EXCLUSIVE: Fluffyhamster declared grammar dunce!

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Fri Sep 05, 2008 12:17 pm

Woodcutter wrote:No, I tend to believe that there are significant fundamental differences in the way different people approach things - with special reference to internet discussions where any old page will do as evidence mark you - so that a lot of the time people are jabbering away at cross-purposes. For example, one of the most basic things we talk about, a unit from which we begin our discussions and build our theories upon, perhaps, are nouns.

And what the heck are they anyway?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noun

(The wiki entry for verb, by the way, kicks off by mentioning "actions" amongst other things, and has that sign at the top that says "expert needed". Can any of you experts help me out with a real definition?)

Stephen, however, has said such problems (among experts, of course) are usually only a matter of "terminology".

I dipped into Quirk here and there, when I lived in more civilized parts, and I've seen other people's dippings in. Do you really read these works cover to cover?

Why the obssession with notional definitions (particularly those for nouns)? And how does one arrive at satisfactory ones, short of compiling a detailed grammar that elucidates the thinking behind the definitions (and likely soon leaves them behind)? Then, even the most detailed grammar is a set of generalizations, and hardly a detailed lexicogrammar; and finally we have the language "itself", ultimately learnable without much superimposed verbiage.

JuanTwoThree · Post by **JuanTwoThree** » Sat Sep 06, 2008 4:41 pm

Now that I've got time and inclination to contribute to this thread I'd like to interject something here. Which may appear to be deranged ramblings.

I want to leave aside superficial grammatical differences and even deep structure and try to home in on a core meaning of the infinitive marker.
Those sentences from the other thread seem to represent as good a sample as any, so here they are, numbered for the sake of convenience:

1) I want to buy the same dictionary as you have
2) John went to London to see the lights.
3) John didn't have money to buy the furniture for his new room.
4) Mary was pleased to hear the news.
5) Mary had no friends to talk about the matter with.
6) Many Japanese like to have nori for breakfast.
7) This bridge is not strong enough for the lorry to cross.

How careless he is to have lost his umbrella.

So here's my train of thought, if it can be dignified as such.

2) is quite straightforward and at first sight there's a sort of implicit comment (in brackets):

John went to London (and he didn't just go for no reason: he went with the following purpose.............) to see the lights.

Now there seems to be a bracketed thought in all the sentences:

In 1) I don't just want existentially without knowing what it is I want, the thing I want is...........

In 3) He didn't just have money with no consequences, his purpose (??)was ..........

In 4) The reason for her pleasure was .........

and so on.

Now the thing is that we seem to end up with a hotch-potch of consequences, results, purposes and reasons, and no particular core meaning at all. So I was wondering if that isn't information that we bring to the situation while the language is fairly neutral about it.

I've brought some money to pay for the coffees ( it's not necessarily "in order to" because it might have been ear-marked for another thing)

I haven't got enough money to pay for the coffees. (Which might have been my plan all along for all you know. It doesn't say)

I suppose that in essence I mean that in "Kennedy went to Dallas only to be shot by Oswald" and "Oswald went to Dallas to shoot Kennedy" "The rifle was powerful enough to be fired from that distance" "Jackie K was lucky not to be killed as well" those "to"s are all the same, but we interpret them differently, some as purposes and some as consequences, because of what we know. Unless you believe that everything has a cosmic purpose. I'm trying to say that as far as the word "to" is concerned it's more like a cosmic indifference.

So all the sentences are the same. And no, I haven't touched a drop.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Sat Sep 06, 2008 4:45 pm

I've made the last hamster pic (on the previous page) my new Job Discussion Forums avatar.

There's actually some pretty fun stuff at pilkey.com:
http://www.pilkey.com/games.php (links to Hamster Highway and Sulu the Bionic Hamster games among others, plus the website 'When Hamsters Attack!')
http://www.pilkey.com/jukebox.php?mp3=W ... ingle_.mp3 ('When Hamsters Attack' song!!)

Then I found this:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/artic ... -bite.html

donnach · Post by **donnach** » Sat Sep 06, 2008 5:35 pm

fluffyhamster wrote:I take it that the Huddleston (An Intro to the Grammar of English) didn't do it for you then, Woody? Might I suggest one of the Quirk grammars instead? (SJ and Donnach swear by 'em). Reading that would sure beat beating yourself (and implicitly others) up about the "total" lack of an agreed/agreeable terminology.

