Chipanglish » Grammar

Arizona Immigration and Education

Peter — Sat, 01 May 2010 01:46:55 +0000

A blogger for the Wall Street Journal has written a post commenting on the impact the immigration law may have on education.

The new law requires police to question anyone suspected of being in the country illegally. The educational implication for this may result in the arbitrary firing of teachers with heavy accents or have less than standard English syntax or morphology.

The reasoning given behind this is, “How can you expect a student learning English to learn it properly from someone who has trouble with the language himself or herself? Whether it be through clarity of pronunciation, mixing syntax and morphology, or otherwise ‘mangling’ the language?”

The question at the core is how to deem one person more “American” than the next, using linguistics as a tool. I know many children who are US born to immigrant parents who speak with accented English and have less than perfect syntax because they learned English simultaneously as their native tongue. Others have become naturalized citizens, are hard-working professionals, who just happen to have accents as English was not their first language. Though they are US Citizens, this new law could potentially threaten the employment of Arizona teachers in these situations.

First, nobody speaks “perfect” English. We all use slang, mix tenses, leave prepositions at the end of sentences, etc. If grammar and spelling were markers for teaching employment, a large majority of teachers would find themselves with pink slips. (I was in a classroom today where the teacher had written “grammer” on the board.) Or what about the many students (and teachers) who consistently mix up “there”, “their”, and “they’re”? Or those who write, “should of” instead of “should have”? Should those individuals be interrogated too?

Second, what about regional accents? There are many accents within our nation that people from outside that geographic region find difficult to understand. Fran Drescher’s New York accent? Or what about a heavy Southern drawl? Or the nasal accent associated with “Wes-caaaahn-sin”?

While I understand why this law was passed and the intention behind it, the whole thing just seems poorly thought out. I suspect it will affect many people in ways that its writers had not previously thought.

Debating Grammar Pt. 3: grammar vs. Grammar”

Peter — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 19:45:08 +0000

Eagle-eyed blog readers may notice that in my previous posts about grammar, I did not capitalize “grammar” except at the beginning of sentences and in the titles. This is because in the world of linguistics, there is a difference between “grammar” and “Grammar”.

grammar with a small g, refers to language specific patterns and structures.

Grammar with a capital G, refers to Universal Grammar.

Universal Grammar, often noted as UG, is another contribution to linguistics made by Chomsky.

But what is universal grammar? It is Chomsky’s theory that there are certain principles about language that are found in all languages and innate to humans. Through it, he attempts to explain the fact that newborns have an ability to learn any language, so long as the environment for it is provided.

The most compelling evidence for UG is the existence of creole languages. Creoles are formed when two or more languages’ vocabularies are blended together for communication’s sake. This first version forms a pidgin, which is highly unstable and unsystematic. Often it is just the “bare bones” of a language. No inflections, no affixes, no case markers, gender markers, very basic SVO (subject-verb-object) syntax, etc.

However, after a generation or more, the children of pidgin speakers pick up the pidgin as their first language. They apply structural elements to it. This more structured version, with native speakers, is called a creole.

Since the parent language was lacking in inflection, prefixes, suffixes, case markers, etc. How did they get into the creole? Parents of creole speakers often do not apply the creole structures themselves, so the native speakers of creoles could not have been taught syntax or morphology.

These are my arguments for the existence of grammar. Feel free to add your thoughts to this ongoing debate.

Debating Grammar Pt. 2: Rules, Schmules

Peter — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 15:36:25 +0000

To continue the debate regarding the existence of grammar, we move on to the topic of rules. Are the rules set forth in language a prescription of nuns with rulers in their hands, or is there something within the languages themselves that follow logical patterns?

The answer: BOTH

I will break this down into three parts: Syntax, Morphology, and Phonology

Syntax: Sentence Structure
Linguists don’t really care if you say, “Can I go to the bathroom?” vs. “May I go to the bathroom?” Structurally, both follow the same patterns. A common theory used in syntactic dissections is X-Bar Theory (sometimes noted as X’ Theory). I will not go into detail about X’ Theory as you could easily spend at least a semester’s worth of graduate seminar investigating it. Basically, think back to grade school sentence diagrams. Then, put them on steroids. I seemingly simple sentence such as, ‘He studies linguistics at the university,” ends up looking like this. (And that’s an easy sentence to diagram.)

In a nutshell, each phrase, whether they be noun phrases (NP), verb phrases (VP), adverbial phrases (AdvP), adjectival phrase (AP), etc. have specific places in which they can and cannot go. Most importantly, notice that lines are not crossed. Syntactic structures help us explain phenomena such as the understood “you subject” in a command:

(You) Call 911!

Here, the receiver of the message is the intended subject. If we switched the order, the subject would end up in the middle of the verb phrase, “call 911″, and the sentence would not structurally work in terms of syntax.

*Call (You) 911!

If the implied subject lies in the second position, the sentence no longer structurally works, thus is ungrammatical. (In linguistics, an asterisk [*] indicates an unacceptable utterance.)

