[Gllug] Monthly GLLUG grammar report

[Dylan]

On Sunday 01 December 2002 21:43, Nix wrote:
> On Tue, 26 Nov 2002, dylan at dylan.me.uk mused:
> > On Tuesday 26 November 2002 17:04, Dave Cridland [Home] wrote:
> >> Ah, but that is, I think, a known factor - people who learn a foreign
> >> language usually tend to speak it more correctly then a native speaker.
> >
> > The form of a language taught to foreign learners is usually the socially
> > preferred form (for English, we might call it 'BBC' English) and is
> > usually
>
> RP, actually; `Received Pronunciation'.

Actually, NO. I am intending to refer to Estuary English. RP is as much an 
artificiality as the split infinitive rule. For the sake of transparence, 
Estuary English IS the most widely understood dialect, and is widely 
represented in current BBC presenters, hence: we might refer to it (for 
clarity) as BBC English

>
> `BBC English' is merely because the BBC once used to standardize on it;
> nowadays, they seem to allow just about any rabble to become announcers
> and newsreaders (especially on the World Service), and some of them have
> accents so strong even I can't follow them (and I can follow thick
> Scottish, Irish, Welsh, and Cornish accents without overmuch trouble).
>
> >> Learning the grammer of your own native language is significantly
> >> harder, I think, than learning the grammer of a foreign one.
> >
> > Children generally manage to learn the core by the age of 3 to 5, with
> > little if any direct coaching...
>
> Indeed. They have substantial advantages over a later learner, too; the
> brain is much more plastic, for instance. It is known that e.g. the
> auditory cortex detects inter-word gaps and emphasises them, and detects
> differing vocables that should map to the same syllable from the POV of
> the native language, and performs that mapping `in hardware' (trimming
> back neurons).
>
> This latter is the cause of the Japanese `r'/`l' confusion; they often
> literally can't hear the difference between the two, and it's damned hard
> to get it right in speech if you can't hear when you're going wrong.
>
> > Depends how you count them. Actually, the only ones which don't fit the
> > general rules are: BE, HAVE, GET and DO. The other 'irregular' verbs
> > simply
>
> i.e., the really common ones.
>
> > have patterns which are so subtle and complex there's no point
> > consciously learning them (unless, like me, you're a theoretical
> > linguistics geek.)
>
> I see irregularities and weird complex grammar and raise you Finnish.

That's not exactly a fair bet - The Finnish language is qualitatively 
different from English in many important ways.

>
> (Compositional semantics? What's wrong with them then?)


Apart from the fact that the primary predictions of 'CS' are unsupported in 
the syntax...

Dylan

-- 
"Sweet moderation
Heart of this nation
Desert us not, we are
Between the wars"

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