could easily say, "Yesterday evening at around ten o'clock the news came
that...". Does this just prove that, as you said in another recent post, that
language is _complicated_?
Gary Williams
John M. Lawler
>Neil Coffey <sann...@sable.ox.ac.uk> writes:
>>> ... for whom the definitions
>>> are being constructed: English learners, regular English users,
>>> or those of us with nothing better to do than deconstruct the
>>> language.
>>The point about analysing words into lexical categories such as 'adverb',
>>'pronoun' etc is that we're trying to get at how the language is stored
>>and how it operates in the brain. From this point of view, it shouldn't
>>really make much difference who the definitions are being constructed for.
>But "we" aren't! (trying to get at how the language is stored and how it
>operates in the brain). You are; your colleagues are; John Lawler is;
I beg your pardon. That's Neil's thing, not mine.
You have to understand that Neil and I go to different churches entirely,
despite the fact that we're both linguists and therefore may seem to agree
on a lot. We *do* agree on a lot. But in many details we disagree almost
completely. So the "we" in Neil's paragraph above should be taken as not
including all linguists, merely some linguists. For my money, it will be
many, many years before a more inclusive "we" understands anything about
how language works in the human brain. If you hear reports of such a
discovery, be dubious. Be very dubious.
>many of the rest of us also regard this as a fascinating subject of
>enquiry. But there are hosts of other people using words like "adverb",
>"pronoun" and so on for the purpose of, for instance, teaching English as
>a foreign language, discussing stylistic aspects of writing, explaining
>to a student how a given sentence could be made clearer, and so on.
Now *that* is the business that I'm in. I have taught EFL, I do teach
writing regularly, and I teach various linguistics courses as well,
including English grammar, to assorted undergraduates and graduates, in
the United States. And what *I'm* concerned about is making grammar
useful. Which means, to me at least, making it *clear*, first and
foremost.
>The definitions we use are sloppy, by your standards, and we don't always
>agree on them; sometimes they are positively misleading even for the
>simple uses we require. But they are usable within the community of
>non-specialists for a great deal of the time.
Some of them are, some of the time, but I would disagree that sloppy
definitions are usable for very much, or for very long. Grammar is like
math in that its utility depends on its ability to be exact. A rough
facility with figures is all very well; but if you can't get the same
answer three times running you're in trouble, and won't stay in business
very long. Which is why bluster is such a big component of folk grammars;
it's to compensate for the lack of clarity and precision.
>The sorts of classification that you want to make, and
>particularly the sorts of classification you do *not* want to make, mean that
>your scheme of definitions may not be nearly as useful to those people as the
>ones already in use.
By the same token, the "you" here should refer to those whom Neil's "we"
includes, rather than to all linguists. For my part, I would like to
dissociate myself from Neil's tree structures, which are an artifact of a
particular theory of syntax followed by a minority of the world's
linguists (but a very stylish minority). The sorts of classification that
that group seems to want to make are indeed not all that useful for
ordinary mortals, and I have no particular use for them. I occasionally
use tree structures, and categories, but not those.
This does not mean, however, that precision in grammar is inevitably
doomed to such jargonistic incomprehensibility. I even hope that I
demonstrate this occasionally.
>The language used by car mechanics, and car owners, and car enthusiasts, has
>certain terms in common with the language of modern advanced physics. It is
>neither necessary nor desirable (let's leave "sufficient" out of this) for the
>car mechanic to use the terms with the precision and sophistication of
>understanding demanded by advanced physics. And if the professor of physics
>engages in a dialogue with the local car mechanic, communication will be
>improved if both recognise this fact.
This would be a more useful analogy if language were an artifact like
cars. Unfortunately, language is a natural phenomenon, like birds.
The language used by birdwatchers ("birders") has certain terms in common
with the language of modern biology. However, it *is* desirable, in
general, for a birder to use the terms with as much of the precision and
sophistication of biological understanding as they can muster (if not
always advanced biology, at least basic biology, and not mythology). And
when biologists and birders engage in dialogue, they find a common
language without much difficulty, and it is a technical biological
language.
>It's very helpful and interesting when you tell us how you, in the profession,
>use certain words, and particularly when you tell us why. But if you take it
>for granted that for all purposes and to all speakers your criteria of
>definition are the only ones of any merit, then we shall learn less from
>you than we otherwise might.
Precisely. As Kipling put it,
"There are nine-and-ninety ways
Of constructing tribal lays
And each and every one of them is right."
But one does have to make the effort to be precise.
K. Edgcombe
John M. Lawler <jla...@centipede.rs.itd.umich.edu> wrote:
>K. Edgcombe <ke...@cus.cam.ac.uk> writes:
>
>>But "we" aren't! (trying to get at how the language is stored and how it
>>operates in the brain). You are; your colleagues are; John Lawler is;
>
>I beg your pardon. That's Neil's thing, not mine.
I have apologised to John privately for misrepresenting him.
>
>>many of the rest of us also regard this as a fascinating subject of
>>enquiry. But there are hosts of other people using words like "adverb",
>>"pronoun" and so on for the purpose of, for instance, teaching English as
>>a foreign language, discussing stylistic aspects of writing, explaining
>>to a student how a given sentence could be made clearer, and so on.
>
>Now *that* is the business that I'm in. I have taught EFL, I do teach
>writing regularly, and I teach various linguistics courses as well,
>including English grammar, to assorted undergraduates and graduates, in
>the United States. And what *I'm* concerned about is making grammar
>useful. Which means, to me at least, making it *clear*, first and
>foremost.
Yes; in spite of what I said in defence of a degree of sloppiness, I am very
concerned with making grammar clear so that it can be useful. However, there
is a layers-of-the-onion effect going on here. When you learn school
chemistry, you learn some simple principles. Then the next year, they say to
you "well, actually, of course, it's nothing like as simple as that, and what
we told you last year wasn't really true. Here is something much better."
Then, the next, year, they say the same, adding "Now we're going to tell you
how it really works." Then when you get to University they tell you to forget
everything you learnt at school because it's much too simplistic and
over-generalised and inaccurate, and now you're just about to make a naive
start on the real subject. And so on.
>
Any set of notions used in the early stages of study is going to be subject to
progressive refinement, and is quite likely to strike professionals as
over-simplified or plain wrong. What Neil seems to want is for all of us, beginners
and professionals alike, to desist from using these over-simplified concepts
even where they might be extremely useful.
Saying that "it is probable that X is a verb" is. no doubt, perfectly sensible
for Neil, but it isn't necessarily going to help a foreigner who wants to know
whereabouts in a sentence, and with what meaning, a native English speaker
habitually uses the word.
Clarity and precision don't necessarily go hand in hand in the sciences I know
about; very often you can reason more effectively using a notion which is clear
but not rigorously precise. if you're a scientist or mathematician, you then
go back, having perhaps made an imaginative leap from imprecise concepts, and
try to see whether what you have done can be rigorised.
I am informal: you are imprecise: he is downright sloppy.
(no individual references intended).
>
>Some of them are, some of the time, but I would disagree that sloppy
>definitions are usable for very much, or for very long.
I suppose anyone who has got on reasonably well with Newtonian mechanics for
many years might well be accused, these days, of using sloppy definitions.
That doesn't stop those definitions being useful.
>
>By the same token, the "you" here should refer to those whom Neil's "we"
>includes, rather than to all linguists.
Point taken.
>
>This does not mean, however, that precision in grammar is inevitably
>doomed to such jargonistic incomprehensibility. I even hope that I
>demonstrate this occasionally.
>
Indeed you do.
And thank you for explaining in more detail the areas in which your interests
and Neil's differ.
Katy
shorts...@my-dejanews.com
>
> > "There" is both an adverb and a pronoun (or expletive used with "pronomial
definitions
> > are being constructed: English learners, regular English users, or those of
us
> > with nothing better to do than deconstruct the language.
>
> The point about analysing words into lexical categories such as 'adverb',
> 'pronoun' etc is that we're trying to get at how the language is stored
> and how it operates in the brain. From this point of view, it shouldn't
> really make much difference who the definitions are being constructed for.
>
> > > The subject slot is filled by a noun or a pronoun
> > > "There" fills the subject slot.
> > > Therefore, "there" is a noun/pronoun.
> > >
> > > What is wrong with this system of analysis?
> >
> > Longman agrees. Webster *tends to* agree
>
> There's nothing wrong in the logical steps of this analysis, but there are
> problems with its initial assumptions. (a) it assumes that the 'subject
> slot' is filled by a noun or pronoun, when we can see quite clearly that
> this 'subject slot' is in some sentences filled by other things; (b) it
> assumes that this 'subject slot' is simpler than it is. In terms
> of syntactical structure, there are at least _two_ positions -- Spec CP
> and C positions in Chomsykan analysis -- before that filled by the subject
> in "normal" sentences. In the sentence "There's a boy here", the form
> 'there' may not be filling the "subject" (Spec IP) position at all but
> could well be placed syntactically elsewhere. It's quite possible that
> ultimately the form 'there', like French 'il' and 'ce', ends up fusing
> with the verb (and thus "there's" occupies a single syntactic position).
> Or it could be that "there" occupies not Sepc IP ("subject") position but
> Spec CP position.
>
> Now again, this stuff about Specs and CPs and IPs is technical details
> that doesn't matter that much to most people. But the point is, there are
> serious problems with the assumptions made by e.g. Longman, Webster etc,
> and we should beware of assuming that the situation is quite as simple as
> they'd like to make out.
>
> Neil
>
You're right, but I wish it were simple, and I think my initial reply was to
an EFL student in Japan who really wanted to know which it was, when it was
both, and knowing any more details than that would really turn him into a
nightmare for his poor teacher! I'm not a linguist, just an ESL teacher who
extrapolates "rules" wherever I can and has fun in the process; as such, I
depend on where/how these are stored in the brain in order to intuit and
extrapolate definitions and "rules" for students. I know I'm way out of my
league, but sure have enjoyed the flap over all of this.
