swsh@ellis.uchicago.edu (Janet M. Swisher) (12/14/90)
[For those of you tuning in late, this thread began on the topic of whether wordprocessing should be taught along with writing, then shifted to problems of teaching writing, at which point David Lindsley asserted that it's hard to learn to write clearly in English because English grammar is irregular. As we join the action, David has replied to Dan Bernstein's reply to his assertion. Apologies for the large amount of quoted material; I've left it in for context.] In article <1814@blackbird.afit.af.mil> dlindsle@blackbird.afit.af.mil (David T. Lindsley) writes: >In article <9237:Dec1315:28:3190@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> >brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes: >>In article <1811@blackbird.afit.af.mil> >>dlindsle@blackbird.afit.af.mil (David T. Lindsley) writes: >>> The widespread irregularity of English verbs makes learning any underlying >>> structure difficult -- more difficult, I'd contend, than in other Western >>> languages. >>Hardly. In fact, verb structure is simpler in English than in any other >>language I know of. The verb ``catch'' has just five forms: infinitive >>(to catch), present third person singular (he catches), past (I caught), >>perfect (I have caught), and participle (I am catching). >>catch/catches/caught/caught/catching is a *complete* conjugation. What >>other language is so simple? To learn a verb in English you must learn >>just five words. >But there is a notable lack of rules to follow when attempting to generate >the latter four forms from the first (whereas, in Latin, for example, >this is a trivial task for the majority of verbs). So far, the discussion is just about regularity--the fact that that you can't always determine a word's part of speech from its form. >>> In addition, it is difficult to tell gerunds from participles, >>A gerund is a noun. A participle is not. That's about as simple as a >>language rule can get. >Simple in theory, yes. But when you get into complex-compound sentences >with multiple subordinate clauses, it's not so easy to tell the >difference -- precisely because there are "just five words". Here, the issue is the fact that, in some cases, a single form can represent more than one part of speech. But no one has disputed the fact that English does have structure, i.e., a categorization of words into parts of speech. The question is how easy is it to discern that structure. [stuff deleted] >I was raised bilingually, and in fact spoke another language fluently >language before starting to learn English. Perhaps I am biased as >a result, but it has been my experience/observation that people >who learn English as a second language have less problems with >English grammar than "native-speakers". Consistently. >(I mention this to avoid any accusations of having an axe to grind. >I don't, and in any case, that would be an _ad_hominem_/cirmustantial >fallacy, without any bearing on the argument.) >Now the only reason I can see for this is that English lends itself ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >less to formal/rigorous definition than (at least some) other >languages do. I have discussed the topic with scholars of language(s), >and I have not found one who disagrees with me. (Not till this thread >started, anyway, and I'm still not sure...) This is where I start to take issue. I can see another possible reason: native speakers are less careful about their grammar in many contexts than non-native speakers. Even if the non-native speakers speak the language fluently, I would guess that it involves more concious effort than it does for native speakers. To test this, I would want to compare the grammaticality of speech (or writing) of native and non-native speakers for a number of languages. If the non-natives are always more grammatical, and to the same degree, I would take that as supporting my hypothesis. If natives are more grammatical in other languages, or if non-natives are "better" but the difference is smaller, I would take that as possibly supporting your hypothesis (or at least the hypothesis that English grammar is easier to learn when you learn it as a second language--which would startle a lot of folks who study language acquisition). >So I would say that English is unstructured, relatively speaking. And >I do believe that's justified. I don't believe so. You've introduced this hypothesis to explain a phenomenon you've observed, but the hypothesis introduces some extra baggage that I think you still haven't accounted for. I agree that the irregularities of verb conjugation in English make it difficult to see the underlying structure. But I don't think you've shown at all that the structure isn't there. [more stuff deleted--in fact, I've lost track: there may be deletions in the middle that I haven't noted.] >Dave L dlindsle@blackbird.afit.af.mil >#24601 > >Opinions. Mine. (Sorry, the words don't come any smaller.) >"If you don't succeed at first, transform your data!" -- Janet Swisher Internet: swsh@midway.uchicago.edu University of Chicago Phone: (312) 702-7608 Academic and Public Computing P-mail: 1155 E. 60th St. Chicago IL 60637, USA "This whole world's wild at heart and weird on top." -- Lula