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JZer
Joined: 16 Jan 2005
Posts: 3898
Location: Pittsburgh
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 Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2012 11:15 am Post subject: |
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| LongShiKong wrote: |
| JZer wrote: |
I do believe his second point has a lot of merit. While one may not be able to acquire a native accent as an adult there are plenty of scholars and writers for whom English is their second language and who write in English better than many native speakers. |
True enough but if circumstance and necessity were all that was needed then wouldn't intelligent, motivated adults and children learning the language routinely surpass the native infant in acquiring it? Crying won't help them when hungry, lost or hurt. And I thought we were talking about language, not accent acquisition. What infant doesn't learn it's native language? Would ELT and this website even exist if immersion were enough?
I don't know.... but do others get the sense Everett's more interested in making money than sense? |
I am not saying that I agree with Everett or not. But I will say that even if one is a motivated language learner it is really difficult to get as much input in an L2 than your native language.
You don't have 12 years of education in the language and you don't have family talking to you in the language. |
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JZer
Joined: 16 Jan 2005
Posts: 3898
Location: Pittsburgh
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| Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2012 11:21 am Post subject: |
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If Universal Grammar were true then wouldn't American and British speakers use the same grammar constructs:
American English:The British football team is going to play in the Olympics.
British English: The British football team are going to play in the Olympics.
If grammar was universal then why would the British football team be considered singular in American English and plural in British English?
It seems to be that this is culturally learned rather than universal which is what Daniel Everett argues. |
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johnslat
Joined: 21 Jan 2003
Posts: 13859
Location: Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
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| Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2012 12:43 pm Post subject: |
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Dear JZer,
Doesn't grammar (like so many other things: spelling, punctuation, capitalization. etc.) change over time?
"Use a singular verb when talking about collective nouns, such as "staff", "team", "government" or "class." For example a sentence, "The other team are all sitting down" is incorrect, according to American grammar rules. However, the same sentence, though somewhat outdated in modern British English, is still acceptable."
http://www.ehow.com/how_7875115_learn-american-english-grammar.html#ixzz1qnC4Ric8
Regards,
John |
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JZer
Joined: 16 Jan 2005
Posts: 3898
Location: Pittsburgh
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| Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2012 1:00 pm Post subject: |
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| johnslat wrote: |
Dear JZer,
Doesn't grammar (like so many other things: spelling, punctuation, capitalization. etc.) change over time?
"Use a singular verb when talking about collective nouns, such as "staff", "team", "government" or "class." For example a sentence, "The other team are all sitting down" is incorrect, according to American grammar rules. However, the same sentence, though somewhat outdated in modern British English, is still acceptable."
http://www.ehow.com/how_7875115_learn-american-english-grammar.html#ixzz1qnC4Ric8
Regards,
John |
Yes, if it were universal then why would it change? |
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johnslat
Joined: 21 Jan 2003
Posts: 13859
Location: Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
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| Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2012 1:15 pm Post subject: |
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Dear JZer,
Couldn't the "fundamentals" of a universal grammar be innate, but the specifics be subject to consciously-directed changes over time, changes thtat could differ due to (among other variables) geography.
Hmm, rather like evolution itself, perhaps.
Regards,
John |
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Sashadroogie
Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 11061
Location: Moskva, The Workers' Paradise
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| Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2012 1:16 pm Post subject: |
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| I think some of the comments above reveal a severely limited understanding of what Universal Grammar claims to be. |
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johnslat
Joined: 21 Jan 2003
Posts: 13859
Location: Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
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| Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2012 1:18 pm Post subject: |
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Dear Sasha,
Could you elaborate, please?
Regards,
John |
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Sashadroogie
Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 11061
Location: Moskva, The Workers' Paradise
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| Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2012 1:21 pm Post subject: |
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Dear Johnslat
The bit about US and UK speakers of English seems to me to totally miss the point.
Sasha
PS Our previous posts crossed. I was not referring to your comments. |
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JZer
Joined: 16 Jan 2005
Posts: 3898
Location: Pittsburgh
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| Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2012 1:46 pm Post subject: |
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Everett makes a huge blunder on page 113, "OVS to date has only been found in one language of the world, Hixkaryana, another Amazonian language, spoken several hundred miles north of the Brazilian city of Manaus."