--Shortstrokes
shorts...@my-dejanews.com
ke...@cus.cam.ac.uk (K. Edgcombe) wrote:
> In article <Pine.OSF.4.05.981005...@sable.ox.ac.uk>,
> Neil Coffey <sann...@sable.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> >> force," depending on its usage. It also depends upon for whom the
definitions
> >> are being constructed: English learners, regular English users, or those of
us
> >> with nothing better to do than deconstruct the language.
> >
> >The point about analysing words into lexical categories such as 'adverb',
> >'pronoun' etc is that we're trying to get at how the language is stored
> >and how it operates in the brain. From this point of view, it shouldn't
> >really make much difference who the definitions are being constructed for.
>
> the rest of us also regard this as a fascinating subject of enquiry. But
there
> are hosts of other people using words like "adverb", "pronoun" and so on for
> the purpose of, for instance, teaching English as a foreign language,
> discussing stylistic aspects of writing, explaining to a student how a given
> sentence could be made clearer, and so on.
>
agree
> on them; sometimes they are positively misleading even for the simple uses we
> require. But they are usable within the community of non-specialists for a
and
> particularly the sorts of classification you do *not* want to make, mean that
> your scheme of definitions may not be nearly as useful to those people as the
> ones already in use.
>
> certain terms in common with the language of modern advanced physics. It is
> neither necessary nor desirable (let's leave "sufficient" out of this) for the
> car mechanic to use the terms with the precision and sophistication of
> understanding demanded by advanced physics. And if the professor of physics
> engages in a dialogue with the local car mechanic, communication will be
> improved if both recognise this fact.
>
> use certain words, and particularly when you tell us why. But if you take it
> for granted that for all
> purposes and to all speakers your criteria of definition are the only ones of
> any merit, then we shall learn less from you than we otherwise might.
>
Neil Coffey
> >But "we" aren't! (trying to get at how the language is stored and how it
> >operates in the brain). You are; your colleagues are; John Lawler is;
[...]
> including all linguists, merely some linguists. For my money, it will be
> many, many years before a more inclusive "we" understands anything about
> how language works in the human brain.
Let me ask you both something, then. When you say that word X is used
as (or "is") an adverb/pronoun/whatever, are you not implying that you
believe that the brain categorises lexical items in some way or other
so that you can recognise categories 'adverb', 'pronoun' etc (and that
word X falls into suchandsuch category)?
Neil
K. Edgcombe
Very interesting question; I look forward to John's response.
I think that when I say something is an adverb, I am saying that in my native
speech it appears in the sort of place I expect something I call an adverb to
appear, and has the sort of semantic function I expect something I call as
adverb to have. It has an adverbial sort of meaning, it's in an adverbial sort
of slot, maybe it looks like an adverb, principally it feels like an adverb.
I think I am dealing in taxonomy rather than any more precise science, and I'm
sure that for the purpose of professional linguistics this is a wholly
unsatisfactory definition. But you did ask.
Of course, I run into difficulties as soon as my taxonomy comes across
something it hasn't met before, or finds that it has made an indequate number
of distinctions, or even an irrelevant distinction, for the purpose for which I
want to use it. That's where quite a lot of the fun comes in, and I don't
doubt for a moment that you people (lumping linguists togehter again for a
moment) can be of great help in refining and illuminating the process. But I
do maintain that this very rough taxonomy can be of great value in teaching and
in discussing matters of style and expression.
It's useful, for instance, to have a shorthand expression like "hanging
participle" to be able to discuss why certain sentences are potentially ambiguous
or misleading. I'm sure that this expression is actually rather imprecise and
could be taken apart with vigour and enthusiasm by those who like that sort of
thing, but I am not sure that they will thereby have done a service to the
*use* of the language (rather than the science of the language), unless they
will then provide us with a better and more refined tool for the same general
purpose.
I don't think my brain categorises things as hanging participles in any very
fundamental way - that is, I sdon't think such a category existed for me when I
was a child acquiring my native language. I know what I mean by it in the same
sort of way, only less precisely, that I know what I mean by a vector space.
This is all written at speed as I think, and I'll brood on it further to see
whether I can say anything more sensible.
Katy
Gary Williams, Business Services Accounting
>John M. Lawler <jla...@centipede.rs.itd.umich.edu> wrote:
>>>...But there are hosts of other people using words like "adverb",
>>>"pronoun" and so on for the purpose of, for instance, teaching English as
>>>a foreign language, discussing stylistic aspects of writing, explaining
>>>to a student how a given sentence could be made clearer, and so on.
>>
>>Now *that* is the business that I'm in. I have taught EFL, I do teach
>>writing regularly, and I teach various linguistics courses as well,
>>including English grammar, to assorted undergraduates and graduates,
[Just in case it's not clear, the first quoted paragraph is Katy's, the second
John's.]
I look forward to John's reply to the main body of Katy's post; that discussion
will be far more interesting than what I'm about to ask. But ask I shall,
nonetheless.
This thread got started because a learner of English wanted to know whether
"there" in a particular sentence of the form "there are x y's..." was a pronoun
or an adverb. From a didactic point of view, what difference could it make?
Gary Williams
Neil Coffey
<URL:mailto:ke...@cus.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
> is a layers-of-the-onion effect going on here. When you learn school
> chemistry, you learn some simple principles. Then the next year, they say to
> you "well, actually, of course, it's nothing like as simple as that, and what
> we told you last year wasn't really true. Here is something much better."
This is inevitably true in most subjects. And there's nothing wrong with
it in language teaching any more than elsewhere. It's quite common for me,
for example, to explain French 'je', 'tu' etc as "kinds of prefix" rather
than introducing the notion of "clitics".
There's a difference between simplifying the _details_ of an analysis,
though, and presenting an analysis with an entirely different direction.
And I would argue that saying that such-and-such a word is a pronoun
because it denotes existence, or saying that a sentence might be
structured in such a way that there's a syntactic component that expresses
the action carried out on the subject (I refer now to the 'predicate vs
verb' thread) is to me taking an unnecessarily wide birth of more accurate
analyses.
Another thing is that, whilst I'm in complete agreement about
simplifying analyses for the sake of explanation, I would always try to
do my audience the courtesy of saying that this is what I'm doing. One
of the dangers with many textbooks, and indeed with analyses such as
that of Longman and Webster that we looked at on this thread, is that
they fail to be up-front about the problems they gloss over.
> over-simplified or plain wrong. What Neil seems to want is for all of us, beginners
> and professionals alike, to desist from using these over-simplified concepts
> even where they might be extremely useful.
Not at all. I have no problem whatsoever with, and indeed often use
myself, simplified explanations. But as I say, I would always do my
audience the courtesy of saying "this is a slightly simplistic
explanation, but it'll do for the time being" rather than just blindly
pretending it's the be-all and end-all.
> Saying that "it is probable that X is a verb" is. no doubt, perfectly sensible
> for Neil, but it isn't necessarily going to help a foreigner who wants to know
> whereabouts in a sentence, and with what meaning, a native English speaker
> habitually uses the word.
But if it isn't clear whether or not a particular word is a verb, why
lie about the situation? If it isn't clear, then that means that there
will be cases where assuming the word is a definitely verb (or not) will
also get the foreigner into difficulties, doesn't it?
Neil
John M. Lawler
>This thread got started because a learner of English wanted to know whether
>"there" in a particular sentence of the form "there are x y's..." was a
>pronoun or an adverb. From a didactic point of view, what difference
>could it make?
None whatsoever. Linguists call "there" in the existential construction
an 'expletive' or a 'dummy', because it's not referential, and it doesn't
work like any other uses of the word "there". If anybody wants to call it
something else, it's up to them. The problem is, as usual, that the
choices may not include any good ones. But I'm not responsible for that.
-John Lawler http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/ Michigan Linguistics
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Language is the most massive and inclusive art we know, a - Edward Sapir
mountainous and anonymous work of unconscious generations." Language (1921)
John M. Lawler
>John Lawler <jla...@umich.edu> writes:
>> For my money, it will be
>> many, many years before a more inclusive "we" understands anything about
>> how language works in the human brain.
>Let me ask you something, then. When you say that word X is used
>as (or "is") an adverb/pronoun/whatever, are you not implying that you
>believe that the brain categorises lexical items in some way or other
>so that you can recognise categories 'adverb', 'pronoun' etc (and that
>word X falls into suchandsuch category)?
Absolutely not. I have nothing to do with The Brain, even as I have had
nothing to do with The Native Speaker, The Child, The Ideal Language
Learner, or any other mythic prototype. I leave these to mythologists.
Rather obviously, peoples' brains are involved in their learning and using
their languages, but equally obviously, peoples' brains are very, very
different, one from another. Nothing more can be said, really.
As for lexical categories, these are largely artifacts of theories, and
have little to do with the ways individual people manage their mental
lexicons. There are indeed generalizations to be made, but these have
nothing to do with the brain, except in the vacuous sense that they have
something to do with every part of the human body, since we all have them.
Or, as I've become fond of saying, ontology recapitulates physiology.
shorts...@my-dejanews.com
will...@ahecas.AHEC.EDU wrote:
> In article <6vb69t$9bj$1...@pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk>, ke...@cus.cam.ac.uk (K.
> Edgcombe) writes:
> >In article <YK5S1.139$fS.2...@news.itd.umich.edu>,
> >John M. Lawler <jla...@centipede.rs.itd.umich.edu> wrote:
>
> >>>"pronoun" and so on for the purpose of, for instance, teaching English as
> >>>a foreign language, discussing stylistic aspects of writing, explaining
> >>>to a student how a given sentence could be made clearer, and so on.
> >>
> >>Now *that* is the business that I'm in. I have taught EFL, I do teach
> >>writing regularly, and I teach various linguistics courses as well,
> >>including English grammar, to assorted undergraduates and graduates,
>
> John's.]
>
> I look forward to John's reply to the main body of Katy's post; that
discussion
> will be far more interesting than what I'm about to ask. But ask I shall,
> nonetheless.
>
> "there" in a particular sentence of the form "there are x y's..." was a
pronoun
> or an adverb. From a didactic point of view, what difference could it make?
