LL-L "Grammar" 2005.12.13 (02) [E]

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   L O W L A N D S - L * 13 December 2005 * Volume 02
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From: jonny <jonny.meibohm at arcor.de>
Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2005.12.12 (01) [E]

Dear Gabriele,

glad to see you back without lack, and thanks for preventing me from 
falling in love with our charming Sandy ;-)! It was the very last moment 
because I usually prefer this special type of rough and cross-grained ladies 
:-)) as you perhaps could know!

Ian- when did you do your last look into the anniversary-sites 
("Introductions");-)??

Greutens/Regards

Johannes "Jonny" Meibohm

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From: heather rendall <HeatherRendall at compuserve.com>
Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2005.12.12 (01) [E]

Message text written by INTERNET:lowlands-l at LOWLANDS-L.NET
>Not sure what that says about language learning, but it does seem
interesting. Perhaps it gives an idea of how _very_ imitative and
unanalytical infant speech is? Or maybe it is analytical but they just
think the structure means, "You pick up"? I don't know!<

I think there is a recognised psychological explanation for this ; that the
child has not yet learnt to diiferentiate itself as a 'me'. Isn't this one
of the toddler phases developmental psychologists look for?

A child hears parents using 'I' & 'me' when referring to themselves but
using 'you' when referring to itself so it needs a huge awareness raising o
geater experience before the child realises that it can use I & me about
itself and  you to others. UNtil then it is 'feeding back' to its parents
the chunk of language that it hears in reference to itself.  Do  "you" want
to be picked up?    Yes pick "You" up.

Frequently a child will use its name instead as if referring to a 3rd
person " Pick Janie up"  " Mummy tie Janie shoe"

Isn't this indicative of the non-I state of awareness too?
Heather

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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2005.12.12 (01) [E]

> From: Jan Strunk <strunkjan at hotmail.com>
> Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2005.12.10 (11) [E]
>
> Hoho, this is the old linguistics isn't a science, physics is, debate. I
> agree with
> your feeling that many strands of modern syntactic theory have a bad
> habit
> of patching there theories, but this does not apply to the whole
> enterprise
> of
> linguistics. Just as the whole of modern physics isn't necessarily an
> empirical science,
> just look at all the speculative work on black holes, strings, etc.
>
I don't think speculation prevents it from being part of empirical
science, it depends more on the _quality_ of the speculation.

When you talk about black holes, strings, &c, the problem with these is
that we barely have the technology to carry out the necessary
experiments to verify the theories, but it doesn't mean that experiments
can't be formally designed with an eye to doing them some day, or even
spotting a way of doing them once we're clear about what it is we need
to do.

For example, Einstein designed an experiment to demonstrate that quantum
mechanics was wrong because it predicted that information could be
propagated instantaneously, whereas it had become generally accepted
that information couldn't be propagated faster than light. At the time,
there was no way this experiment could be done, but by 1986 it was a
technological possibility and Alain Aspect performed the experiment and
showed that information is indeed propagated instantaneously. Einstein's
seemingly impossible speculation or "thought experiment" gave many
quantum physicists something important to aim for, and in the end it was
accomplished.

It's probably a question of formulating your speculation in a
disprovable form. The one thing that makes a theory scientific is that
it can be disproved. Actually testing it might seem impossible but
publishing the disproof might make a lot of people think about how to
disprove it, and if you're lucky there may even be someone who already
knows.

> Well, I think one should not seriously expect one structural rule to
> cover
> all
> constructions, patterns, templates, call them what you will in all
> languages?
> Of course, you are allowed to amend your theory. I don't like the way
> that
> is done in transformational syntax, either, but you don't have to through
> away the
> whole theory of endocentric (i.e. headed) structure just because some
> constructions
> work differently. Or would you do this in physics?
>
I think you would do this in physics. Indeed, the quest for a "Theory of
Everything" - explaining all physical phenomena in a few neat equations
- has been a bit of a holy grail in physics for some time. No more
likely to happen than finding the actual Holy Grail in my opinion, but
very good indeed for advances in physics that they keep striving for it.

It seems to me that in linguistics things do go this way, too, there's
just less cultural impetus. For example, a bunch of more or less random
phonetic symbols are gradually seen to have "features" and these
features make descriptions of phonological processes simpler. If this
was physics the culture would dictate that no effort is spared in taking
this to extremes and seeing just how simple everything can be made if
you're not scared of advanced mathematics.

You might ponder this imaginary exchange as illustrating the differences
in the two cultures:

Physicist: Look at this, can you explain this utterance to me: "He
warned the ruling could cost the XK Euchequer a... um thpt thpt thpt,
sorry, ah wha...right, he warned ruling could the cost... can we? Sorry."
Linguist:: It's not proper English, nobody would say that.
Physicist: What do you mean? Somebody just did!
Linguist: All right, but a newsreader wouldn't say something like that,
would they?
Physicist: It was a newsreader, I saw it on an outtake programme, I've
got the tape.
Linguist: All right, an outtake programme, that's hardly...
Physicist: Look, it happened! Just explain it!

> And the methodology of obtaining grammaticality judgements is often
> not very
> scientific. But things are
> changing, there is a small revolution going on in current linguistics
> about
> what kinds of evidence one should
> use for testing and building theories. Linguists often have problems to
> communicate with "ordinary people" about
> grammaticality because modern linguistics has totally shed prescriptivism
> which is held dear especially by
> other "language professionals" such as teacher, editors, etc. For
> example, I
>
Thanks for the pointers to further reading in linguistics.

I think you're right and I'll have to think again about all that
"concepts" stuff.

To get back to the idea of "grammar" though, and why some people insist
that only certain forms as correct (as you say, teachers, editors, The
Times readers :)

If there was one important thing that seems to me to be missing from
modern linguistics (meaning, at the amateur level I read at, I'd expect
it to get at least a whole chapter in a standard textbook, whereas in
fact I never seem to see it at all) is the idea of "motivation".

For example, a publisher has a certain motivation in using Fowler-style
English or similar - "it sells books".
A writer has a motivation in using Fowler-style English - "the publisher
won't take it otherwise".
A teacher has a motivation in teaching Fowler-style English - "the
children have to pass their exams".
An examination has a motivation in insisting on Fowler-style English -
"this is what they have to read and write when they leave school".

The above is just sticking to reasons for writing a certain kind of
English, but of course in spoken language motivation wouldn't be so
straited and would make a more interesting study. But this sort of
"interesting" is now starting to appear in a lot of writtten English
that gets read quite widely, due to the ease of publishing your own
stuff freely on the internet without any publishers or examiners
breathing down your neck. You might conceivably run into a blog exchange
like this:

"Wy wern't you ther last nite?"
"sorry i wuz out and couldnt reach you."

You might instantly add your own reply telling them both off and
pointing them at online grammar guides (and I hope you get paid for
doing so because it's going to be a full-time job!), or you might post
to ask them about their motivation for writing the way they do.

The first might say he's head of the campaign for English Spelling
Reform and he can hardly let people see him blogging in unimproved
English orthography. The second might say that she considers capitals
and apostrophes to be outmoded historical artifacts and as for "wuz",
well, that just seemed funny.

I dare say their motivations are just as good as anyone's who insists on
using "correct" or, rather, "prescribed" grammar. They even seem to have
the moral high ground to some extent and perhaps the English could be
improved by combining both views and making it even "worse".

But of course motivations in spoken language would be different and
probably more complex: "I'm a southerner", "My father would kill me if
he heard me speaking like that", "All my friends talk that way", "I like
spoonerising", "I just swallowed a fly" &c.

I think this sort of approach might not exactly simplify linguistic
reasearch in a Theory of Everything manner, but it is a step in the
direction of getting nearer the truth about language, and the truth has
a tendency to lead to something important, whether it's simplicity
(maybe like physics) or mastery (maybe like chemistry).

Unfortunately I think there's a tendency to view wider human discourse
as sociology, literature, dialect and so on instead of pure linguistics,
but a more purely linguistic approach might make it easier to accept
real language phenomena such as "would of" (by understanding _why_
people write that) instead of just disparaging anyone who speaks in an
unfamiliar way or writes unprescribed English. Studying the motivation
behind different kinds of speech might be a unifying priniciple.

For example, some people write "phenomena" as a singular and others as a
plural. The grammatically-inclined can get into a bit of a quandary over
this - it's grammatically incorrect but they tend to be more forgiving
as it isn't regular English grammar that's being broken and it's harder
to diss people for getting it "wrong". Perhaps their apparent laxity in
this case is purely selfish - they're not sure they can avoid getting
caught out in this way the way they can avoid "would of"! But they still
want one thing to be right and the other wrong. The way to accept both
possibilities in one system might be to add different people's
motivations as a determinant.

OK, from conceptualisation to motivation. If that's no good maybe it'll
be a case of third time lucky  :)

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/ 

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