German uses both SVO and OVS. Due to the use of cases either grammar form is acceptable in German. |
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LongShiKong
Joined: 28 May 2007
Posts: 1082
Location: China
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| Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2012 3:52 pm Post subject: |
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| Sashadroogie wrote: |
| I think some of the comments above reveal a severely limited understanding of what Universal Grammar claims to be. |
...including Everett's! The 'rules' he mentions that spring from necessity or circumstance are clearly not the general rules of universal grammar but of specific languages or dialects:
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Universal grammar is a theory in linguistics that suggests that there are properties that all possible natural human languages have.Usually credited to Noam Chomsky, the theory suggests that some rules of grammar are hard-wired into the brain, and manifest themselves without being taught. There is still much argument whether there is such a thing and what it would be.
If human beings growing up under normal conditions (not conditions of extreme deprivation) always develop a language with property X (for example, distinguishing nouns from verbs, or distinguishing function words from lexical words) then property X is a property of universal grammar in this most general sense...
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If what Everett means is that all language stems from necessity or circumstance and nothing is innate--the blank slate theory, is he not denying the role of the human mind in language acquisition/development? If UG's critics are correct, that Chomsky et all are just seeking innate patterns and structures where none exist--isn't this the strongest argument in favour of what I said before, that the nature of the mind is to seek our or impose rules/patterns on experience? |
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fluffyhamster
Joined: 13 Mar 2005
Posts: 3292
Location: UK > China > Japan > UK again
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| Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2012 7:11 pm Post subject: |
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| JZer wrote: |
Everett makes a huge blunder on page 113, "OVS to date has only been found in one language of the world, Hixkaryana, another Amazonian language, spoken several hundred miles north of the Brazilian city of Manaus."
German uses both SVO and OVS. Due to the use of cases either grammar form is acceptable in German. |
Mark C. Baker's The Atoms of Language (which this expanding thread has "inspired" me to start dusting off), published in 2001, also quotes only Hixkaryana as OVS. So it can hardly be a 'huge mistake' but rather simply a received fact, seeing as it's also quoted by a true Generative linguist. I guess they are all ultimately talking about a language's perceived basic/canonical/unmarked word order, rather than any stylistic or functional or whatever variations in that word order.
I'll try to come back and post some substantial comments when (if?) I actually finish at least the Baker LOL. |
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JZer
Joined: 16 Jan 2005
Posts: 3898
Location: Pittsburgh
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| Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2012 10:08 pm Post subject: |
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| fluffyhamster, I would consider using only one source when you are trying to write an academic book that is factual a blunder. Tamil uses OVS as well. |
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fluffyhamster
Joined: 13 Mar 2005
Posts: 3292
Location: UK > China > Japan > UK again
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| Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2012 11:08 pm Post subject: |
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| Again, I think we can assume there's a big difference between '(sometimes) uses, can be' and '(usually) is', JZer. (If one is into Yoda-speak and the like, hell, even English could be whatever word order you wanted it to be). And I don't know about Everett's sources (as I've yet to really look at any of his books), but Tamil isn't mentioned as an OVS language in Baker's book either, so I doubt if this is a "blunder" or low academic standards on anyone's part, but rather just how the typology involved has generally typified/classified each language. |
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JZer
Joined: 16 Jan 2005
Posts: 3898
Location: Pittsburgh
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| Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2012 11:50 pm Post subject: |
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| I believe that OVS is the dominant structure of Tamil. I apologize if I am wrong. I will research it further when I have some time. |
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fluffyhamster
Joined: 13 Mar 2005
Posts: 3292
Location: UK > China > Japan > UK again
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| Posted: Mon Apr 02, 2012 12:02 am Post subject: |
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This might save you the time, JZer.   
From Wikipedia:
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Syntax
Tamil is a consistently head-final language. The verb comes at the end of the clause, with a typical word order of subject�object�verb (SOV).[108][109] However, word order in Tamil is also flexible, so that surface permutations of the SOV order are possible with different pragmatic effects. |
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_language#Syntax ) |
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