>
None. When you teach overseas, you run into students from time to time who
become fixated on a definition and the sooner it can be given to them, the
sooner peace comes to the teacher. It was a good question, coming from an
overseas student. Analytical people come up with questions and can't rest
until they get clarification. Clarification of confusing points (and these
vary from individual to individual and are the "how is language stored?"
question that fascinates theoretical linguists) is a necessary step at
certain (and, again, individual) points in language learning. Often
questioning like this is an expression of a need for strokes, an attaboy, a
"Well aren't you observant/perceptive/clever to have found this?" and a
considered and straightforward answer is a form of attaboy for the language
learner. We've all been there: evidence this newsgroup, these postings, all
on "there," in our own language. --Shortstrokes
John M. Lawler
>jla...@umich.edu (John Lawler) writes:
>>Gary Williams writes:
>>> Classifying "there" as pronoun has to be based on an analysis that
>>> says
>>> The subject slot is filled by a noun or a pronoun
>>> "There" fills the subject slot.
>>> Therefore, "there" is a noun/pronoun.
>>> What is wrong with this system of analysis?
>>More importantly, I'd say that what is wrong are the unspoken assumptions
>>that go along with the spoken ones Gary has outlined:
>> Every word belongs to one and only one lexical category.
>> Therefore, every use of a word is an example of the
>> use of the lexical category it belongs to.
>I was not saying that every word belongs to one and only one lexical
>category.
Then I misunderstood you. My apologies.
>I was saying that the lexical categories to which a word belongs are
>determined by the roles it may play in a sentence. In the instant
>sentence, "there" is serving as the (dummy) subject. Subjects are nouns
>or pronouns. (OK, they're noun phrases, but every noun phrase contains a
>noun or pronoun, so the only word in a one-word phrase must be a noun or
>pronoun.)
Ah, the jump. *Most* (the vast majority, in fact) of noun phrases contain
a noun or pronoun.. But not every one. For instance, sentential subjects
(subject complements) function as noun phrases but don't have head nouns.
That I miss her is saddening.
"That I miss her" is the subject of "is saddening", and as a clause of
course it contains its own subject and object noun phrases ("I" and
"her"), but they aren't the head of the NP subject of the main clause.
It's not in fact necessary for a NP to contain a noun or pronoun, just for
it to function as a NP. It's certainly common, even the norm, but it's
not required.
>Therefore, noun/pronoun is one of the lexical categories of "there".
Therefore, the conclusion fails, because the premise is false.
>>> Yesterday evening at around ten o'clock came the news that
>>> Jonathan had comitted suicide.
>I'd hesitate to say that "yesterday evening at around ten o'clock" is filling
>the subject slot in this sentence. I don't know why I'd reject that notion,
>but, since the example was from Neil, I am free to say that my native
>speaker's intuition entitles me to.
And it'd be right, for the most part. As I pointed out earlier, this
fails many of the tests for subjecthood.
>>It might also be more correct to say that the decision to place the
>>adverbial phrase at the beginning of the sentence necessitates the
>>subject-verb inversion, much the same way placing an interrogative word at
>>the beginning necessitates inversion:
>> Where did they go yesterday?
>> Vb Subj
>>An extremely strong constraint in English is that the verb should be the
>>second constituent in the sentence, even if we have to go and get another
>>verb (in this case, "did") to put there. Deviations from this are highly
>>marked.
>But I could easily say, "Yesterday evening at around ten o'clock the news came
>that...". Does this just prove that, as you said in another recent post, that
>language is _complicated_?
Yup. Subject-verb inversion is optional in some cases (like this one),
obligatory in others (like questions), and prohibited in still others.
Much the same can be said of any syntactic rule in English. And of
course, every rule has a different set of constraints and contexts for
their application. That's what makes it so damn complicated.
Neil Coffey
> > "there" in a particular sentence of the form "there are x y's..." was a
> pronoun
> > or an adverb. From a didactic point of view, what difference could it make?
> >
> > Gary Williams
>
> None. When you teach overseas, you run into students from time to time who
> become fixated on a definition and the sooner it can be given to them, the
> sooner peace comes to the teacher. It was a good question, coming from an
> overseas student. Analytical people come up with questions and can't rest
> until they get clarification. Clarification of confusing points (and these
> vary from individual to individual and are the "how is language stored?"
> question that fascinates theoretical linguists) is a necessary step at
> certain (and, again, individual) points in language learning.
One answer to such questions, though, is that the analysis adopted
simply isn't intended to, say, class 'there' as adverb or pronoun in the
construction "there's".
One of the problems with the traditional analyses often adopted in
language teaching is that they rely on notional criterea which work for a
large number of members of the main categories (verb, noun, adjective) but
which fail when it comes to certain forms. This then leads to certain
categories, notably 'adverb', being used as dustbin categories to sweep up
forms which are awkward to class. 'pronoun' might be considered such a
class in French (where 'y', 'en' have traditionally been dustbinned as
"pronouns").
Neil
Neil Coffey
> Ah, the jump. *Most* (the vast majority, in fact) of noun phrases contain
> a noun or pronoun.. But not every one. For instance, sentential subjects
> (subject complements) function as noun phrases but don't have head nouns.
>
> That I miss her is saddening.
I suppose one question that needs to be asked here is: do we want to call
'That I miss her' an NP? It certainly fills subject ("Spec IP"
in PPT analysis) position, but does it have to be a noun phrase? The
presence of the complementizer 'that' is maybe problematic if we want
to say that it's a noun phrase.
Neil
Neil Coffey
> Rather obviously, peoples' brains are involved in their learning and using
> their languages, but equally obviously, peoples' brains are very, very
> different, one from another. Nothing more can be said, really.
Well... *some* things can be said about the way that people appear to
acquire language. There are many things which it may well be a long time
before we know, about language acquisition, but some general
theories/processes are supported by experiments.
> As for lexical categories, these are largely artifacts of theories, and
> have little to do with the ways individual people manage their mental
> lexicons.
The theories generally intend to propose ways in which the lexicon might
be managed, though, don't they? If you don't believe that closeness to
internal organisation matters in developing theories of syntax, then what
_do_ you use as your benchmark?
Neil
Neil Coffey
> I think that when I say something is an adverb, I am saying that in my native
> speech it appears in the sort of place I expect something I call an adverb to
> appear, and has the sort of semantic function I expect something I call as
> adverb to have. It has an adverbial sort of meaning, it's in an adverbial sort
> of slot, maybe it looks like an adverb, principally it feels like an adverb.
> I think I am dealing in taxonomy rather than any more precise science, and I'm
> sure that for the purpose of professional linguistics this is a wholly
> unsatisfactory definition. But you did ask.
It's interesting that you divide words up according to their _meaning_
rather than their syntactic function -- this is the main problem with
traditional analyses, and why they often hit upon words which are
difficult to categories, that the defining criterea for different
categories is often quite vague ("adverbial meaning").
> moment) can be of great help in refining and illuminating the process. But I
> do maintain that this very rough taxonomy can be of great value in teaching and
> in discussing matters of style and expression.
One problem with modern analyses is that they've attempted to keep as
far as possible traditional terminology. I imagine that this was at
its origin intended to be helpful, but actually ends up being confusing.
It would have been nice to start from scratch and describe syntax in
a way that avoids terms in traditional/folk grammar ("verb", "noun",
"participle", "gerund", "predicate" etc).
As you say, it's often quite useful to be able to refer to things which
technically don't have much syntactic status. It's a shame that the
terminology doesn't always make it clear what is old-style and what
is new-style analysis (and by 'new-style' I would mean, for example, the
recognition that lexical categories are determined by syntactical (and
morphological) criterea rather than vague notional criterea like
"is a describing word", "modifier").
Neil
K1912
Neil Coffey wrote:
[...]
>One problem with modern analyses is that they've attempted to keep as
>far as possible traditional terminology. I imagine that this was at
>its origin intended to be helpful, but actually ends up being confusing.
>It would have been nice to start from scratch and describe syntax in
>a way that avoids terms in traditional/folk grammar ("verb", "noun",
>"participle", "gerund", "predicate" etc).
>
>
And what terminology would you use to describe syntax in a way that avoids
"traditional/folk grammar"?
George
K1912
Gary Williams, Business Services Accounting
Neil Coffey <sann...@sable.ox.ac.uk> writes:
... by 'new-style' I would mean, for example, the
>recognition that lexical categories are determined by syntactical (and
>morphological) criterea rather than vague notional criterea like
>"is a describing word", "modifier"....
A chance for me to ask a _very_ basic question.
When you say that a word's lexical categories are determined by syntactical
criteria, do you mean that there is a tag on each word such as "may be used
immediately following a verb" or "goes in front of a noun" (if we only knew
what "nouns" and "verbs" are)?
And how is this sort of categorization more useful than a functional one, such
as "may be used to modify [i.e., further define or limit] the verb, when it
appears in any of a number of positions within the sentence"?
Gary Williams
Neil Coffey
> And what terminology would you use to describe syntax in a way that avoids
> "traditional/folk grammar"?
It doesn't essentially matter that much. We invent some term or other for
'category which can carry tense and inflection'; some term or other for
'category of invariable lexical items whose complement is a phrase of
category X' etc etc.
Neil
Neil Coffey
> When you say that a word's lexical categories are determined by syntactical
> criteria, do you mean that there is a tag on each word such as "may be used
> immediately following a verb" or "goes in front of a noun" (if we only knew
> what "nouns" and "verbs" are)?
You've by now had a sample of the trees I've been drawing. Now, the
details of these aren't too important, and indeed, as you've seen from
John's posts, different linguists use different syntactical models (the
particular model I've been using is quite popular in the field of language
acquisition). But what you will notice is that a sentence has a
particular, relatively well-defined, structure.