Morphology: Word Structure
This one, I find fascinating. In English, we have a plethora of suffixes and prefixes which we can affix to roots. Take the root “speak”.

We could come up with words such as speaks, speakers, speaking, etc. These all come from a root+suffix model. What if we wanted to add multiple suffixes?

“Speak” is a verb. Only certain affixes can apply to verbs, mainly -s, -er, and -ing. If we tried to turn speak into an adverb by adding -ly, we end up with *speakly, an unacceptable utterance.

That said, affixes must be applied in specific order. We cannot add -s and then -er to imply a person who speaks: *speakser. (There are multiple -s affixes. One pluralizes nouns, one modifies verbs to indicate active action.)

Phonology: Sound Patterns
In colloquial spoken Chinese, you will not find two words with the third tone adjacent to each other. This is because there is a phonological rule that prohibits it. The rule indicates if you have two third tones next to each other, the first one becomes a second tone, a rising tone.

我給 John 蘋果 (了).
Wo3 gei3 John ping2 guo3 (le5).

If you were to transcribe just this sentence, with no other prior knowledge of Chinese, it would read:

Wo2 gei3 John ping2 guo3 (le5).

Nobody would speak the sentence as such:

*Wo3 gei3 John ping2 guo3 (le5).

I contend that the mere fact that we have utterances in which native speakers find unacceptable indicates the existence of grammar.

Up next… grammar vs. Grammar

Debating Grammar Pt. 1: What is Grammar?

Peter — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 02:00:51 +0000

I feel like I’m about to open up a Pandora’s box of philosophical and linguistic debate with this post. I will try to stay away from existentialism, since the meaning of life is not the point of this blog. But I felt the need as a linguist to stand up for grammar, especially after reading this post. Here goes:

First, I would like to say: language is arbitrary. SAY WHAT?!?!? Yes. It is. Aside from onomatopoeia, there is very little in the world that relates an object or phenomenon to a word with which it is associated. Take for example, a shoe. There is nothing about the object one wears on his/her foot that tells us it should be called a “shoe”. It could easily be called a *skohkaz. Or a “poinko”. The point is, nothing about that object correlates to the way we contort our mouths and airflow to produce the spoken word, “shoe”. Likewise, nothing about the spoken word “shoe” is innately related to the written Arabic letters s-h-o-e, arranged in that order. If someone invented a language using other symbols, the word for that thing you wear on your foot could just as easily look like this: 3&$@4^!

Now that we’ve established the fact that language, by nature, is arbitrary; let’s get to the meat of the debate: Does “grammar” exist?

First, we need to define what “grammar” is and is not.

Grammar is NOT the same as semantics or meaning. Many sentences that make absolutely no sense can be grammatical. Take for example, this famous wonderful gem in the world of linguistics composed by Chomsky himself:

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

The sentence may seem like a bunch of gibberish, but it is not ungrammatical.

Definitions 1 and 2 of Merriam-Webster talk about inflections and syntax. In other words word and sentence structure. What we have come to know as “grammar,” courtesy of elementary school phonics books, is actually prescriptive grammar: the “correct” way to use language. Linguists, however, focus on descriptive grammar, or how language is actually used, paying attention to morphological and syntactic structure. While the phrase “colorless green ideas” may not make sense semantically, it does not violate morphological and syntactic structure.

So, if we define grammar as how language is used, specifically focusing on inflections and syntax, then yes; grammar exists; since we all use language with inflection and syntax.

Case closed? Ahh…. not so fast young grasshopper. The debate continues…

*dun dun dun*

Up next: Rules, Schmules… are there rules in language?

Six Sentences in Chinese

Yvonne — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 05:47:31 +0000

Many of the language blogs I’ve found in the last few weeks have discussed Tim Ferriss’s “How to Learn (But Not Master) Any Language in 1 Hour”. He provides six illustrative sentences that will help you tease apart the basic structure of a language in a short period of time.

The apple is red.
It is John’s apple.
I give John the apple.
We give him the apple.
He gives it to John.
She gives it to him.

In Chinese, the six sentences are (followed by the literal word-for-word English translation):

蘋果是紅的.
Ping2 guo3 shi4 hong2 de5.
Apple is red [possessive marker].
是 John 的蘋果.
Shi4 John de5 ping2 guo3.
Is John [possessive marker] apple.
我給 John 蘋果 (了).
Wo3 gei3 John ping2 guo3 (le5).
I give John apple (marker to indicate an action is completed).
我們給他蘋果 (了).
Wo3 men2 gei3 ta1 ping2 guo3 (le5).
I [plural marker] give him/her apple (marker to indicate an action is completed).
他給 John (了).
Ta1 gei3 John (le5).
He/She give John (marker to indicate an action is completed).
她給他 (了).
Ta1 gei3 ta1 (le5).
She give he/she (marker to indicate an action is completed).

