LL-L "Grammar" 2008.08.23 (01) [E]
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L O W L A N D S - L - 23 August 2008 - Volume 01
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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2008.08.17 (04) [E]
> From: heatherrendall at tiscali.co.uk <heatherrendall at tiscali.co.uk>
> Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2008.08.17 (02) [E]
>
> Agreed! But the fact that the examiners used 'misspelt/misspelled' as
> a "spelling problem" points to the state of affairs that reigns in
> British Education - not enough people know not enough about an awful
> lot.
> I had a postgrad. student at Cambridge tell me that 'learnt' was the
> preterite and 'learned' was the past participle rather than possible
> alternatives for both! She would not have believed that had she not
> been taught it. She wouldn't have been taught it if her teacher had
> been well schooled in grammar.
I find the description of English grammar for educational purposes a bit
confused, or possibly I should say confusing, because I'm not sure if
it's me that's approaching it wrongly or the educators.
As I understand it a verbal participle is so called because it needs
another verb (usually a stative verb, eg "have", "is") to be used along
with it. But this is just word taxonomy which, while useful for ensuring
correct sentence structure, isn't a good way to approach verb formation.
To me, a verb can take four kinds of modification:
o tense: the time at which the action happens;
o aspect: the way in which the action develops over time;
o mood: the speakers attitude to or opinion of the action
(including whether it even ever happened);
o manner: the way in which the action was executed.
To me, tense is very simple: as far as markings go, it's either past,
present or future (plus some languages have markings for things like
"distant past" and "distant future"). Times can be specified more
accurately using extra words.
This means that a term like "preterite" doesn't mean much to me: if you
say "future" then you should just say "past". Am I missing something?
So to me your postgrad is very confused: you can say "I learned", so, at
least in that context, it's _not_ a participle. When you say "I have
learned", you're using the perfect(ive?) aspect in the past tense. When
you say "I was learning", you're using the imperfect aspect in the past
tense.
She might say that "learned" is a participle because you can say "I have
learned", but consider the verb "to take": you say "I took" but "I have
taken". In other words, -en is the perfect participle, but in a lot of
English verbs (such as "learned"), -ed is used as the marker for both
past tense and perfect participle, causing some difficulties for
grammarians who don't think hard enough!
So the preterite and perfect participle is the same for "learned"
thought they're distinguished for some verbs such as "took/taken". Of
course "learned" and "learnt" can be used interchangeably so there's
going to be no distinction between them in grammatical terms, we'd have
to resort to phonology to classify them. The best you could say is that
"learnt" has a more "final" feel to it than "learned", so might be some
sort of vestigial, nascent or assumed (by some speakers) "cessative"
aspect or something.
You'll notice that I think of -ing and -en (more usually -ed) as marking
the continuous and perfect _aspects_ respectively, they're not about
tense:
I was speaking.
I am speaking.
I have spoken.
I am spoken for (or more clearly "I am taken"!).
You can use either particle in either of the two tenses in English:
"-ing/-en" are _not_ tense markings but aspectual markings. So it seems
to me to be rubbish to talk about "present and past participles" in
English.
> What is a teacher not well schooled in grammar doing being a teacher
> of languages??????
But think about French teaching. The conditional mood is called the
conditional tense. The imperfect and perfect aspects are called tenses.
The subjunctive mood is sneakily called the "subjunctive". I think that
this is because in French (and other languages), the tenses, moods and
aspects are all covered by one large semi-consistent system of
inflections, so that grammarians and teachers try to describe them under
an umbrella terminology, giving us students that are a bit vague about
what's actually going on, who eventually turn into teachers of a similar
water.
It seems to me that it's not that they're not well schooled, it's that
they're schooled in a tradition that includes some considerable
nonsense. I imagine it has its roots in trying to base English grammar
on Latin, but that doesn't make it right!
Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/
----------
From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2008.08.17 (05) [E]
> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Morphology
>
> Sandy, Lowlanders,
>
> One of my long-term projects is remodeling, refurbishing and hopefully
> improving my Northern Low Saxon grammar presentation:
> http://lowlands-l.net/grammar/ (which proved to be surprisingly
> popular).
Thanks for the Afrikaans summary, Elsie.
Ron, nice site! I think I'll start learning, at least for reading
purposes, once you get the pronunciation up.
Welsh-style plurals, I see. Meaning, you need a dictionary to find out
what they are! I note what you say about the -s plural being quite
widespread, though. By this do you mean that it's the most common way of
forming the plural, or that the use of plurals varies between dialects?
Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/
----------
From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Grammar
Thanks, Sandy.
Remember that what is at the temporary location
http://lowlands-l.net/grammar-new/en/ will eventually replace that and that
the new stuff is better (?), at least more detailed. However, since it's a
lot of work I might make it in English only or add a German version much
later.
Plurals with *-s* may be just barely in the majority, closely followed by
those with *-en*. There is some dialectical difference, not a lot. In the
Low Franconian varieties it seems to be *-en* that predominates.
Cheerio!
Reinhard/Ron
•
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