One way of looking at things is that a word can fill a particular
syntactical function, and in doing so will have morphology which reflects
that syntactical function. It's not easy to start from scratch and define
everything from first principles, because, whatever syntactical model you
use, the categories will ultimately rely on one another. But, for example,
we might define 'Verb' as being the category which can take tense
(actually, we'd want to refine this quite a bit to cope accurately with
all languages, but it'll more or less do for English). We might define
'Noun' as being the category which can be at the head of a phrase which
has the possessive 's marker attached to it and which can be marked as
plural by addition of /s/. We might define 'Pronoun' as an invariable item
which fills the syntactic role of a Noun Phrase. We might define
'Preposition' as an invariable item which takes a (Noun?) phrase
complement.
Or whatever.
But the point is that we are _not_ at any time referring to semantic
notions such as "is a doing word" or vague things such as "modifies", "is
next to".
> And how is this sort of categorization more useful than a functional one, such
> as "may be used to modify [i.e., further define or limit] the verb, when it
> appears in any of a number of positions within the sentence"?
Well, for one thing, because there's less likelihood of stumbling across
words that don't fit well into either category. There's no scope for
arguing about whether a particular "modifier" is a noun or adjective -- it
fills a particular syntactic position, and that's what determines its
category.
In fact, many language teachers aren't as far off the
syntactical/morphological model of categorisation as might be imagined.
For example, the reason why the notion of "modal verbs" might be
introduced is to say "modal verbs don't have infinitives; modal verbs take
verbal complements without 'to'; modal verbs don't take the -s inflection
in the 3rd singular present form". All that needs to be done now is to say
"and indeed, these are the criteria that define a modal verb" rather than
saying "a modal verb is a verb that modifies other verbs" or whatever
other fuzzy notion people choose to invent.
Neil
Bob Cunningham
said:
[ . . . ]
>You've by now had a sample of the trees I've been drawing. Now, the
>details of these aren't too important, and indeed, as you've seen from
>John's posts, different linguists use different syntactical models (the
>particular model I've been using is quite popular in the field of language
>acquisition). But what you will notice is that a sentence has a
>particular, relatively well-defined, structure.
[ . . . ]
Flipping through a linguistics encyclopedia, I see that there have been
a number of approaches to language analysis, things with names like
'case grammar', 'traditional grammar', 'categorial grammar',
'componential analysis', 'finite-state grammar', 'functional grammar',
'generative grammar', 'genre analysis', 'immediate constituent
analysis', 'lexical-functional grammar', 'Montague grammar', 'Port-Royal
grammar', '(Post-)Bloomfieldian American structural grammar',
'relational network grammar', 'scale and category grammar',
'stratificational syntax', 'systemic grammar', and
'transformational-generative grammar'. The book is seven years old, so
I suppose there may be a number of other grammars by now.
As I look over this profusion, I can't help wondering how much of it has
grown out of a perceived need to correct alleged deficiencies in
traditional grammar, and how much of it has resulted from desperate
efforts by students and their advisors to think up topics for PhD
dissertations.
By the way, Neil, does the material you've been presenting fit into any
of the categories I've listed? If I knew that it did, and if I knew
which one, then I could read about it and try to understand better where
you're coming from.
Gary Williams, Business Services Accounting
Neil Coffey <sann...@sable.ox.ac.uk> writes:
>You've by now had a sample of the trees I've been drawing. ...
>In fact, many language teachers aren't as far off the
>syntactical/morphological model of categorisation as might be imagined.
You may have answered this already in the "predicate" thread, but if so I
missed it.
Did you have to diagram sentences in school? If so, how different, if we bent
them a bit so that they looked more like things hanging from other things than
like things sitting on and dangling from a wire, would the results of your tree
diagrams be very different from the result of school-type sentence diagrams?
Gary Williams
Fred Louder
Neil Coffey wrote:
> ... It's not easy to start from scratch and define
>everything from first principles, because, whatever syntactical model you
>use, the categories will ultimately rely on one another. But, for example,
>we might define 'Verb' as being the category which can take tense
>(actually, we'd want to refine this quite a bit to cope accurately with
>all languages, but it'll more or less do for English).
Now just what are you going to tell a learner that "tense" is, without
dragging in the concept of a "verb"? (In logic, less is not more.)
>'Noun' as being the category which can be at the head of a phrase which
>has the possessive 's marker attached to it and which can be marked as
>plural by addition of /s/.
And we might as well drive up to the local service station and ask for
hydroformed 2,2,4 trimethylpentane-heptane instead of gasoline.
We might define 'Pronoun' as an invariable item
>which fills the syntactic role of a Noun Phrase. We might define
>'Preposition' as an invariable item which takes a (Noun?) phrase
>complement.
>But the point is that we are _not_ at any time referring to semantic
>notions such as "is a doing word" or vague things such as "modifies", "is
>next to".
If we could so define "pronoun" and "preposition," why would we need more
than one of each? This is pure abstraction. Pronoun am coming home
preposition school, Sunday pronoun are going preposition church. It seems
that semantic notions do matter after all.
>In fact, many language teachers aren't as far off the
>syntactical/morphological model of categorisation...For example, the reason
why
>the notion of "modal verbs" might be introduced is to say "modal verbs
don't
>have infinitives; modal verbs take verbal complements without 'to'; modal
>verbs don't take the -s inflection in the 3rd singular present form". All
that
>needs to be done now is to say "and indeed, these are the criteria that
define a
>modal verb" rather than saying "a modal verb is a verb that modifies other
verbs"
>or whatever other fuzzy notion people choose to invent.
Well, somebody "chose" to invent these definitions of yours, too, and they
certainly do a wonderful job of avoiding any reference to semantic criteria.
But the rest of us, the common speakers and writers, ARE referring to
semantic notions whenever we speak or write; nor do I consider myself some
sort of mystic for suppose that is why we are speaking and writing to begin
with--for which modest exercise we require fairly easy, all-purpose
descriptive tools, things we can cut corners with so as to "get an idea as
efficiently as possible out of one mind and into another."
The trouble with these linguistic definitions is that they are conveying
information to the wrong epistemological point of entry. You no more
require this level of refinement to learn how to speak or write correctly
than you need a full course in musical analyisis in order to play a simple
sonata.. If anything, teaching by such definitions, instead of working on a
level that admits words have meanings, is no better in principle than the
long-abandoned practice of teaching boys to scan and parse Latin verse
before allowing them to construe.
I don't mean at all to suggest that linguistics can't supply useful models
and practical explanations--witness John Lawler's admirable Web pages. But I
do think there are common-sense issues in which "a modal verb is a verb that
modifies another verb," though limited for scientific work, is adequate to
the job.
What I suppose we all desire is a sort of Taoist linguistics in which the
tools of analysis and creativity would be identical, like the master
butcher's cleaver that kept its edge for thirty years without needing to be
sharpened.
Regards,
Fred Louder
Golgo13
> Let me ask you both something, then. When you say that word X is used
> as (or "is") an adverb/pronoun/whatever, are you not implying that you
> believe that the brain categorises lexical items in some way or other
> so that you can recognise categories 'adverb', 'pronoun' etc (and that
> word X falls into suchandsuch category)?
What an excellent question. When I read this, I reflected upon my own
foreign language acquisition and considered the nature of fluency. As
native speakers of our own tongues, whatever those may be, we are fluent
and became so prior to formal schooling. The foreign language student,
on the other hand, has nothing -but- study whether it is contact with
speakers of the target language (L2) or formalized lessons.
I would suggest that in the initial stages a student struggles with the
new language, fitting the strange sounds in his mouth, trying out
guesses, and pondering in a very concrete way such questions as "Is this
an adjective? How do I make it possessive?" At this stage, the student
probably -does- in at least some way organize lexical items by function
and class, although the categories may not be formal ones - the student
may have developed his own (action words, polite words, greetings,
etc.).
Later on, with any luck and lots of effort, the student may discover the
ability to "think" in L2 and at this point the abstractions so
painstakingly developed are steadily less necessary save when acquiring
novel lexical/grammatical items, or (as we do here in aue), when
reflecting upon language itself. To answer the question above: the
supposition of a language user classifying a word into a structured
category does not imply that the brain categorizes words in any way at
all. For the purposes of learning a language or discussing it, however,
symbolic abstractions are indispensable.
Cheers,
DLS
--
D. Sosnoski
gol...@mindspring.com
Res ipsa loquitor.
shorts...@my-dejanews.com
Neil Coffey <sann...@sable.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> On 6 Oct 1998, Gary Williams, Business Services Accounting wrote:
>
> > When you say that a word's lexical categories are determined by syntactical
> > criteria, do you mean that there is a tag on each word such as "may be used
> > immediately following a verb" or "goes in front of a noun" (if we only knew
> > what "nouns" and "verbs" are)?
>
Don't lose sight of the forest for them.
--Shortstrokes
>Now, the
> details of these aren't too important, and indeed, as you've seen from
> John's posts, different linguists use different syntactical models (the
> particular model I've been using is quite popular in the field of language
> acquisition). But what you will notice is that a sentence has a
> particular, relatively well-defined, structure.
>
> One way of looking at things is that a word can fill a particular
> syntactical function, and in doing so will have morphology which reflects
> that syntactical function. It's not easy to start from scratch and define
> everything from first principles, because, whatever syntactical model you
> use, the categories will ultimately rely on one another. But, for example,
> we might define 'Verb' as being the category which can take tense
> (actually, we'd want to refine this quite a bit to cope accurately with
> all languages, but it'll more or less do for English). We might define
> 'Noun' as being the category which can be at the head of a phrase which
> has the possessive 's marker attached to it and which can be marked as
> plural by addition of /s/. We might define 'Pronoun' as an invariable item
> which fills the syntactic role of a Noun Phrase. We might define
> 'Preposition' as an invariable item which takes a (Noun?) phrase
> complement.
>
> Or whatever.
>
> But the point is that we are _not_ at any time referring to semantic
> notions such as "is a doing word" or vague things such as "modifies", "is
> next to".
>
> > And how is this sort of categorization more useful than a functional one,
such
> > as "may be used to modify [i.e., further define or limit] the verb, when it
> > appears in any of a number of positions within the sentence"?
