Grammar (was Re: a joke about two pere ubuists

[jbor]

on 8/3/03 9:49 PM, Abdiel OAbdiel at abdieloabdiel at yahoo.com wrote:

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

Or "brang". It might be called "pattern recognition", I guess. Most of the
common verbs which are spelt with -ing, such as sing, ring etc, and other
homophonic verbs like swim, follow the sing, sang, sung format for the past
tense and past participle. It's quite logical that a child will try to apply
this pattern to the verb "bring".

As a child learns to speak a language she or he will first learn chunks of
language, full clauses and sentences which mimic what he or she has heard
adults and peers saying. So, while a child might learn to say "I went to the
park" very early on, once the -ed rule for past tense verbs is taught the
child will try to apply it to all verbs and will start making grammatical
errors, such as "I goed to the park" or "I wented to the park". It will seem
as if the child's language development has taken a backward step, but in
fact this "error" is a part of what some linguists call a "natural order" in
language development/acquisition. Once the forms of irregular verbs are
introduced the child will correct the mistake, and begin to understand a
little bit more about the way the language works.

As Paul notes, traditional or formal (i.e. "prescriptive") grammar, is based
on Latin grammar. As a language, Latin is consistent and unchanging. English
is such a hybrid and living language that this style of or approach to
grammar does not work particularly well at all, and so teachers needed to
resort to all that "exception that proves the rule" nonsense. In the '60s
and '70s Michael Halliday developed a grammatical model, known as systemic
functional linguistics, which is better able to capture the way English, and
Englishes, are used. It's probably what people mean when they refer to a
"descriptive" as opposed to a "prescriptive" grammar, but the opposition is
not really as clear-cut as that. Basically, functional linguistics describes
the way meanings are communicated through language. Language use is analysed
according to its field (the semantic or "ideational" aspect, or subject
discourse), tenor (the inter-personal aspect, who is speaking to whom, and
the relationship between those interlocutors) and mode (which is sort of
like the medium, whether written or spoken, or written-like or spoken-like
etc, along a continuum).

on 9/3/03 12:02 AM, Cyrus at cyrusgeo at netscape.net wrote:

> For 
> example, being Greek, and having learned English as a Foreign Language,
> I find the use or omission of the article "the" in the sentences quite
> logical. However, according to modern linguistics, the purpose of
> language is to get the message through. That is usually achieved,
> despite mistakes and variations.

Yes, an added complication second language learners face is this sort of
first language interference. If the first language doesn't use articles, or
signals tense changes by use of an adjunct word rather than changing the
verb, as some Asian languages do, then ESL or EFL learners will have
difficulty in this area and continue to reproduce the "error" while they are
still switching back and forth (i.e. "translating") between English and
their first language. (I think the big breakthrough comes when the learner
is able to "think" in the target language.) The point about the purpose of
language being able to get the message through is quite correct, but there
are also social and political dimensions to language use which should not be
overlooked. Language is an instrument of power, and the teaching of critical
literacy is imperative.

best