Job Discussion Forums

[fluffyhamster]

Michael West rather than C.K. Ogden is surely the guy to pick if you're going to make much mention of the 1930s~ 'Vocabulary Control Movement' (=so named because it tried in various ways to make learning the vocabulary easier by limiting it in some respect) and its lasting influence. Then there are guys like Harold Palmer and A.S. Hornby, the latter of whom (for those who didn't know) compiled what would go on to become the OALD. (See Howatt for more on all these personages).

Ogden was ultimately of a more philosophical than practical bent, and his so-called "Basic" English of only 850 core words, which was a proposed international auxiliary language ("British American Scientific International Commercial"), made the fatal mistake of trying to insistently limit and indeed at least initially replace English itself, 'which was never going to happen' (Schmitt pg 15). Chief among the many well-documented problems of his scheme were that its lack of many basic words necessitated often clunky or all-too-concise paraphrase (for example, 'ask' is 'put [a question] to', 'want' is 'have [a] desire for' - only the noun form of 'desire' but not 'want' is in the 850 Basic word list; also missing are social essentials such as [Good] Morning, 'Evening, Goodbye and Thank you), with the small number of discrete items to be learned proving illusory, as they hid a much larger number of more complex and combinatory ideas and phrases (Nation 1983 for one has estimated that 12,425 meanings lurk within Basic's 850 items); then, even native speakers of English would need to be retrained (restrained?) plenty to be able to use this new and unnatural "language". It all seems too algorithmic and dead, not a living language at all.

West on the other hand approached the issue of vocabulary control through the eminently practical and empirically-reproduceable means of calculating word frequencies and compiling graded readers, and his New Method courses and readers (1933~), New Method Dictionary (1935, which introduced the notion of a 'defining vocabulary'), and General Service List of English Words (finally completed in 1953), all published by Longman, were clearly influential.

Some apposite quotes from Howatt:

"Palmer wrote to Ogden offering to try Basic out in Tokyo in 1931, but Ogden wrote back saying 'Take care, or our lawyers will be prosecuting you for infringement of copyright'. Since this happened three years before Palmer's support for West in his conflict over Basic, it is not very easy to understand." (pg 233)

"The strongest argument against Basic by English language teachers was that it produced 'unnatural' English. ..... Ogden's answer to this was, of course, that you can express the same notions in a different way and the final outcome is just as 'natural' as it would be in normal English. This was profoundly unsatisfactory, at least in the eyes of many teachers of English as a foreign language, who felt that if courses were offered which claimed to teach Basic English, they should in fact teach basic English.
Ultimately, the situation is insoluble, with both sides arguing from different premises. Basic was a separate language into which English had to be translated whereas the teachers were developing a grading system based on a selection of common words in standard English." (pg 254)

"Basic dissipated its energies by seeking to replace English, a task it could not hope to accomplish." (pg 255)

"There is no doubt that, in the hands of an expert like Richards or Ogden himself, Basic can sound quite normal and translations were made of a number of standard texts like Treasure Island or Arms and the Man to prove the point. More usefully, original texts for the teaching of elementary science were also written by Basic enthusiasts like A.P. Rossiter and H.S. Hatfield. Perhaps if this application of Basic had been pursued more single-mindedly and resulted in an extensive list of simple science and technology texts, the system might have had a much greater chance of long-term survival. ..... Essentially, it is a reasonably good system for writing simple texts, but it is not an appropriate medium for everyday social interaction in the spoken language. Nor, to be fair, was it intended to be." (pg 251)

"It is somewhat ironic that Malinowski's paper outlining the 'context of situation'...should have appeared in tandem with Ogden's first major work in semantics in 1923. In that paper Malinowski summarized his views by saying that 'language in its primitive function and original form has an essentially pragmatic character; it is a mode of behaviour, an indispensable element of concerted human action. And negatively: to regard it as a means for the embodiment or expression of thought is to take a one-sided view of one of its most derivative and specialized functions'. Basic was a work of intellectual art, 'magnifique - mais ce n'est pas la parole'." (pg 255)

