What Have the Corpus Linguists Done for Us?

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Fri Jul 13, 2007 8:41 am

This wouldn't be the first time that the CANCODE boys could be accused of implying that native norms are the only way to fly) to give teachers outlines of possible syllabuses based on frequency and meaning criteria.

Truth is, only native-speaker ESL/EFL materials sell.

It's up to us teachers to expand the horizons of the syllabus and show 'em how to do some "crazy" stuff!).

I agree. Hey, is this new Fluff we see?

*What I'm trying to say is that 'was like' functions to break down the line between simple words and facial expression, gesture etc. But perhaps it would be hoping too much for its substituting 'said' to have much of an effect on completely robot-voiced students.

So what's the solution? Teach "was like" only to those who are guaranteed to benefit from it?

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Fri Jul 13, 2007 8:48 am

metal56 wrote:So what's the solution? Teach "was like" only to those who are guaranteed to benefit from it?

Well, let's put it like, if I was like, you know, kidnapped in Iraq or Afghanistan or somewhere and had a load of guns in my face, I wouldn't start telling them stories about my skaterboi drug-fuelled days when I was like, 'No way, dude!', my old chap now, would one?

The above was a demonstration of the new texts I'm developing that shift almost imperceptibly between differing styles of English.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Fri Jul 13, 2007 8:52 am

I wrote:This wouldn't be the first time that the CANCODE boys could be accused of implying that native norms are the only way to fly) to give teachers outlines of possible syllabuses based on frequency and meaning criteria.

Wow, what interesting capitalization, use of brackets and unconnected ideas within the same 'sentence'!

You quote people so beautifully, metal, that it moves me. Bud. Buddy. Buddy wuddy.

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Fri Jul 13, 2007 9:04 am

The above was a demonstration of the new texts I'm developing that shift almost imperceptibly between differing styles of English.

Differing for whom, dude?

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Sat Jul 14, 2007 4:41 am

AC calls CL "armchair" and "enumerable", but one could just as easily call linguistics proper "armchair" (unless fieldwork's involved), and one of the problems with the UG flavor is that it goes for the impossible i.e. unenumerable:

(...(A)nother one of Widdowson's polarities: ) 'Chomsky's view is that you go for the possible, Sinclair's view is that you go for the performed'. By any realistic measure, Chomsky's programme has always gone for the impossible, advocating, with tireless self-confidence, one project after another that never materialise and never could - ...

It's worth reading on in Beaugrande's paper, at least up to the point where I took a longer quote on another thread for the benefit of Jotham (you can find that thread and the URL linking to Beaugrande by, again, searching for 'dribble' (or indeed 'Beaugrande', not that what he wrote isdrivel, though!)).

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Sat Jul 14, 2007 6:53 am

The whole point is that our intuitions are often wrong. They're never wrong about something being correct, but are often wrong when we classify a usage as incorrect that turns out not to be so.

Anuradha Chepur · Post by **Anuradha Chepur** » Sat Jul 14, 2007 9:47 am

The problem with performance based approach is performance can depend on factors other than language competence. A person could be drunk, sleepy, panicky, slip of tongue, typos, etc and performance will vary, which is different from the person's actual competence.
In postulating a linguistic theory, it is competence that should be considered and UG is on the right track.

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 6:11 am

They're never wrong about something being correct,

Have you never used the expression "that doesn't sound right to me"?