From the above, it’s clear that Chinese deals with the following grammatical structures quite differently than English (and for the record, I’ve had zero formal instruction in Chinese grammar—I picked it up the way native speakers do so this may not be 100% accurate):

Articles. Chinese does not have a definite article like “the”. Chinese does have indefinite and partitive articles, but they are used a bit differently than in English—you can drop them if it’s clear what you mean from context.
Verb conjugation. Does not exist in Chinese. Tense is inferred through context.

This creates a certain amount of ambiguity in translation. The first sentence above could mean “The apple is red.” But it could also mean “Apples are red.” In the right context, it could even mean “This apple is red,” or “These apples are red.”

Possessives. In Chinese, possession is marked by the word 的 which has no real English translation. 的 is used when a person possesses an object, but also when an object possesses a particular property, like being red.
The existence of 了. There is no real English equivalent of this marker. And while it’s not strictly necessary to put it in, not doing it at all will give your Chinese a stilted, I-learned-it-from-school feel.
Pronouns. The same word 他 is used for he, she, him, and her. If there’s a need to specify female gender, you can use 她. There is a neuter pronoun 它, which can mean “it”, but it’s not used in quite the same way. We, 我們, is literally “I, plural”. And though it’s not illustrated in the sentences above, they, 他們, is literally “he/she plural”.

There is a notable similarity between English and Chinese though—both follow subject-verb-object patterns.

Knowing these kinds of things up front could definitely be useful in learning a language (or not, if you subscribe to the no grammar school of language learning).

It’s also worth knowing if you’re interested in language education/language psychology. When people make errors in a second language, it’s likely not a random error. Most errors are due to interference from the first language.

For example, my mom is pretty much the stereotypical Chinese Lady with Broken English. She is fluent, in the sense that she can live and work in the US just fine. But she rarely says or writes an English sentence that isn’t riddled with grammatical errors.

Almost all of her errors fall into one of these categories:

Pronoun errors. Despite being fully aware that I am female, my mom refers to me as “he” maybe half the time.
Subject/verb agreement.
Verb conjugation/stem errors. My favorite of this category is when she says “I am confusing” when she means “I am confused.”

In other words, she tends to make errors when English grammar has rules that don’t exist in Chinese!

This Just Sounds Wrong

Yvonne — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 06:59:31 +0000

I discovered the joy that is All Japanese All the Time yesterday and I just have to say: WORD to Khatzumoto’s entire language learning philosophy. At some point I may go through the language learning literature and pull references to studies that support his total correctness on everything [1], but today I’m going to focus on this:

Most learners of a foreign language – any foreign language – remain, like a novice skater to the wall of the rink, glued to their textbooks: a boring, sanitized, artificial, mutant subset of their target language. As a result, if they get good at anything at all, they get good at handling a boring, sanitized, artificial, mutant subset of…you get the picture. Their exposure to native materials is insufficient at best if not non-existent. And their language skills suffer accordingly.

An internet friend of mine once memorably said:

Americans waste their time focusing on verb conjugation. Once you have a feel for how things sound, you’ll know when to use the right form of the verb. I can always tell if someone learned HS spanish or if they learned street spanish because the HS spanish person says things that have not been used since Ferdinand wrote Cristobal Colon a cheque to buy three boats.

I’m up to Lesson 10 of Beginning Chinese Reader and while it’s been fantastic for refreshing me on characters that I once learned and forgot and teaching me new compounds, if you actually used the sentence constructions that appear in some of the readings, you would sound kind of like a Chinese Yoda.

For example:

這兩本書很好. 是你的嗎?
Zhe4 liang3 ben3 shu1 hen3 hao3. Shi4 ni3 de5 ma1?

是的. 那兩本書是我的.
Shi4 de5. Na4 liang3 ben3 shu1 shi4 wo3 de5.

多少錢一本?
Duo1 shao3 qian2 yi1 ben3?

那兩本書三塊九.
Na4 liang3 ben3 shu1 san1 kuai4 jiu3.

Translated, that’s:

These two books are very good. Are they yours?

Yes. Those two books are mine.

How much does one book cost?

Those two books are $3.90.

The whole dialogue is a bit stilted, what with the unnecessary repetition, but big issue is in the third sentence. The text has 多少錢一本?. I may not have native fluency in Chinese [2], but I was raised in a Mandarin-speaking household and that just sounds weird to me. I would reverse the construction and say, 一本多少錢?.

I’m a cognitive psychologist by training.
On the other hand, my pronunciation and grammar are such that I can pass as a native speaker for basic interactions. On our recent trip to Taiwan, people generally assumed me to be a local until I blanked on a phrase that a native speaker would know or asked for menus/brochures in English.

Chipanglish » Grammar

Arizona Immigration and Education

Similar Posts:

Debating Grammar Pt. 3: grammar vs. Grammar”

Similar Posts:

Debating Grammar Pt. 2: Rules, Schmules

Similar Posts:

Debating Grammar Pt. 1: What is Grammar?

Similar Posts:

Six Sentences in Chinese

Similar Posts:

This Just Sounds Wrong

Similar Posts: