LL-L "Grammar" 2005.12.06 (01) [E]

Tue Dec 6 15:39:10 UTC 2005

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06 December 2005 * Volume 01
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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2005.12.05 (03) [E]

> From: Paul Tatum <ptatum at blueyonder.co.uk>
> Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2005.12.05 (01) [E]
>
> hello everybody
> I'm sorry if this sounds like I'm harping on about this subject.
>
> Sandy Fleming wrote:
>
>> Simple would very that be!
>>
>> Of problem-the course can the gibberish am come, understand listeners
>> you not plus.
>>
> Except these are not English sentences and so don't qualify as new
> sentences. And they are not english sentences because they do not
> follow the rules of english sentence construction. They use English
> words, spelling and punctuation, but they do not use English syntax.
> It would be difficult to criticise their correctness using an exemplar
> based approach, while it very easy to say why they are not English if
> you allow syntactical analysis.

I think we're exposed to new patterns (I've changed the name to
"patterns" just to remind myself that we haven't actually defined what
we're talking about very precisely!) all the time, they're just not as
extreme as my example. At which point do "I should cocoa!", "Tha'll burn
in hell thee will, lad!", "You should be so lucky!", "A Jedi seeks not
these things", "I enjoyed the party, I'm not saying that"*, "He don't
want to go,"** "I'd rather be the devil to be that woman man,"*** or
"It's got a certain je ne sais quoi," become not-English? They certainly
all seem to be part of English discourse.

*Scottish English for "I'm not saying I didn't enjoy the party."
**Something an English West Country woman said to me, referring to her
clock.
***From Skip James's "Devil got my Woman" - it means "I wish I was the
devil so that I could be that woman's man."

Of course we do perceive cultural boundaries which makes us wary of new
language patterns. The desire to stick with what we know is stong, which
is why I said:

>> As I said, we can, but normally we don't!
>
>
> But we do, probably the majority of sentences we utter each day are
> new sentences that we have never heard or spoken before.

...

> You need an infinite number of exemplars to exemplify an infinite
> number of sentences, but you can describe an infinite number of
> sentences with just a finite set of rules, in this case just one: a
> sentence can be composed of a sentence joined to another sentence by
> the word 'and'. There again, if exemplar based language analysis works
> and you can ditch syntax, then I would go ahead and write your books
> now before someone steals your ideas!

I'm not sure exactly why you think you need an infinite number of
exemplars. If we're thinking of the brain as processing language like a
neural net, then we can expect the brain, like neural nets, to determine
its own set of rules from the exemplars. Whether these are "The Rules"
in any sense doesn't matter in the least, as long as the results we get
from using them are acceptable.

These days there are rules because grammarians have defined them - but
language was working perfectly before grammarians came along. And the
rules that grammarians define still don't work perfectly. One reason
they work well - in writing, though less so in speech - is because
people these are taught them, not because they were pre-existent.

It's important to note that in a very real sense the rules that
grammarians figure out don't exist in "real life" - that's just not the
way neural nets work. It's a bit like the laws of physics (though not
nearly as well-done, presently!) - it's amazing how well they describe
the way the physical world works and how relatively simple they are, but
nobody knows if they're just a shoe made to fit or the skin of the foot
itself. But human ability being limited - I suspect it's just the shoe!

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/

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From: heather rendall <HeatherRendall at compuserve.com>
Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2005.12.05 (06) [E]

Can I take this discussion in a totally different direction.

Lionel Standing in the 70s showed his students pictures for 5 secs a time
each. The next day he showed them pairs of pictures and they had to point
out of the two which picture they had seen the previous day i.e. which
picture was familiar. He increased the number of pictures until he got to a
point where the students started to make mistakes - or at least not be
sure. That number was 10,000 images.

I think this goes to show that the brain has a huge capacity for
recognising something seen once.

I would like to think that this also goes for sounds: If we hear a chain of
sound more than once/ repeatedly we [begin to] recognise it. This allows us
to build up as a baby banks of sound chains - both small and large ( I am
sure most toddlers/children don't have any idea of the meaning of half the
words they repeat but that doesn't stop them repeating them   viz cows with
crumpled horns and maidens all forlorn)

I think here is the basic senetnce structuring or laying down of  the
'grammar' of language which then develops into the substitution phase which
gives infinite possibilities of re-creation.

So if I define

The apples in the box are red        as  (The) xs y (the) z are a    then I
can create/adapt this to say   the cars in the garage are brand-new
The neurons in the brain are many        The hairs on my head are grey

and it also implies the following    (The ) x  y (the) z is  a

The brain understands these patterns of sound and meaning..... tho' the
latter only gradually which is why children make such delicious mistakes
when meaning is still not fixed to phrase.

The pattern has to be a recognised and oft used one for it to be able to be
first  recognised and then recognised as useable by the brain.

What drives the precise sequence of words is thought . The perspective of
thought that we each individually and collectively wish to transfer to the
listener, often differs and thus creates varieties of grammars i.e.
languages. What is fascinating ( and this is what is revealed most by
forums (fora ?) like these) is how a language that reaches a standard form
i.e. one used consistently by a group of people begins to change and / or
develop once those people disperse.

I firmly believe that the brain is cleverer than we are - and it knows more
than we are aware of knowing. Otherwise when I tell my pupils to 'read what
they have written aloud' they  wouldn't eb able to 'hear# their mistakes
quite as easily as they do do.!

Heather

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From: Darrin Speegle <speegled at slu.edu>
Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2005.12.05 (03) [E]

Paul Tatum wrote:
>
> But we do, probably the majority of sentences we utter each day are
> new sentences that we have never heard or spoken before. Each
> language has an infinite number of sentences. The nursery rhyme
> 'this is the house that jack built' is one sentence that is
> potentially infinite, as is 'there was an old woman who swallowed a
> fly'. Start with any simple sentence 'Blue begonias sit in chilly
> chambers'.

I have been trying something that I find fascinating.  On Google,
type in the next random 6-8 word sentence that comes to your mind,
and see whether that sequence of words exists anywhere "out there".
(Put the sentence in double quotes to only get exact matches to your
entire sentence.)  I was very surprised that most every sentence
occurs very rarely or not at all.

For example, the following sentences do not appear on the internet:

"The ugly man went to the store" appears on one page
"Next time I go, I'll buy some apples" doesn't appear
"The president went from the pentagon to the white house" doesn't appear

Amazingly, given the proliferation of, well, adult-themed cites,
"hot women want some action" doesn't appear, nor does "hot men want
some action".

I'm not sure what it says about this debate, but it is still interesting to 
me.

Darrin Speegle 

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