a joke about two pere ubuists

[Abdiel OAbdiel]

This is all very interesting. David and Cyrus have
both suggested that a standard is valid or required
when teaching a language. It is not. In fact,
depending on the student, it can be a hindrance. My
wife knows English grammar. She knows more English
grammar than most native speakers of English do. Her
English is still poor. Ugh! UG? 

Mother: Where is your bike? 
Son: I brung it in. 
Mother: You brought it. 

We know why the Mother "corrects" the son. 

Why do kids, generation after generation, say brung
and not brought? 



In Education And Experience Dewey says, "There is no
such thing as educational value in the abstract." 
Americans are practical people. Practical people are
suspicious of theory, of knowledge "for its own sake."
 A pragmatic student wants to why she should learn
something new.  She wants to be prepared to handle new
situations and new problems-not only those for which
there are tried-and-true rules of thumb. She wants to
be able to judge whether what he is being taught is
practical. Practice not based on sound theory is
likely to be bumbling, hampered by all sorts of
nonsense. Grammar provides us with a theory about how
language works. It can help us understand how sounds
combine into words, and words into sentences, to
express an infinite number variety of facts, thoughts,
observations, opinions, feelings, and, so on. A
knowledge of grammar can help us use language with
some sense of what we are doing and why. As Cyrus
noted, modern grammar, like modern musical theory and
modern mathematics,  modern physics, has gone through
changes. MalignD suggests we bone up. As Paul M's
comments on the Webster's controversy imply people who
studied grammar years ago may find the latest theories
of grammar newfangled to a fault. Grammarians, as Paul
noted, can be prescriptive, descriptive, generative,
and even proscriptive. They can also be historical,
social, and classic. Grammar changes. Language
changes. Change is not the same as corruption. 
Grammar changes. 

Remember Parts Of Speech? How useful are these
arbitrary classifications? 

Most nouns are not names for persons, places, or
things. 
Lots of Verbs are not action words. 


The "verb" 

Break, breaks, broke, broken, breaking. 

MalignD, presumably, to eradicate some ambiguity,
introduced the "verb" BE

Try that with the "verb" BE
be, am, are, is, was, were, been, being. 

Is BE a verb or not? 

If it is, it's an unusual verb. An irregular one, 
perhaps? 
BE has uses that other verbs don't. 
Maybe we should call it a "BE." Some grammarians do. 

No double positives? Sure about that? 
No theory of grammar, no school of grammar, no system
to classify or explain how and why a language works
the way it does can account for all the possibilities
that a language produces. 

Consider this: 

L1 speakers of Greek add the article "the" where it
doesn't belong. For example, they put it in front of
proper nouns. So, they call me, "The Abdiel" and not
Abdiel. 

L1 speakers of Korean omit the article "the" when they
shouldn't. 
For example, they don't put it in front of nouns. So,
they say, "car  in street" and not the car is in the
street." 

The questions that L2 speakers can produce will humble
a grammarian in a New York minute. Is it practical, is
it good theory, good pedagogy, to diagram these
sentences with linguist's charts and sentence trees? 


He has the flu. 
He has cancer. 
We watched an eclipse of the sun. 
We watched an eclipse of Jupiter. 
We are having pork chops for dinner.
We are having the pork chops for dinner. 
He is going to Ethiopia. 
He is going to the Congo. 
I like rice and beans. 
I like the rice and beans. 

The Abdiel in street. (frag)Where Colorless green
ideas sleep furiously. (frag) 
And theory and practice are as meditation and the sea.











__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more
http://taxes.yahoo.com/