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Deicide
Joined: 29 Jul 2006
Posts: 1005
Location: Caput Imperii Americani
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 Posted: Sun May 06, 2007 12:08 pm Post subject: |
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| JZer wrote: |
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| Inversion is not a uniform trait in Indo-European languages; the Celtic languages are all VSO regardless of whether or not a question is asked. |
Sorry, I only know Spanish, English and German. So, thanks for the information. |
My knowledge of Spanish is minimal and limited to very basic communication, thus I cannot comment. German to my knowledge always inverts; this was apparent to me after spending a year in France and coming back to good 'ol Germany and saying things like 'Du gehst jetzt zum Laden?' (Tu vas au magasin?)....I think inversion in English is at least in the colloquial sense optional; intonation does quite a lot of work as well... |
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JZer
Joined: 16 Jan 2005
Posts: 3898
Location: Pittsburgh
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| Posted: Sun May 06, 2007 2:30 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| German to my knowledge always inverts |
I am not sure about that. I think that it is the same as in English. You can check what someone has said with a statement as a question.
You went shopping today?
Du bist heute einkaufen gegangen? |
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JZer
Joined: 16 Jan 2005
Posts: 3898
Location: Pittsburgh
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| Posted: Sun May 06, 2007 2:35 pm Post subject: |
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Deicide,
In Spanish you have the subject verb inverted.
Do you speak Spanish?
Hablas espanol?
Verb subject
And to any spanish speaker, I know that I am missing accents, I just don't know how to type spanish accents on my Korean computer. |
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Deicide
Joined: 29 Jul 2006
Posts: 1005
Location: Caput Imperii Americani
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| Posted: Sun May 06, 2007 2:55 pm Post subject: |
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| JZer wrote: |
Deicide,
In Spanish you have the subject verb inverted.
Do you speak Spanish?
Hablas espanol?
Verb subject
And to any spanish speaker, I know that I am missing accents, I just don't know how to type spanish accents on my Korean computer. |
I was aware of inversion in Spanish, just not the possibility of using intonation instead of inversion. Inversion is used in French in formal and literary contexts. Otherwise intonation is used. |
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JZer
Joined: 16 Jan 2005
Posts: 3898
Location: Pittsburgh
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| Posted: Sun May 06, 2007 3:28 pm Post subject: |
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| Deicide, anyways, I am hoping to start learning Khmer soon. The structure of Khmer is the same as English. (S V O) |
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Deicide
Joined: 29 Jul 2006
Posts: 1005
Location: Caput Imperii Americani
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| Posted: Sun May 06, 2007 3:42 pm Post subject: |
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| JZer wrote: |
| Deicide, anyways, I am hoping to start learning Khmer soon. The structure of Khmer is the same as English. (S V O) |
Yeah, earn your gs and get the hell out of dodge... |
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JZer
Joined: 16 Jan 2005
Posts: 3898
Location: Pittsburgh
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| Posted: Mon May 07, 2007 12:36 am Post subject: |
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| Based on their L1 there is really no reason for Koreans to seperate the helping verb "will" from the V2. In Korean the verb is connect with will. Actually it would make more sense for them to say. I to store tomorrow go will. |
Deicide, you have not commented on why this is a transfer error. Koreans should be saying "I store tomorrow go will." |
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Deicide
Joined: 29 Jul 2006
Posts: 1005
Location: Caput Imperii Americani
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| Posted: Mon May 07, 2007 2:35 am Post subject: |
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| JZer wrote: |
| Quote: |
| Based on their L1 there is really no reason for Koreans to seperate the helping verb "will" from the V2. In Korean the verb is connect with will. Actually it would make more sense for them to say. I to store tomorrow go will. |
Deicide, you have not commented on why this is a transfer error. Koreans should be saying "I store tomorrow go will." |
They do say that as well. I have heard both, admittedly the latter more often than the former... |
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JZer
Joined: 16 Jan 2005
Posts: 3898
Location: Pittsburgh
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| Posted: Mon May 07, 2007 4:43 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| They do say that as well. I have heard both, admittedly the latter more often than the former... |
Well, I cannot really comment for two reasons. One is that I do not tend to speak to Koreans in English unless I am in class. Secondly, I teach college freshman who don't speak that often in class. |
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MELEE
Joined: 22 Jan 2003
Posts: 2583
Location: The Mexican Hinterland
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| Posted: Mon May 07, 2007 2:51 pm Post subject: |
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| JZer wrote: |
Deicide,
In Spanish you have the subject verb inverted.
Do you speak Spanish?
Hablas espanol?