>
> Well, for one thing, because there's less likelihood of stumbling across
> words that don't fit well into either category. There's no scope for
> arguing about whether a particular "modifier" is a noun or adjective -- it
> fills a particular syntactic position, and that's what determines its
> category.
>
> In fact, many language teachers aren't as far off the
> syntactical/morphological model of categorisation as might be imagined.
> For example, the reason why the notion of "modal verbs" might be
> introduced is to say "modal verbs don't have infinitives; modal verbs take
> verbal complements without 'to'; modal verbs don't take the -s inflection
> in the 3rd singular present form". All that needs to be done now is to say
> "and indeed, these are the criteria that define a modal verb" rather than
> saying "a modal verb is a verb that modifies other verbs" or whatever
> other fuzzy notion people choose to invent.
>
> Neil
shorts...@my-dejanews.com
Neil Coffey <sann...@sable.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> On 5 Oct 1998, K. Edgcombe wrote:
>
> > I think that when I say something is an adverb, I am saying that in my
native
> > speech it appears in the sort of place I expect something I call an adverb
to
> > appear, and has the sort of semantic function I expect something I call as
> > adverb to have. It has an adverbial sort of meaning, it's in an adverbial
sort
> > of slot, maybe it looks like an adverb, principally it feels like an adverb.
> > I think I am dealing in taxonomy rather than any more precise science, and
I'm
> > sure that for the purpose of professional linguistics this is a wholly
> > unsatisfactory definition. But you did ask.
>
> It's interesting that you divide words up according to their _meaning_
> rather than their syntactic function -- this is the main problem with
> traditional analyses, and why they often hit upon words which are
> difficult to categories, that the defining criterea
_criteria_
>for different
> categories is often quite vague ("adverbial meaning").
>
> > moment) can be of great help in refining and illuminating the process. But
I
> > do maintain that this very rough taxonomy can be of great value in teaching
and
> > in discussing matters of style and expression.
>
> One problem with modern analyses is that they've attempted to keep as
> far as possible traditional terminology. I imagine that this was at
> its origin intended to be helpful, but actually ends up being confusing.
> It would have been nice to start from scratch and describe syntax in
> a way that avoids terms in traditional/folk grammar ("verb", "noun",
> "participle", "gerund", "predicate" etc).
>
> As you say, it's often quite useful to be able to refer to things which
> technically don't have much syntactic status. It's a shame that the
> terminology doesn't always make it clear what is old-style and what
> is new-style analysis (and by 'new-style' I would mean, for example, the
> recognition that lexical categories are determined by syntactical (and
> morphological) criterea
_criteria_
>rather than vague notional criterea
Arrrrrghhhhhhhh _criteria_
So there.
I'd been wondering how and when "there" could function as an expletive. I
suppose that this is one case in which "there" functions as (and is) an
expletive.
On On,
--Shortstrokes
>like "is a describing word", "modifier").
Neil Coffey
> 'case grammar', 'traditional grammar', 'categorial grammar',
> 'componential analysis', 'finite-state grammar', 'functional grammar',
[...]
> By the way, Neil, does the material you've been presenting fit into any
> of the categories I've listed? If I knew that it did, and if I knew
> which one, then I could read about it and try to understand better where
> you're coming from.
OK, have a look at "generative grammar" and "transformational grammar".
You _might_ even look at Andrew Radford's introduction to transformational
grammar (I think it's called something highly original like "An
introduction to Transformational Grammar"), though it's a little bit wordy
(but quite well explained).
Neil
Neil Coffey
> Did you have to diagram sentences in school? If so, how different, if we bent
> them a bit so that they looked more like things hanging from other things than
> like things sitting on and dangling from a wire, would the results of your tree
> diagrams be very different from the result of school-type sentence diagrams?
To be honest, I don't recall really drawing sentence diagrams at school. I
understand, however, that some boards do now incoroporate syntax within
the English Language A-Level, and the model used is a simplified version
of the PPT model I've been using.
Neil
Neil Coffey
> Now just what are you going to tell a learner that "tense" is, without
> dragging in the concept of a "verb"? (In logic, less is not more.)
Who knows. But it must theoretically be possible, because in some
languages words other than verbs take tense inflection (I believe
Icelandic is an example of such a language, but this may or may not be
true -- I have no knowledge of Icelandic whatsoever).
> >'Noun' as being the category which can be at the head of a phrase which
> >has the possessive 's marker attached to it and which can be marked as
> >plural by addition of /s/.
>
> And we might as well drive up to the local service station and ask for
> hydroformed 2,2,4 trimethylpentane-heptane instead of gasoline.
I don't really see this analogy.
> If we could so define "pronoun" and "preposition," why would we need more
> than one of each? This is pure abstraction.
It's an attempt to identify the factors which distinguish members of one
lexical category from another. It's not an abstraction; it's an
observation of how the language appears to work.
> Pronoun am coming home
> preposition school, Sunday pronoun are going preposition church. It seems
> that semantic notions do matter after all.
I don't see what point you're trying to make. I was saying that words
appear to be categorised in a way which is independent of syntax. I don't
see how what you're saying counters this.
> Well, somebody "chose" to invent these definitions of yours, too, and they
> certainly do a wonderful job of avoiding any reference to semantic criteria.
They chose to invent them because they appear to describe the way the
language actually operates. It is the notional definitions that are the
abstraction from this point of view.
> But the rest of us, the common speakers and writers, ARE referring to
> semantic notions whenever we speak or write
When you speak or write, yes. But that's not really what's at stake. What
is being questioned is whether the lexicon is organised into categories
according to syntactical and morphological behaviour or semantic value.
From the point of view of how language operates ("in the brain", if you
like), the former seems closer to the truth.
> The trouble with these linguistic definitions is that they are conveying
> information to the wrong epistemological point of entry. You no more
> require this level of refinement to learn how to speak or write correctly
> than you need a full course in musical analyisis in order to play a simple
Is the purpose of knowing, say, what a Noun is to help one "speak or
write correctly", I wonder? When the prime minister (or his little men)
writes a speech, do you think he really cares that much whether
such-and-such a word happens to be a Noun, Preposition, or whatever, so
long as what he writes is effective native-speaker English?
One thing I would say about lexical categories is that speakers probably
have more conscious instinct about them than we give them credit for. If
you say to a reasonably intelligent fourteen-year-old "The words 'under',
'below', 'above', 'behind', 'from', 'with', 'without' are prepositions",
they'd probably feel relatively instinctively that, say, the word 'about'
was somehow "more like these words" than, say, the word 'tree'.
> I don't mean at all to suggest that linguistics can't supply useful models
> and practical explanations--witness John Lawler's admirable Web pages. But I
> do think there are common-sense issues in which "a modal verb is a verb that
> modifies another verb," though limited for scientific work, is adequate to
> the job.
What actually _is_ that job, though? If that job is to then say "modal
verbs don't have infinitives", then why not just say "modal verbs are
verbs that don't have infinitives". You might then go on to say: "typical
examples are.... the ideas they often expess are...". This way, you've
given a quite precise definition of a what a modal verb is *and* you've
explained typical uses (thus overcoming your fear that the definition
might be too "abstract" because it lacks semantic reference).
Neil
shorts...@my-dejanews.com
>
> > > "there" in a particular sentence of the form "there are x y's..." was a
> > pronoun
> > > or an adverb. From a didactic point of view, what difference could it
make?
> > >
> > > Gary Williams
> >
> > None. When you teach overseas, you run into students from time to time who
> > become fixated on a definition and the sooner it can be given to them, the
> > sooner peace comes to the teacher. It was a good question, coming from an
> > overseas student. Analytical people come up with questions and can't rest
> > until they get clarification. Clarification of confusing points (and these
> > vary from individual to individual and are the "how is language stored?"
> > question that fascinates theoretical linguists) is a necessary step at
> > certain (and, again, individual) points in language learning.
>
> One answer to such questions, though, is that the analysis adopted
> simply isn't intended to, say, class 'there' as adverb or pronoun in the
> construction "there's".
>
> One of the problems with the traditional analyses often adopted in
> language teaching is that they rely on notional criterea
criteria
>which work for a
> large number of members of the main categories (verb, noun, adjective) but
> which fail when it comes to certain forms. This then leads to certain
> categories, notably 'adverb', being used as dustbin categories to sweep up
> forms which are awkward to class.
which is as good a place as any for them in the second-language classroom,
for, as Gary Williams pointed out, "From a didactic point of view, what
difference could it make?" None, but some students have a need to clarify
little details before they can move on (as above). Answer the question as
quickly and directly as possible, sweep it under the table, under the rug,
into the dustbin, and get on with the business of a natural use of the
language...and no, I don't want to define "natural."
--Shortstrokes
>'pronoun' might be considered such a
> class in French (where 'y', 'en' have traditionally been dustbinned as
> "pronouns").
Neil Coffey
>
> _criteria_
Oh grow up.
Robert Lieblich
A few days ago I sent Neil a polite (I thought) e-mail suggesting that
he might want to adopt the same spelling of "criteria" as the rest of
the world, rather than consistently adhering to "criterea." He did not
respond. It appears I was fortunate.
Spelling has such little linguistic significance. I think I'll spell
his name "Niel" from now on.
Bob L.
Skitt
Neil Coffey wrote in message ...
>Oh grow up.
But Neil, if we all did that, who would have anything truly worthwhile to
post here? After all, this is just a playground, the toys are our language
peculiarities, and they are strong enough to survive anything we may try to
do to twist them or break them.
We are just having fun here -- though not all of us at the same level. Some
of us just watch, others try to take the the toys apart, and some are just
playing the part of bullies to lend the playground a realistic atmosphere.
We all get by quite well without anything we may learn here. Sooner or later
we all will have to go home and do something useful. Meanwhile, fun is fun.
--
Skitt http://www.geocities.com/TheTropics/5537/
Central Florida CAUTION: My opinion may vary.
Neil Coffey
> A few days ago I sent Neil a polite (I thought) e-mail suggesting that
> he might want to adopt the same spelling of "criteria" as the rest of
> the world, rather than consistently adhering to "criterea."
