Corpora: overuse and underuse of learner English; International English

Sun Dec 16 00:12:15 UTC 2001

The response from Professor Wilks is as usual logical but unfortunately
he focuses too much on the error aspect. What seems more valuable is not
how to identify sets of errors, compare them, etc., because there is
certainly an infinite number of possible errors, which is true of both
native and non-native speakers (users etc.) but instead the
> > crucial point is to describe the norm.
i.e. the core elements of non-native English that seem recurrent, which
make communication possible. And those elements are certainly identical
to a considerable degree with those of native English.
Tadeusz Piotrowski

> -----Original Message-----
> From: yorick wilks [mailto:ywilks at excite.co.uk]
> Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2001 7:10 PM
> To: Tadeusz Piotrowski; corpora at hd.uib.no; 'Eric Atwell';
> 'xiaotian guo'
> Cc: 'E S Atwell'
> Subject: RE: Corpora: overuse and underuse of learner
> English; International English
>
>
> This line of argument only makes sense if native X can be
> opposed to non-native X (the latterbeing a majority of
> speakers etc.) as if they were two dialects of a single
> language, each with its own sense of correctness and error
> (as if this were Castillian vs. Catalan or something like
> that). But it is nothing at all like that: for non-native
> English (or any other language as a value of X) is not a
> dialect and THERE CANNOT BE ANY SET OF ERRORS ITS SPEAKERS
> AGREE ARE ERRORS. That being the case, there is no sense to
> Mr. Piotrowski's speculations about comparing the error sets
> of natives and non-natives, because non-natives dont form a
> set in any interesting sense. Not-being-Romanian is not a
> real property and more than
> not-being-newspaper, into both of which sets I supose I fall.
> Yorick Wilks
>
>
> On Thu, 13 Dec 2001 11:18:50 +0100, Tadeusz Piotrowski wrote:
>
> >  By accident, I am a Polish user of English (now I am writing
> > self-consciously, thinking about my own cluster of
> errors...), and by
> > accident I know an interesting PhD dissertation that
> compares selected
> > aspects of natives-speaker English to those of a non-native
> variety,
> > comparing like with like: Przemyslaw Kaszubski Selected aspects of
> > lexicon, phraseology and style in the writing of Polish advanced
> > learners of English, a contrastive, corpus-based approach.
> Poznan 2000
> > (przemka at elex.amu.edu.pl). He hoped to publish it. But,
> returning to
> > errors, if we indeed treat English as an international
> language, like
> > Latin, then, first of all, are really native speakers a
> good yardstick
> > to measure non-native varieties with? Were there any native
> speakers
> > of  Latin in the Middle Ages or the Renaissance? Measured
> against the
> > numbers of non-native speakers of English, the native ones are a
> > minority. And one venerated tradition in linguistics is -- what
> > everybody, the majority, says is correct.  It might be
> interesting to
> > know what the overlap between different  non-native
> varieties is, what
> > the common core is. There must be,  otherwise all those
> speakers could
> > not communicate. That common core is  perhaps the international
> > variety. The international variety was very  broadly described by
> > Quirk and Gimson in their respective publications.  I don't know
> > whether somebody followed up.  Another problem is, what is
> an error?
> > As far as I know, an error is what  departs from the norm, and the
> > crucial point is to describe the norm. If  we treat the
> international
> > variety as the norm, then the native-speaker  variety may
> be said to
> > be a particular cluster of errors. Tadeusz  Piotrowski
> >
> >  > -----Original Message-----
> >  > From: owner-corpora at lists.uib.no
> >  > [mailto:owner-corpora at lists.uib.no] On Behalf Of yorick wilks  >
> > Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2001 3:33 PM  > To: Eric Atwell;
> > xiaotian guo  > Cc: corpora at hd.uib.no; E S Atwell
> >  > Subject: Re: Corpora: overuse and underuse of learner English
> >  >
> >  >
> >  > There are many statistical studies around of the spelling and
> >  > grammatical errors in English associated with specific first
> >  > language competences---e.g. the the English errors Poles
> >  > typically make as contrasted with those of the French (lack
> >  > of articles etc.) These were done so as to produce
> >  > grammar/speeling correctors for particular markets and may
> >  > well be what Eric Attwell was referring to---a search of the
> >  > CL/NLP literature would soon find them.
> >  >
> >  > Whether these studies support the claim of Erics's Polish
> >  > chum, that his cluster of errors now have equal status with
> >  > native English competence is a different and wholly
> >  > non-linguisic question. That there is an international
> >  > English is beyond question as a social fact, and native
> >  > Engish speakers are often poor speakers of it,
> >  > unsurprisingly. The problem of its status will have to be
> >  > settle by its own Academy who will also have to decide which
> >  > particular cluster of distinctive errors will have to have
> >  > primacy over the others in its definition. Yorick Wilks
> >  >
> >  >
> >  > On Wed, 12 Dec 2001 10:19:18 +0000 (GMT), Eric Atwell wrote:
> >  >
> >  > >
> >  > >  >I am making a contrastive study of learner English and NS
> >  > learner
> >  > > >English.
> >  > >
> >  > >  I dont understand what you mean by "NS learner English" -
> >  > do you mean
> >  > > English of young children?  If you want access to a corpus
> >  > of young
> >  > > children's spoken English, try Polytechnic of Wales Corpus,
> >  > see ICAME
> >  > >  website: http://www.hd.uib.no/icame/newcd.htm for what's
> >  > on ICAME CD,
> >  > > http://khnt.hit.uib.no/icame/manuals/pow.htm for POW
> corpus manual
> >  > >
> >  > >  Another thought - I recently attended a "European Year of
> >  > Languages"
> >  > > symposium in Krakow, Poland, organised by British Council
> >  > and others;
> >  > > a consensus emerged that English has become the
> >  > international lingua
> >  > > franca of Europe, and is no longer "owned" by native
> >  > speakers, it is
> >  > > common property of the European (and international)
> community.  So,
> >  > > the International English of a Polish speaker at this
> conference
> >  > > should have equal "status" to the English used by
> native speakers.
> >  > > Maybe there is scope for a European Corpus of English
> >  > parallel to the
> >  > > British National Corpus, where an object of study might be
> >  > not "what
> >  > > are  the deficiencies of learner Engish" but "what are the
> >  > > regional/national  variations in English as
> written/spoken across
> >  > > Europe".
> >  > >
> >  > >  Is your study in this vein?
> >  > >
> >  > >  Eric Atwell
> >  > >
> >  > >  --
> >  > >  Eric Atwell, Distributed Multimedia Systems MSc Tutor &
> >  > SOCRATES Tutor
> >  > >  School of Computing, University of Leeds, LEEDS LS2 9JT
> >  > >  TEL: 0113-2335430  MOBILE: 0775-1039104 FAX: 0113-2335468
> >  > >  WWW: http://www.comp.leeds.ac.uk/eric  EMAIL:
> eric at comp.leeds.ac.uk
> >  > >
> >  > >
> >  > >
> >  >
> >  >
> >  >
> >  >
> >  >
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