Verb subject
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Sorry JZer, I can forgive accent marks, I can't be bothered to put them in myself most of the time. But espa�ol is not the subject of that question.
The subject is tu, (you). Espa�ol is the object. Spanish verbs mark the subject so a separate subject is redunant and often left out. The statement and question are the same.
Hablas espa�ol. (statement)
�Hablas espa�ol? (question)
In either case if the subject is included for emphasis you'd get
Tu hablas espa�ol.
�Tu hablas espa�ol?
But the speaker has the freedom to move the tu for added drama.
�Hablas espa�ol, tu? (The tu would be stressed) |
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Deicide
Joined: 29 Jul 2006
Posts: 1005
Location: Caput Imperii Americani
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| Posted: Mon May 07, 2007 2:55 pm Post subject: |
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| MELEE wrote: |
| JZer wrote: |
Deicide,
In Spanish you have the subject verb inverted.
Do you speak Spanish?
Hablas espanol?
Verb subject
. |
Sorry JZer, I can forgive accent marks, I can't be bothered to put them in myself most of the time. But espa�ol is not the subject of that question.
The subject is tu, (you). Espa�ol is the object. Spanish verbs mark the subject so a separate subject is redunant and often left out. The statement and question are the same.
Hablas espa�ol. (statement)
�Hablas espa�ol? (question) |
Lingua Hispania fillia Latinae est... |
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sunrader
Joined: 12 Dec 2005
Posts: 101
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| Posted: Sun May 13, 2007 12:44 am Post subject: |
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| MELEE wrote: |
In either case if the subject is included for emphasis you'd get
Tu hablas espa�ol.
�Tu hablas espa�ol?
But the speaker has the freedom to move the tu for added drama.
�Hablas espa�ol, tu? (The tu would be stressed) |
Melee -
Can you say �Hablas tu espa�ol? |
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Justin Trullinger
Joined: 28 Jan 2005
Posts: 3110
Location: Seoul, South Korea and Myanmar for a bit
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| Posted: Mon May 14, 2007 1:35 am Post subject: |
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| Can you say �Hablas tu espa�ol? |
In theory, I suppose so. Mobility of a subject pronoun in Spanish is virtually unlimited; I imagine this is due to the redundancy of the pronoun. (As the verb conjugation "hablas" tells the listener that the subject is "tu," it's only ever a matter of emphasis to put the subject there at all- the most common use is to drop the pronoun entirely.)
The use you suggest, "hablas tu espa�ol" is extremely uncommon in Spanish, but could come up as contrastive stress.
Never "�hablas tu espa�ol?"
But rather "�hablas tu espa�ol?"
(Situation important here. In my head, the dialogue sounds like:
"John doesn't speak Spanish."
"Mary doesn't speak Spanish."
"Nobody around here seems to speak Spanish." (imagine tone of voice communicating criticism.)
"Do you speak Spanish?" (This, the loaded question with contrastive stress, is the only use I can think of for "�Hablas tu espa�ol?")
All the best,
Justin |
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dreadnought
Joined: 10 Oct 2003
Posts: 82
Location: Sofia, Bulgaria
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| Posted: Mon May 14, 2007 4:53 pm Post subject: |
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Can't really comment on any of the Spanish stuff knowing nothing of the language...
However, coming back to the OP's question about German and Korean, I think Germans don't make the same error because SOV is mastered later than SVO and so the positive transfer of the SVO order between English and German trumps the later SOV acquisition. I remember reading something about this regarding bilingual German/English children and how they almost never mix up the word orders. On that subject the book 'Bilingualism' by Suzanne Romaine is excellent, only tangentially related to this topic but full of interesting insights that can be applied to second language acquisition.
Interestingly, while as teachers we tend to focus quite a lot on L1 interference errors with our students, they apparently make up only a small percentage of the errors that foreign learners make in English. Most errors are purely developmental and not related to their first language at all. Take, for example, Japanese (and Korean?), which has post-positions rather than prepositions. It would seem to be logical that they would have trouble with putting English prepositions in the right place, but apparently this very rarely happens. |
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JZer
Joined: 16 Jan 2005
Posts: 3898
Location: Pittsburgh
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| Posted: Tue May 15, 2007 3:45 pm Post subject: |
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| This is not related to L1 transfer errors but does anyone think that it is crazy just to speak English at all times in an ESL classroom? Isn't it sometimes more productive to speak the L2 if you can? With advanced students it is no problem and I don't think the L2 should be spoken in difficult situations. Students need to break through their weak points when difficult situations arise. Furthermore, I think with young children it is no problem but often in the ESL world you teach students who probably do not have a large enough vocbulary to learn what is being taught. |
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