And indeed, this was the appropriate way to go about it. There are far too
many intelligent discussions on newsnet which get interrupted for matters
of typography which are hardly relevant. If you have a problem with
somebody's spelling/typing, let them know by private e-mail, but _please_
don't clog up the newsgroup with it.
Neil
Neil Coffey
> Spelling has such little linguistic significance. I think I'll spell
> his name "Niel" from now on.
Well, let's put it this way, you wouldn't be the first... ;-)
Nobody's saying that spelling isn't important. But, particularly in the
context of newsnet, which is designed to be quick to use for the very
reason that it obviates orthographical and typographical niceties, it
isn't intended to overshadow the topic of discussion, is it?
Neil
Robert M. Wilson
Neil Coffey <sann...@sable.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>To be honest, I don't recall really drawing sentence diagrams at school. I
>understand, however, that some boards do now incoroporate syntax within
>the English Language A-Level, and the model used is a simplified version
>of the PPT model I've been using.
The diagramming of sentences was a common North American method of showing
grammatical structure or relationships in English language. Many, if not most,
language text books used this method in the fifties and sixties, but it seemed
to die out. As far as I know, it was not usual in other parts of the
English-speaking world.
Two guesses at the reasons for the NA use are:
the greater population of immigrant families whose children were viewed as
needing English instruction, and
the learning of e.g. Latin and French, with instruction in their grammars,
lessened the need for English grammar in Britain and the colonies.
I also guess that the greater language pedantry found in NA is the result of
the type of instruction used.
Eric The Read
> On Wed, 7 Oct 1998, Fred Louder wrote:
>
> > Now just what are you going to tell a learner that "tense" is, without
> > dragging in the concept of a "verb"? (In logic, less is not more.)
>
> Who knows. But it must theoretically be possible, because in some
> languages words other than verbs take tense inflection (I believe
> Icelandic is an example of such a language, but this may or may not be
> true -- I have no knowledge of Icelandic whatsoever).
In Japanese, adjectives can inflect for tense. I'll have to go back and
check my textbook to be sure, but I'm fairly certain that in that case
the verb does not inflect as well. Japanese may not be the best example,
however, as it only has two tenses: Past, and non-past.
"[Sore wa] oishii deshita." (Past tense; inflect the copula)
"[Sore wa] oishikatta desu." (Past tense; inflect the adjective)
In this example, the copula doesn't inflect, but I won't swear that it
never does; I just haven't seen it do so yet.
-=Eric, returning you to alt.usage.ENGLISH (sorry)
Eric The Read
> The diagramming of sentences was a common North American method of showing
> grammatical structure or relationships in English language. Many, if not most,
> language text books used this method in the fifties and sixties, but it seemed
> to die out. As far as I know, it was not usual in other parts of the
> English-speaking world.
I was taught this my sophomore year in high school, which was '89. (don't
laugh, please :^) Rather, I should say they attempted to teach me this,
and I resisted mightily, seeing it (correctly, I still believe) as useful
only for people who can't figure out the difference between "they" and
"them".
I consider myself able to construct the odd sentence (very odd, some
might say) to this day without needing to diagram it, and still have a
hard time figuring out what they thought this was teaching us. Though my
teacher did have an impressive poster with what was claimed to be "The
Longest Sentence in English Literature, Diagrammed." It was perhaps
2'x3' in size. Don't ask me what font or point size; I didn't care to
pay that much attention to it.
-=Eric
Aaron J. Dinkin
> Nobody's saying that spelling isn't important. But, particularly in the
> context of newsnet, which is designed to be quick to use for the very
> reason that it obviates orthographical and typographical niceties, it
> isn't intended to overshadow the topic of discussion, is it?
Of course, in a.u.e spelling _is_ one of the charter topics of discussion.
But then at least we ought to change the subject heading.
-Aaron J. Dinkin
Dr. Whom
K1912
Neil Coffey wrote:
>On Thu, 8 Oct 1998, Robert Lieblich wrote:
>
>> Spelling has such little linguistic significance. I think I'll spell
>> his name "Niel" from now on.
>
>Well, let's put it this way, you wouldn't be the first... ;-)
>
>Nobody's saying that spelling isn't important. But, particularly in the
>context of newsnet, which is designed to be quick to use for the very
>reason that it obviates orthographical and typographical niceties, it
>isn't intended to overshadow the topic of discussion, is it?
>
>
Know whey, Hose.
K1912
George F. Hardy
GFH
Bob Cunningham
said:
>Neil Coffey wrote:
>>
>> > > difficult to categories, that the defining criterea
>> >
>> > _criteria_
>>
>> Oh grow up.
>
>A few days ago I sent Neil a polite (I thought) e-mail suggesting that
>he might want to adopt the same spelling of "criteria" as the rest of
>the world, rather than consistently adhering to "criterea." He did not
>respond. It appears I was fortunate.
>
>Spelling has such little linguistic significance. I think I'll spell
>his name "Niel" from now on.
I have been intrigued by Neil's spelling to such a degree that I have
been keeping a folder containing postings in which he used the
misspellings 'criterea, 'critereon', and 'differenciate'. I was curious
to know if these were random misspellings or intentional idiosyncrasies
that he followed consistently.
So far, he has consistently used 'critereon' and 'differenciate', but on
30 September, in a 27-line posting, he had 'criterea' at line 10 and
'criteria' at line 23. The conventional spelling could have been a
simple typo.
Also on 30 September, the following exchange occurred:
Someone said:
>> For the criteria of authority, check the Longman Dictionary of
>> Contemporary English.
And Neil responded:
> Any particular reason for choosing this as your "criteria of
> authority"?
Here, I suppose it could be that he unconsciously followed the other
poster's spelling, or he could have been mocking what he thought was the
other poster's misspelling, or something else could be the true case.
When I read Neil's postings, not only am I distracted by each occurrence
of 'criterea', 'critereon', or 'differenciate'; I also find my attention
diverted by an unusual -- for him -- *conventional* spelling of
'criteria', just because I know that he doesn't normally use the
conventional spelling.
I would find it interesting to read a discussion by Neil of his thoughts
on conventional spelling.
Are your unconventional spellings intentional, Neil, or is it that you
just don't care enough about spelling to want to learn conventional
spellings? Do you understand that words spelled unconventionally
distract your reader's attention from what you are saying?
Neil Coffey
> the verb does not inflect as well. Japanese may not be the best example,
> however, as it only has two tenses: Past, and non-past.
How many tense forms do _English_ verbs have?
Neil
Neil Coffey
> I have been intrigued by Neil's spelling to such a degree that I have
> been keeping a folder containing postings in which he used the
> misspellings 'criterea, 'critereon', and 'differenciate'. I was curious
Blimey! People have more spare time than I thought ;-) You'll be drawing
pi charts next...
> I would find it interesting to read a discussion by Neil of his thoughts
> on conventional spelling.
Of course, conventional spelling is a useful thing -- that's why I'm
opposed, for example, to many of the proposed spelling reforms to French.
Though some, such as changing the directions of accents on some words, can
hardly be considered intrusive as 50% of the population place the accent
the "wrong" way round anyway (and actually, the "wrong" way is the more
logical in such cases).
> Are your unconventional spellings intentional, Neil, or is it that you
> just don't care enough about spelling to want to learn conventional
> spellings? Do you understand that words spelled unconventionally
> distract your reader's attention from what you are saying?
Of course I understand that unconventional spelling can distract fluent
readers (though actually, how much difference 'differentiate' vs.
'differenciate' makes is questionable -- I doubt that in the reading
process of fluent readers the brain is quite that sensitive to individual
letters in a word of this length).
You've got to appreciate, though, that much of what I read and write is
actually in French rather than English, and it's inevitable that a few
orthographical parasites are going to slip through from one language to
the other -- I'm sure I've been known to spell 'address' with one 'd' and
'literature' with two t's etc.
Obviously, when it actually matters, I use a spellchecker and get other
people to proofread.
Neil
shorts...@my-dejanews.com
Neil Coffey <sann...@sable.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> > > difficult to categories, that the defining criterea
> >
> > _criteria_
>
> Oh grow up.
>
>
--Shortstrokes
shorts...@my-dejanews.com
lieb...@erols.com wrote:
> Neil Coffey wrote:
> >
> > > > difficult to categories, that the defining criterea
> > >
> > > _criteria_
> >
> > Oh grow up.
>
> he might want to adopt the same spelling of "criteria" as the rest of
> the world, rather than consistently adhering to "criterea." He did not
> respond.
Private politeness seems to have been wasted on him where an open mention at
least got a response. A public flogging may be the way to get somebody like
Neil to correct *themself.*--and *there* it is, *as is*.
>It appears I was fortunate.
It's hard for someone who always sees *themself* as right to be wrong.
> Spelling has such little linguistic significance. I think I'll spell
> his name "Niel" from now on.
>
or Neel.
> Bob L.
>
Thanks.
shorts...@my-dejanews.com
>
> > his name "Niel" from now on.
>
>
> Nobody's saying that spelling isn't important. But, particularly in the
> context of newsnet, which is designed to be quick to use for the very
> reason that it obviates orthographical and typographical niceties, it
> isn't intended to overshadow the topic of discussion, is it?
>
Egad! I seem to have missed the point entirely. Were we discussing whether
"their" was an adjective or a pronoun?
--Shortstrokes ;-)
shorts...@my-dejanews.com
Neil Coffey <sann...@sable.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> On Thu, 8 Oct 1998, Robert Lieblich wrote:
>
> > he might want to adopt the same spelling of "criteria" as the rest of
> > the world, rather than consistently adhering to "criterea."
>
> many intelligent discussions on newsnet which get interrupted for matters
> of typography which are hardly relevant.
How would you spell the Valley girl pronunciation/intonation of
"*What*ever!" ;-)
--and where would I put my question mark in that sentence?
>If you have a problem with
> somebody's spelling/typing, let them know by private e-mail,
I'd rather not get personal.
>but _please_ don't clog up the newsgroup with it.
