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Susie · Joined: 02 Jul 2003 Posts: 390 Location: PRC

Is it "curriculums"?

or "curriculi"?

or what?

stillnosheep · Joined: 01 Mar 2004 Posts: 2068 Location: eslcafe

Curricula.

poof · Joined: 23 May 2005 Posts: 161

Agree with sheep. Baa.

briandwest · Joined: 10 Feb 2006 Posts: 98 Location: Hong Kong

I sheepishly concur.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/curriculum

Susie · Joined: 02 Jul 2003 Posts: 390 Location: PRC

"Poof"

Is the baby doing taijiquan?

poof · Joined: 23 May 2005 Posts: 161

I think it's called the 'Drunken Juvenile' form - a variant style from Shaolin.

well-travelled · Joined: 19 Mar 2003 Posts: 97

Funny - I'm watching the baby while listening to "Snow (Hey Oh) from Stadium Arcadian. Perfectly in rhythm with the music!!!

well-travelled

guilao · Joined: 30 Dec 2004 Posts: 20 Location: At-large

Curricula.
Unless you are a constructivist teaching in America. Then, of course, anything the student makes up is fair game. A sad state of affairs here, to be sure.

Susie · Joined: 02 Jul 2003 Posts: 390 Location: PRC

Do you mean that you don't think "Constructivism" makes for a happy state of affairs in America?

guilao · Joined: 30 Dec 2004 Posts: 20 Location: At-large

Not the way it's often implemented. Some instruction has to be interspersed with the PBL time, IMHO.

I assisted a teacher during a practicum who told her students, Spanish-speaking adults, that the plural of an "-um" noun is "-ums"; in an aside she told me it was easier than confusing them. This disturbed me for the simple reason that they are adults, who have already mastered their L1; obviously they were not stupid and capable of learning this irregular pattern. Perhaps this teacher should have let the students learn the form on their own rather than transmit bogus data.

IMHO, instructivism and constructivism are like Yin and Yang. But that's just me.

The reason America's hurting is because many school districts mandate their teachers to not lecture for more than 10 minutes. Educators can't use their own wits to decide the appropriate amount of time in a class session necessary for instruction. We get paid low enough as it is, why treat us like we work at a burger stand?

once again · Joined: 27 Jan 2003 Posts: 815

Both of these sources say that both forms are ok.

http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/curriculum?view=uk

http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/curriculum

guilao · Joined: 30 Dec 2004 Posts: 20 Location: At-large

Dictionary, schmictionary! That's like using corpora to justify teaching the use of "uh-huh" as fillers.

Consider the Modern English adjective "curricular", in which "-ar" is appended to the same stem. Why do we not just add "-ar" to the word "curriculum" in order to gain the word "curriculumar"? How did we determine what to subtract ("-um") and what to add ("-ar") to come up with the adjective "curricular"?

I posit that the current root word is exactly the original Latin stem "curricul". Why? Because the morphological rules Merriam-Webster use use involve subtraction and addition, an unnecessarily complicated procedure. And people like simple morphological rules; even Pilipino morphology is simpler than adding an "-s" to pluralize this word as suggested.

For "curriculum", syllabicized as cur-ric-u-lum in Merriam-Webster's, let's look at two possible paradigms:

PARADIGM ONE
This is a simple morphological process using the Latin stem as a ROOT.

ROOT ("curricul" = to run, an infinitive noun in the original Latin)
SINGULAR - affixation/inflectional (append "-um" to ROOT) = curriculum
PLURAL - affixation/inflectional (append "-a" to ROOT) = curricula
ADJECTIVE - affixation/derivational (append "-ar" to ROOT) = curricular
* inflectional PLURAL (affix "-s" to (affixation/inflectional SINGULAR (append "-um" to ROOT))) = curriculums

*Note that to affix "-s" for a plural requires 2 inflectional affixes to the ROOT. Since in English only one inflectional affix is allowed per word, this word is BOGUS.

PARADIGM TWO
This is brain salad surgery. To make the affixation of "-s" follow a morphological rule we must pretend the ROOT is really the SINGULAR, and not worry about what it means; we're simply juggling letters after all. Then we must create two separate rules for PLURAL to appease the dictionary-wads:

ROOT ("curriculum" = a noun)
SINGULAR (do nothing to ROOT) = curriculum
PLURAL - affixation/inflectional (add "-s" to SINGULAR) = curriculums
**PLURAL - deletion, then affixation/inflectional (drop "-um", add "-a" to ROOT) = curricula
**ADJECTIVE - deletion, then affixation/derivational (drop "-um", add "-ar" to ROOT) = curricular

**Note that we are performing two operations to acquire two of these words, a complicated procedure with no logical reasoning. The deletion is not even a whole syllable. Why would we drop "-um" rather than the final syllable "-lum" as prescribed by the dictionary?

Curiously, Paradigm One can only allow "curricula" as a PLURAL. Paradigm Two can allow both as a PLURAL, but one iteration requires the temporary existing of a word "curricul" that is ignored in this parsing. This is evidence that the word root is "curricul", making Paradigm One the valid paradigm. Hence, "curriculums" is a BOGUS word!

As a lazy old-fashioned sod, I prefer to build and teach words from the morphological root, rather than accept some complicated word-parsing rule that excuses laziness in speech and lines the pockets of dictionary publishers. For "curriculum" the morphological root and etymological stem are one and the same, "curricul".

stillnosheep · Joined: 01 Mar 2004 Posts: 2068 Location: eslcafe

Or, in summary....

guilao · Joined: 30 Dec 2004 Posts: 20 Location: At-large

yeah. what stillnosheep said in the first place!

once again · Joined: 27 Jan 2003 Posts: 815

So which is the correct spelling CENTRE or CENTER ?