[Corpora-List] FW: Gender differences in language

[Dr DJ Hatch]

When I was an undergrad we were taught, if I remember correctly, that what
is innate is (a) universal grammar.


Oh, I forgot to reply to the query on 'prescriptive grammar'. It's merely
the grammar taught by language teachers and compiled by the grammarians who
serve that industry. Such persons have lead me to the belief that ALL
languages are over-grammaticalised  by those who give us prescriptive
grammars, and then by ourselves through our acceptance and use of the stuff.
I recall that a few years ago Aplle came up with the slogan (Think
different). Which enraged some L teachers and grammarians.
Of course, English grammar is relatively simple ­ compared to say
Serbo-Croat (or Croatian and Serbian, if you prefer). And, I think a simple
grammar is useful. As you all know, some languages not only have gender
differences for all objects (whether animate or not). [Can the ability to
choose the correct gender be innate?]

A very sensible grammarian once suggested in my hearing that a language
needs either strict word order (plus prepositions, etc) or strict word
ending rules (so without prepositions). This seems a rather persuasive
hypothesis. But are there any languages out there which conform to it?
If not, was that grammarian wrong, or do we actually have too much grammar?

Incidently, I found the recent "... complete grammar" discussion on this
list thought provoking. But it seems to me that the pivotal issue remains ­
which parts of language are grammatical and which not? Ie, how much of
'meaning' ­ if any ­ is covered/explained by grammar. This sounds a very
amateurish question. But it seems to be a not unimportant one. Over the
years a number of my colleagues have suggested that one problem here is the
poverty of sub-disciplines such as (traditional) semantics, which seemed to
be very influential in Cricean 'pragmatics'.

I really think it is unclear to many (in and around linguistics) as to where
grammar ends and where some other stuff begins (that is, the stuff and the
sub-discipline responsible for 'keeping it in order').

This is clearly a practical problem for thoughtful second/foreign language
teachers




On 29/3/08 16:59, "Mike Maxwell" <maxwell at umiacs.umd.edu> wrote:

> Albretch Mueller wrote:
>> ...I don't think there are specially constructed, pre-built neuron
>> paths for, say, gender, adjectives and past tense in our brains
>> (Chinese born naturals from some rural area where Swahili has never
>> even been heard can learn it if exposed to the proper environment and
>> a Swahili baby can certainly learn Navajo ...).
> 
> I don't believe anybody who believes in innate grammar (which depending
> on your view, may or may not include innate morpho-syntactic features)
> has suggested that the innate abilities would be racially specific
> (although there was some recent conjecture connecting tone languages
> with certain gene pools).  So the undoubted fact that a Chinese person
> can learn Swahili, or a Swahili child could learn Navajo/ Dene, doesn't
> so far as I can see have any implications for whether gender,
> adjectives, or tenses are in our genes.
> 
> BTW, I suspect grammatical gender is not a good candidate for inclusion
> in universal grammar.  There's just too much variability, at least IMO.
>   Person (1/2/3) and number, OTOH, have been proposed as
> universal--based not on the fact that all languages which have person
> agreement distinguish these, but rather on the basis of the structure of
> agreement (e.g. first person plural inclusive vs. exclusive).  There's
> more I could say, but this is probably not the right forum.



_______________________________________________
Corpora mailing list
Corpora at uib.no
http://mailman.uib.no/listinfo/corpora