Or as Zippy says, "Send me to Minnesota, but PLEASE don't embarass me!"
>
> Neil
>
Sorry I hurt your feelings; you're just the perfect straight man.
shorts...@my-dejanews.com
Neil Coffey <sann...@sable.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> On Thu, 8 Oct 1998, Robert Lieblich wrote:
>
> > A few days ago I sent Neil a polite (I thought) e-mail suggesting that
> > he might want to adopt the same spelling of "criteria" as the rest of
> > the world, rather than consistently adhering to "criterea."
>
> And indeed, this was the appropriate way to go about it. There are far too
> many intelligent discussions on newsnet which get interrupted for matters
> of typography which are hardly relevant.
>
I saw it so many times that it was detracting from the content; the first
time, I assumed it was a typo. After the fourth or fifth time, I started
thinking, "How can I do something about this. The guy thinks that no one but
he has the answers."
>If you have a problem with
> somebody's spelling/typing, let them know by private e-mail,
I'd rather meet in public.
>but _please_ don't clog up the newsgroup with it.
> Neil
After seeing it three times in one posting I had to say something and say it
fast.
--Shortstrokes
shorts...@my-dejanews.com
exw...@ix.netcom.com (Bob Cunningham ) wrote:
> On Thu, 08 Oct 1998 13:44:34 -0400, Robert Lieblich <lieb...@erols.com>
> said:
>
> >>
> >> > > difficult to categories, that the defining criterea
> >> >
> >> > _criteria_
> >>
> >> Oh grow up.
> >
> >he might want to adopt the same spelling of "criteria" as the rest of
> >respond. It appears I was fortunate.
> >
> >Spelling has such little linguistic significance. I think I'll spell
> >his name "Niel" from now on.
>
> been keeping a folder containing postings in which he used the
> misspellings 'criterea, 'critereon', and 'differenciate'. I was curious
> that he followed consistently.
>
> So far, he has consistently used 'critereon' and 'differenciate', but on
> 30 September, in a 27-line posting, he had 'criterea' at line 10 and
> 'criteria' at line 23. The conventional spelling could have been a
> simple typo.
>
> Also on 30 September, the following exchange occurred:
>
> Someone said:
> >> For the criteria of authority, check the Longman Dictionary of
> >> Contemporary English.
> And Neil responded:
> > Any particular reason for choosing this as your "criteria of
> > authority"?
>
> Here, I suppose it could be that he unconsciously followed the other
> poster's spelling,
I was trying to lead him in that direction; I'd noticed the misspelling
several times before.
>or he could have been mocking what he thought was the
> other poster's misspelling,
It was I. He must have been
>or something else could be the true case.
>
> When I read Neil's postings, not only am I distracted by each occurrence
> of 'criterea', 'critereon', or 'differenciate'; I also find my attention
> diverted by an unusual -- for him -- *conventional* spelling of
> 'criteria', just because I know that he doesn't normally use the
> conventional spelling.
>
> I would find it interesting to read a discussion by Neil of his thoughts
> on conventional spelling.
>
> Are your unconventional spellings intentional, Neil, or is it that you
> just don't care enough about spelling to want to learn conventional
> spellings? Do you understand that words spelled unconventionally
> distract your reader's attention from what you are saying?
>
>
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
Fred Louder
>
>> Now just what are you going to tell a learner that "tense" is, without
>> dragging in the concept of a "verb"? (In logic, less is not more.)
>
>Who knows. But it must theoretically be possible, because in some
>languages words other than verbs take tense inflection (I believe
>Icelandic is an example of such a language, but this may or may not be
>true -- I have no knowledge of Icelandic whatsoever).
Dear Neil,
Thanks for your considered reply. I won't try to answer just now, as I am
still considering it all...
Icelandic is very highly inflected, with active, middle and passive voice in
verbs. You even declines the definite article and tack it onto the
noun-ending, with suitable adjustment. Great fun. I only have a smattering.
Regards,
Fred L.
Fred Louder
Fred Louder wrote:
>You even declines the definite article and tack it onto the noun-ending...
I's none too swift dis mornin', b'ys. FOR declines READ decline
F.L.
Gary Williams, Business Services Accounting
<emsc...@mail.uccs.edu> writes:
>I was taught this my sophomore year in high school, which was '89. (don't
>laugh, please :^) Rather, I should say they attempted to teach me this,
>and I resisted mightily, seeing it (correctly, I still believe) as useful
>only for people who can't figure out the difference between "they" and
>"them". ...
I didn't mind diagramming sentences; I always enjoyed puzzles, and this was
just another kind. But I am in sympathy with your wonderment, and that of most
of my classmates, as to what _possibly_ the process could have taught us.
And I still wonder how different the results are from Neil's tree diagrams.
Gary Williams
Gary Williams, Business Services Accounting
>I would find it interesting to read a discussion by Neil of his thoughts
>on conventional spelling.
I think Neil has already clearly stated his position--in circumstances under
which he was not under personal attack--that spelling conventions are merely
conventions, without linguistic significance.
The only reason Neil's misspellings are even slightly distracting is that there
is a bit of a disconnect; Neil is well-educated, so while we allow the
occasional typo, we don't expect outright spelling errors. But even I, a
former fourth-grade spelling champion, remain utterly baffled by "sheriff" and
"embarrass". So I vote for giving it a rest.
Gary Williams
Bob Cunningham
said:
>On Fri, 9 Oct 1998, Bob Cunningham wrote:
>
>> I have been intrigued by Neil's spelling to such a degree that I have
>> been keeping a folder containing postings in which he used the
>> misspellings 'criterea, 'critereon', and 'differenciate'. I was curious
>Blimey! People have more spare time than I thought ;-) You'll be drawing
>pi charts next...
>> I would find it interesting to read a discussion by Neil of his thoughts
>> on conventional spelling.
>Of course, conventional spelling is a useful thing -- that's why I'm
>opposed, for example, to many of the proposed spelling reforms to French.
>Though some, such as changing the directions of accents on some words, can
>hardly be considered intrusive as 50% of the population place the accent
>the "wrong" way round anyway (and actually, the "wrong" way is the more
>logical in such cases).
>> Are your unconventional spellings intentional, Neil, or is it that you
>> just don't care enough about spelling to want to learn conventional
>> spellings? Do you understand that words spelled unconventionally
>> distract your reader's attention from what you are saying?
>Of course I understand that unconventional spelling can distract fluent
>readers (though actually, how much difference 'differentiate' vs.
>'differenciate' makes is questionable -- I doubt that in the reading
>process of fluent readers the brain is quite that sensitive to individual
>letters in a word of this length).
Hmm. It seems to me that a fluent reader might be distracted more than
a slow reader. I think that I recognize a word as a single pattern
rather than as a sequence of letters. When I look at a word, either the
pattern looks right or it doesn't. If it doesn't, I have to readjust to
recognizing individual letters, and it may take a millisecond or so to
figure out what's wrong. The thought process may go: 'Hey, that doesn't
look right. What's wrong with it? Oh, there's a "c" where there should
be a "t". Or am I wrong? Should I look it up? Naw, I know it should
be a "t". Now, what was he saying?' To answer the last question may
require reading again from the beginning of the sentence.
A slow reader, one who plows through a word letter by letter or syllable
by syllable, might sound out 'ciate' as /Si:'eIt/ or /si:'eIt/ without
even noticing that there's a misspelling, so that there would be no
distraction at all.
>You've got to appreciate, though, that much of what I read and write is
>actually in French rather than English, and it's inevitable that a few
>orthographical parasites are going to slip through from one language to
>the other -- I'm sure I've been known to spell 'address' with one 'd' and
>'literature' with two t's etc.
My reaction to that is that if I were in that situation I would feel I
need a spelling checker more than most people do.
>Obviously, when it actually matters, I use a spellchecker and get other
>people to proofread.
From that statement I infer that in writing for AUE you feel that
correct spelling doesn't actually matter. I, for one, feel that it
does, remembering that for a given posting there is only one writer, but
there may be dozens or hundreds of readers. So I seldom fail to invoke
the spelling checker before I push the 'Send Now' button. I almost
never find a misspelled word, but I often find one or two typos.
I read only ten or twenty percent of what's posted to AUE. My
newsreader is set to optionally display postings only from posters who
are on a list of 100 or so that I have watch filters set for. (I
usually don't even read all of those postings, because I skip the ones
with uninteresting subject lines.) Almost no careless writers are on
that list, although I make an exception for someone who usually has
especially interesting things to say.
Neil Coffey
> I didn't mind diagramming sentences; I always enjoyed puzzles, and this was
> just another kind. But I am in sympathy with your wonderment, and that of most
> of my classmates, as to what _possibly_ the process could have taught us.
>
> And I still wonder how different the results are from Neil's tree diagrams.
Do you have any examples of trees you might have drawn? I could certainly
give you an equivalent tree in the approach I've been using.
Neil
Gary Williams, Business Services Accounting
writes:
>Tsk, tsk. There, there.
Hmmm.....is there an adverb?
Gary Williams
Eric The Read
Given your relatively recent burial of the subjunctive and case in
English, I'm afraid to answer. ^_^;;
I would have said three, except that I'm fairly sure you'll disallow the
future tense, since it's really a combination of words, and not a unique
morphology. This leaves two, except that for many verbs, the past tense
is either: morphologically distinct, but irregular ("ran" -> "run"), or
morphologically identical to the present tense ("read" -> "read"). Which
might lead the unwary (namely, me) to conclude that English has either
one tense, or none at all.
So, O Linguist, how many tenses DO they have?
-=Eric, honestly curious.
Skitt
Bob Cunningham wrote in message <36242b49...@nntp.ix.netcom.com>...
>Hmm. It seems to me that a fluent reader might be distracted more than
>a slow reader. I think that I recognize a word as a single pattern
>rather than as a sequence of letters. When I look at a word, either the
>pattern looks right or it doesn't.
Exactly!
>I read only ten or twenty percent of what's posted to AUE.
I try to at least scan everything posted. Being able to read quickly without
distractions is extremely important to me, as I can't devote too much time
to this endeavor. Poorly written sentences are no help either.
--
Skitt http://www.geocities.com/TheTropics/5537/
Central Florida CAUTION: My opinion may vary.
Neil Coffey
> Private politeness seems to have been wasted on him where an open mention at
> least got a response.
But that's just your assumption. It was a private e-mail, requesting that
I adopt a different spelling of that word. The logical response to that
request is to adopt the different spelling, which I will from now on
attempt to do. What response were you expecting?
Neil
John M. Lawler
If by "tense" you mean what linguists mean, then two. Present and Past.
If by "tense" you mean something else, then any number you like,
depending on what *you* want to mean by "tense". It's your language.
Oh, and by the way, the past tense of "read" is only orthographically
identical with its present form. In real (i.e, spoken) language, the kind
everybody learns *before* they go to school, the present tense is /rid/
and the past tense is /rEd/, and they are therefore not "morphologically
identical". Of course, that's using what *linguists* mean by
"morphologically identical".
You seem to be using it in a different context, and you may be correct in
that context; I couldn't tell. Many other verbs are irregular, and plenty
(including the distinguished set of t-final monosyllabic verbs including
"set, spit, cut") neutralize the present/past distinction. This is normal
behavior; paradigms are never totally regular in living languages.
Remember, we're dealing with human beings here.
And, if you're still worrying about "how many tenses", and want to get a
bigger number than two, you could always just declare that any combination
of verbs forms a tense, and then you'll have hundreds. For a selection,
try
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/aue/tense.html
-John Lawler http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/ Michigan Linguistics
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Language is the most massive and inclusive art we know, a - Edward Sapir
mountainous and anonymous work of unconscious generations." Language (1921)
Bob Cunningham
Business Services Accounting) said:
[ ... ]
>But even I, a
>former fourth-grade spelling champion, remain utterly baffled by "sheriff" and
>"embarrass". So I vote for giving it a rest.
And I, a former eighth-grade spelling champion (who might have been
Boulder City, Nevada, open champion in 1935 if some smartass woman
hadn't known, after a long head-to-head battle, how to spell 'diarrhea'^
better than I did) vote for giving it a rest only after we convince
everyone that they should use a spelling checker.
(I still look up 'embarrass' once in a while. I find it hard to believe
that it really has two 'r's. The second 'r' seems so unnecessary. The
spelling 'harass' seems much more sensible.)
^ I wanted to spell it 'diharrea'.
Eric The Read
> Eric The Read <emsc...@mail.uccs.edu> writes:
> >So, O Linguist, how many tenses DO they have?
>
> If by "tense" you mean what linguists mean, then two. Present and Past.
Fair enough, what do linguists mean by tense?
> If by "tense" you mean something else, then any number you like,
> depending on what *you* want to mean by "tense". It's your language.
At this point, I feel as if I dare not call anything "tense" (except my
mental state, perhaps!), for fear of having a linguist tell me I'm full
of hooey.
> Of course, that's using what *linguists* mean by "morphologically
> identical".
I did not know that included sound as well as orthography. I'm relieved,
really.
> And, if you're still worrying about "how many tenses", and want to get a
> bigger number than two, you could always just declare that any combination
> of verbs forms a tense, and then you'll have hundreds.
I have no emotional justification in selecting a number greater than two;
it's just that I recall having been taught the "future tense" lo, these
many years back, and I didn't know if it counted or not.
Are there any languages with > 2 tenses?
-=Eric
Armond Perretta
>Bob Cunningham wrote: ... My newsreader is set to
>optionally display postings only from posters who
>are on a list of 100 or so that I have watch filters set for. (I
>usually don't even read all of those postings, because I skip the
>ones with uninteresting subject lines.) Almost no careless
>writers are on that list, although I make an exception for
>someone who usually has especially interesting things to say.
Considering that only about 68 people responded to the recent
"where are you?" survey, it's possible that there aren't many more
than 100 or so individuals writing to a.u.e. When one factors in the
recent
discussion here on the use of AOL aliases, things *really* get bleak.
I'd bet that even with your 100 writer limit you probably don't miss
too very much.
s/v Kerry Deare of Barnegat (remove "BOAT")
"Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell
your parrot to the town gossip."
shorts...@my-dejanews.com
> a slow reader. I think that I recognize a word as a single pattern
> rather than as a sequence of letters. When I look at a word, either the
> recognizing individual letters, and it may take a millisecond or so to
> figure out what's wrong. The thought process may go: 'Hey, that doesn't
> look right. What's wrong with it? Oh, there's a "c" where there should
> be a "t". Or am I wrong? Should I look it up? Naw, I know it should
> be a "t". Now, what was he saying?' To answer the last question may
> require reading again from the beginning of the sentence.
>
> A slow reader, one who plows through a word letter by letter or syllable
> by syllable, might sound out 'ciate' as /Si:'eIt/ or /si:'eIt/ without
> even noticing that there's a misspelling, so that there would be no
> distraction at all.
Thanks for bringing this back to an academic discussion of process. Your
thoughts and words on the mental/decoding process of a fluent reader vs. a
non-fluent reader are especially relevant to the current focus on what
constitutes a "good reader" and what constitutes a "poor reader" here in this
country that has managed to churn out so many of the latter. I have the
horrible feeling that, in returning to phonics instruction (the half of the
"balanced approach" now mandated, which the educrats in middle management
take to mean only the half we'd thrown out some years ago), we're going to be
turning out people who plough through words letter by letter now, instead of
those who blithely sail through any printed text relying on free association
to intital letters and whatever illustrations may accompany the text.
> >You've got to appreciate, though, that much of what I read and write is
> >actually in French rather than English, and it's inevitable that a few
> >orthographical parasites are going to slip through from one language to
> >the other --
It happens to the best of us.
> My reaction to that is that if I were in that situation I would feel I
> need a spelling checker more than most people do.
>
> >Obviously, when it actually matters, I use a spellchecker and get other
> >people to proofread.
>
> From that statement I infer that in writing for AUE you feel that
> correct spelling doesn't actually matter. I, for one, feel that it
> does, remembering that for a given posting there is only one writer, but
> there may be dozens or hundreds of readers.
>
> I read only ten or twenty percent of what's posted to AUE. My
> newsreader is set to optionally display postings only from posters who
> are on a list of 100 or so that I have watch filters set for. (I
> usually don't even read all of those postings, because I skip the ones
> with uninteresting subject lines.) Almost no careless writers are on
> that list, although I make an exception for someone who usually has
> especially interesting things to say.
>
Like yourself. Thanks for an always interesting post.
--Shortstrokes
shorts...@my-dejanews.com
Robert Lieblich
What the hey, Bob, go ahead and spell it that way now. Many of us have
at least one idiosyncratic spelling.
And there's definitely *something* about "embarrass." I too have a hard
time remembering the double r.
Bob Lieblich
George F. Hardy
>
>Neil Coffey <sann...@sable.ox.ac.uk> writes:
>> How many tense forms do _English_ verbs have?
>
>Given your relatively recent burial of the subjunctive and case in
>English, I'm afraid to answer. ^_^;;
Six active: Present past future
present perfect past perfect future perfect
Subjucntive: present past
GFH
Bob Cunningham
said:
>On 9 Oct 1998, Gary Williams, Business Services Accounting wrote:
As best I can remember, here's the way we did it in 1935 (Monospaced
font is mandatory):
The very largest house in the next block is the bright red
one on the corner.
house | is | one
------------------------|-------|------------------
\ \ \ | \ \ \
The largest \in the red \on
---- ------- \ --- --- \
\ block \ corner
very ----------- bright ------
----- \ \ ------ \
the next the
--- ---- ---
Prepositions would be shown rotated to lie on slanted line. Long line
through main horizontal line separated subject and predicate. Short
line above main line only, separated verb from predicate nominative.
When the verb was transitive, the line after the verb would be slanting
to the right instead of vertical (I think), and the object would be on
the main line to the right of the slanting line.
Markus Laker
> Considering that only about 68 people responded to the recent
> "where are you?" survey, it's possible that there aren't many more
> than 100 or so individuals writing to a.u.e. When one factors in the
> recent
> discussion here on the use of AOL aliases, things *really* get bleak.
In the last fortnight, 366 email addresses have been used in postings to
a.u.e. Here are the top 41 posters, along with the number of postings
made by each:
118 a1a5...@bc.sympatico.ca
97 Truly Donovan
93 Charles Riggs
91 Brian J Goggin
79 Mimi Kahn
69 Larry Phillips
69 Robert Lieblich
56 Rushtown
50 Polar
48 Albert Marshall
48 K1912
48 Perchprism
47 Neil Coffey
44 P&DSchultz
42 Gary Williams, Business Services Accounting
41 Robert Bryan Lipton
39 Bob Cunningham
38 Skitt
35 Mark Odegard
34 Eric The Read
34 shorts...@my-dejanews.com
33 "Reinhold (Rey) Aman" <am...@sonic.net>
31 Mark Daniels
30 Peter Moylan
29 Fred Louder
29 Henry Tickner
29 JNugent231
25 Aaron J. Dinkin
23 Armond Perretta
23 Peter T. Daniels
23 babydoll
22 Mark Schaefer
22 Michael Cargal
21 John Holmes
21 Mike Barnes
21 Murray Arnow
21 Simon R. Hughes
20 D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
20 H.W.M.
20 Lee Rudolph
20 N.Mitchum
These numbers are on the low side, because TCP's news server has
recently been economical with the actualités, especially on and around
30th September.
I won't publish these figures regularly, because they give people an
incentive to post even more than they do already. There's too much to
read as it is, even with three of the top ten in the killfile alongside
a hundred or so others.
Markus
--
a.u.e FAQ and resources: http://homepages.tcp.co.uk/~laker/aue/
Drop the 'drop this bit' bit of my email address to reply.
Markus Laker
> And there's definitely *something* about "embarrass." I too have a hard
> time remembering the double r.
Yeah. I keep wanting to give it a better home in the middle of
'harass'.