Um, erm, and come on you already knew this from the nature of my questions: A Student's Grammar of the English Language is, for the most part, over my head. This and other message boards, along with my own research, may eventually allow me to benefit from the book a bit more. It definitely seems like a book that I should try to understand.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Sun Sep 07, 2008 2:15 pm

You seem to be pretty smart and doing fine, if your posts on Dave's are anything to go by, Donnach. So I doubt if the SGEL is that much if at all over your head (and wasn't implying otherwise).

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Mon Sep 08, 2008 12:05 am

FH - I tend to think that there are serious implications for all our definitions if we can't agree on the nature of the most basic definitions. Does a prepositon have an actual meaning concerning position, for example? If so that would obviously be very important to what we call a preposition.

(and it seems that in most languages, by the way, wikipedia at least still kicks off with "a noun is a person, place or thing").

Do you remember "Prawn"? There are plenty of people like him, with a very different approach, I suppose, who would never bother to post here.

Juan, since in Chinese you can live without a "to" like word, I suppose I'm very open to the idea that it is fairly content free. Maybe the main reason for it is just a habit of having only one tensed verb per clause?

mesomorph · Post by **mesomorph** » Mon Sep 08, 2008 12:30 am

FH

The first obvious mistake you have made in this thread is to refer to yourself in the third person.

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Mon Sep 08, 2008 1:37 am

The third rodent, to be more precise.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Mon Sep 08, 2008 12:05 pm

mesomorph wrote:FH

The first obvious mistake you have made in this thread is to refer to yourself in the third person.

The thread title is a little self-indulgent, but an 'obvious mistake'? There are functional reasons for the choice I made - care to guess what they might be? And what would be the further mistakes (your use of 'first' implies you think there are more)? Do you have any actual AL comments to make? I guess still not yet.

mesomorph · Post by **mesomorph** » Mon Sep 08, 2008 12:52 pm

woodcutter wrote:The third rodent, to be more precise.

Rodents are people too.

mesomorph · Post by **mesomorph** » Mon Sep 08, 2008 1:01 pm

fluffyhamster wrote:
mesomorph wrote:FH

The first obvious mistake you have made in this thread is to refer to yourself in the third person.
The thread title is a little self-indulgent, but an 1 'obvious mistake'? There are functional reasons for the choice I made - 2 care to guess what they might be? And 3 what would be the further mistakes (your use of 'first' implies you think there are more)? 4 Do you have any actual AL comments to make? I guess still not yet.

1. OK - glaringly obvious.

2. I wouldn't say I was overly bothered but it may be interesting to hear so go on.

3. Well as you are not a robot I'm quite sure you make hundreds of mistakes everyday. Record everything you ever say and I might consider listening.

Not.

4. What is an 'actual AL' comment?

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Mon Sep 08, 2008 1:19 pm

Meso, like I'm going to bother putting in the time or effort when you're so obviously not prepared to!

AL = Applied Linguistics - the name of the forum. In relation to TEFL, TESL, TESOL, ELT etc especially.

mesomorph · Post by **mesomorph** » Mon Sep 08, 2008 1:23 pm

JuanTwoThree · Post by **JuanTwoThree** » Mon Sep 08, 2008 2:14 pm

Turning the question round as to the core meaning of "to": if we can't say what its presence means between two full verbs, then what is suggested by its absence between a modal and the main verb?

ouyang · Post by **ouyang** » Mon Sep 08, 2008 2:50 pm

I think wherever infinitives occur the word "to" always forms a particle and combines with the base infinitive form as its immediate constituent, even when the infinitve is split by an adverb. So for me, the question is what is the relationship of the infinitives to the other sentence parts in your examples.

I think you need to identify both the part of speech of the infinitive phrase and its function to determine it grammatical relationship. I would classify your example infinitive phrases in the following way.

1 noun - object
2 adverb - modifier
3 adjective - complement
4 adverb - modifier
5 adjective - modifier
6 noun - object
7 verb - object complement
~ adverb - modifier

Interestingly, Reed-Kellog sentence diagrams treat the word "to" in the same way whether it forms a preposition or a particle.

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EXCLUSIVE: Fluffyhamster declared grammar dunce!

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