"The Basic affair is of interest if only because it was, in a sense, a litmus-test of the existence of an English Language Teaching profession. ..... The nineteenth century would have tolerated Ogden as it tolerated the other individualists with interesting, if idiosyncratic, ideas. The twentieth century, however, did not. Basic English failed because the profession and its burgeoning institutions rejected it." (pg 217)

Best of all though are the two examples of word order from the Basic English wordlist chart in the back of The General Basic English Dictionary:

"The camera man who made an attempt to take a moving picture of the society women before they got their hats off did not get off the ship till he was questioned by the police", and "We will give simple rules to you now".

Finally, the relatively recent ABC English-Chinese, Chinese-English Dictionary (or ABC ECCE) for some reason indicates items that are Basic English alongside likely much more dependable frequency band markers drawn from a Chinese-published 'Word List for University English Teaching Programs' (大学英语教学大纲词汇表, by ~ 修订工作组), 上海: 外语教育出版社2000.

[Sources:
ABC ECCE Dictionary (University of Hawai'i Press 2010)
Carter, R: Vocabulary: Applied Linguisitic Perspectives, Second edition (Routledge 1998)
Carter & McCarthy, Vocabulary and Language Teaching (Longman 1988)
Howatt, A.P.R: A History of English Language Teaching (OUP 1984)
Schmitt, N: Vocabulary in Language Teaching (CUP 2000)
The General Basic English Dictionary (1960, but as [re?]printed by the Hokuseido Press, Japan ~1992~)]

[In the heat of the moment]

BTW, to anyone interested, E=MC2 is a bit wrong, aluminium was the second name for aluminum and because it was identified (correctly) in America the name, there, stood, The Brit who identified it changed the name and so we have another addition to our common language separated by an ocean.

Gonna, wanna, and shouda is completely wrong, and you Yanks deserve every Republican prez you get, you Neanderthals!

[scot47]

There are those who think anything produced before 2013 is already obsolete. I do not live in their world and I do not share their perspective. History will judge !

As for using the perfect, what percentage of students in say, Saudi Arabia ever master any more than past, present and future ? I would be amazed if many grasp the distinction between Present Simple and Present Continuous.

For many speakers ma time indicators are not tenses but adverbs.

I go today
I go tomorrow
I was go yesterday

[spiral78]

[In the heat of the moment]

[Knedliki]

In reply to Scots private message about 1930s linguistic theory being relevant today because Euclid had some clever ideas back in the day.

Apples and oranges

[fluffyhamster]

[scot47]

Dumplings and knedliki ?

Basic English is not just about vocabulary control and the use of the 850 words. An important feature is the restriction to a simplified verb structure.

I will leave the postmodernists among you to chase after the latest theory out of Princeton or Oxford.

[gregory999]

[fluffyhamster]

[In the heat of the moment]

[fluffyhamster]

I thought it was just that it used a lower rather than uppercase 2.

[gregory999]

[scot47]

I do not advocate the use of Basic English but think those involved in teaching English should be exposed to this and to the ideas behind it.

I am appalled at how little so many TEFLers know about English and the History of teaching it.

And indeed I am also shocked by the prevalent Anglophone Monoglossia which is one of the reasons for the lack of background in General and Applied Linguistics.

I am just an angry old man.

Fancy asking people to read a book written 85 years ago ! Stupid old f*rt. I bet he does not even have an iPad !

[fluffyhamster]

Well, yes, but it is probably more helpful to look at who in the vocab control movement was more successful in influencing things and actually laying the foundations for present-day approaches, hence the mention of West (as in Herbert, Reanimator). Ogden's work was of course interesting but "simplifying" paraphrase has to be reasonably natural, otherwise it becomes something that only select scribes can do (and even they would probably baulk at the idea of too much unscripted spoken work rather than written translation). It just seems too big an ask to have native speakers forget so much of their native language (especially almost all the verbs, in favour of just nouns or participles). Too much unnatural control, ultimately. All of which is why I (and most others it seems) view him as little more than a passing footnote in ELT history.