"What does psychology study?" Idiomatic. yea or na

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metal56
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"What does psychology study?" Idiomatic. yea or na

Post by metal56 » Thu Nov 24, 2005 9:12 am

On another forum, two native English speakers insisted that the questions shown below were incorrect English. Please tell me why, if the affrimative forms (answers) shown are allowed, the question form is not.

What does psychology study?

What does solid state physics study?

What does quantum mechanics study?

................

-Psychology studies the relationship between environments and human behaviour.
-Psychology studies the human psyche, behavior, and mental processes. This diverse field has roots in biology, medicine, philosophy, religion, and history. ...
-Solid state physics studies the processes taking place on surfaces and semi-conductors. -
-Theoretical physics above all examines the theory of quantum fields, gravitation and quantum information.
Quantum mechanics studies the behavior of atoms and the particles that make them up.

Andrew Patterson
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Post by Andrew Patterson » Thu Nov 24, 2005 9:27 am

Metal wrote:
What does psychology study?
What does solid state physics study?
What does quantum mechanics study?
I'm not sure that it's 100% wrong, that is corpus studies may indicate that this (mis-?)use is becoming more common, but it could be argued that psychology and solid state physics don't study anything, psychologists and solid state physicists do the studying, that is it would be more correct to say, "What is psychology the study of?" and What is solid state whysics the study of?"

With quantum mechanics, the person who studies it is a quantum mechanic, so one could ask, what do quantum mechanics study? Or asking about the subject, "What is quantum mechanics the study of?"

JuanTwoThree
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Post by JuanTwoThree » Thu Nov 24, 2005 10:02 am

Ayn Rand: "Philosophy studies the fundamental nature of existence"

Professor A Dicckinson FRS University of Cambridge: "Comparative psychology studies the limits of learning and cognition in different species with a special emphasis on the distinction between human and animal cognition"

These presumably answer the rhetorical question "What does .....study?"

Anyone who thinks otherwise lives in a curious onanistic hell hole of their own creating. They deserve to stay there, hands firmly over their ears and forever wearing a hat they made of aluminium foil to protect them from the invisible rays telling them how English is in fact used by real people in real life.

Andrew, I don't mean you, you were just thinking aloud.

Stephen Jones
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Post by Stephen Jones » Thu Nov 24, 2005 10:37 pm

Please tell me why, if the affrimative forms (answers) shown are allowed, the question form is not.
Because

or as the Spanish say Porque sí

Google searches for "does Philosophy study" or "does history study" don´t bring in half-a-dozen results each.

But a search for "Philosophy studies the" or "history studies the" with the "the" included in the text string to avoid entries where studies is a noun, gives 424 and 728 entries each.

Stunz
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Post by Stunz » Fri Nov 25, 2005 7:25 am

Anyone who thinks otherwise lives in a curious onanistic hell hole of their own creating. They deserve to stay there, hands firmly over their ears and forever wearing a hat they made of aluminium foil to protect them from the invisible rays telling them how English is in fact used by real people in real life.
And is ignorant of the figurative use of language?
Figure of speech -- intentional departure from straight-forward, literal use of language for the purpose of clarity, emphasis, or freshness of expression.

JuanTwoThree
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Post by JuanTwoThree » Fri Nov 25, 2005 9:45 am

But Stephen, it's like the vocative of "mensa": the form used to address a table, should one wish to. Churchill got beaten , I think, for asking when this might happen. But there is a vocative of "mensa" nevertheless, just in case.

"Hadn't one better..........?" gets only 16 hits. Mostly the same source. But the form must exist. Also porque si.

If you buy "Philosophy studies the...." , you have to buy "Does philosophy study the....?" and hence "What does philosophy study?

Imagine if Ayn Rand had done a classroom drill (if you can):


AR: "Philosophy studies the fundamental nature of existence.

What..................?"

Class: "Philosophy studies the fundamental nature of existence"

So it never happened but what would she have said at that point?


"she might have been satiated" gets absolutely no hits at all. It's never occurred to anyone to say it (perhaps because it's impossible :D ) Does that make it incorrect?

strider
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Post by strider » Fri Nov 25, 2005 12:49 pm

Where can I get one of those hats from? :)

Stunz
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Post by Stunz » Fri Nov 25, 2005 7:45 pm

Is it an example of metonymy?

Stephen Jones
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Post by Stephen Jones » Sat Nov 26, 2005 12:49 am

Is it an example of metonymy?
No.




What we are dealing with here is an interesting phenomenum. That of what I will call "defective collocations". That is to say phrases which are very rarely used in certain grammatical forms. Whether this is true in this case is not completely clear as the web is very much skewed with regard to the frequency of interrogative forms, and third person present singular questions are probably much less common than affirmatives anyway. However the fact that others have doubts as to the correctness of the interrogative forms suggests something is at play here.

Another example, mentioned by Pullum in Language Log today, is "go it alone". He found himself doing a double take when he came across the form "went it alone". He reckoned that he could imagine himself saying 'go it alone' and by extension 'going it alone' but not 'went it alone', 'gone it alone' or 'goes it alone'.

Now a Google and BNC Search reveals that the offending phrases are fairly common, but much less so than one would expect.

The relative frequencies of the forms of 'go' according to the BNC are
  • go -------- 87,209
    going ----- 63,554
    goes ----- 14,650
    gone ----- 18,474
    went ----- 45,872
The relative frequencies of the variants of 'go it alone' are according to the BNC and Google.
  • go it alone -------- 90 ----- 1,930,000
    going it alone ----- 28 ----- 440,000
    goes it alone ------ 4 ------- 83,000
    gone it alone ------ 3 ------- 13,100
    went it alone ------ 1 ------- 14,300
It is clear that there is considerable reluctance to decline the form, just as there may be some reluctance to use the form "Philosophy studies" in the interrogative.

I believe the reason for this is that the form "go it alone" originally entered our minds as a set phrase, and set phrases are stored seperately from their consitituent parts. Trying to conjugate the set phrase "go it alone" means that one needs to access the part of the language engine that houses 'go' and here one comes across resistance, because in our mental entry for 'go' we have the rule that it is intransitive and 'go it' violates that rule.

To a lesser extent I believe this happens in the phrase 'Philosophy studies'. When we access the part of the language engine that houses 'study' we come across the limitation that we study Philosophy, philosophy doesn't study us.

Stunz
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Post by Stunz » Sat Nov 26, 2005 3:37 am

Is it just "personification"? That was my first reaction, until someone somewhere else suggested "metonymy".

JuanTwoThree
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Post by JuanTwoThree » Sat Nov 26, 2005 10:24 am

There certainly is a definite reluctance/disposition to use certain forms. Pinker describes something similar as "blocking". He says for example that though we "know" that it's cast/cast/cast we will accept "broadcasted" because our mental gatekeeper doesn't recognise the "cast". Another example is "I've got through three mouses this year".

I wonder if the mental echo of the noun plural "studies", which is so common in academia (media studies, philosophy studies), prepares us to accept " Philosophy studies the". There may even be a hint of elision of "are".

Perhaps not, because I don't detect the same mental baulking at "Philosophy has always studied....." that I must admit I do get with "Does philosophy study....?, however much I acknowledge its theoretical existence.

Could it be the capital letter at the beginning of the sentence that anthropomorphises philosophy into Philosophy?

I find myself looking askance at "farther" and "farthest" these days.

metal56
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Post by metal56 » Mon Nov 28, 2005 12:01 am

Andrew Patterson wrote:Metal wrote:
What does psychology study?
What does solid state physics study?
What does quantum mechanics study?
I'm not sure that it's 100% wrong, that is corpus studies may indicate that this (mis-?)use is becoming more common, but it could be argued that psychology and solid state physics don't study anything, psychologists and solid state physicists do the studying, that is it would be more correct to say, "What is psychology the study of?" and What is solid state whysics the study of?"

With quantum mechanics, the person who studies it is a quantum mechanic, so one could ask, what do quantum mechanics study? Or asking about the subject, "What is quantum mechanics the study of?"
How does all that fit with such sentences as:

This book reads well.


You say that psychology doesn't study anything, which is true, but do books read? How does all this tie in with "unaccusative verbs" I wonder

metal56
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Post by metal56 » Mon Nov 28, 2005 12:11 am

JuanTwoThree wrote:Ayn Rand: "Philosophy studies the fundamental nature of existence"

Anyone who thinks otherwise lives in a curious onanistic hell hole of their own creating. They deserve to stay there, hands firmly over their ears and forever wearing a hat they made of aluminium foil to protect them from the invisible rays telling them how English is in fact used by real people in real life.

quote]

I agree. I think the people who understand such constructions as "this book read well" will also understand those in the topic post. The affirmative form seems to be an example of unaccusative use. Unaccusative constructions have a subject that lacks active participation.

metal56
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Post by metal56 » Mon Nov 28, 2005 12:14 am

Stephen Jones wrote:
Please tell me why, if the affrimative forms (answers) shown are allowed, the question form is not.
Because

or as the Spanish say Porque sí

Google searches for "does Philosophy study" or "does history study" don´t bring in half-a-dozen results each.

But a search for "Philosophy studies the" or "history studies the" with the "the" included in the text string to avoid entries where studies is a noun, gives 424 and 728 entries each.
A bit of a weak answer, if you don't mind me saying so, Stephen. There seem to be far more statements posted than questions in every field on Google.

metal56
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Post by metal56 » Mon Nov 28, 2005 12:22 am

Stunz wrote:
Anyone who thinks otherwise lives in a curious onanistic hell hole of their own creating. They deserve to stay there, hands firmly over their ears and forever wearing a hat they made of aluminium foil to protect them from the invisible rays telling them how English is in fact used by real people in real life.
And is ignorant of the figurative use of language?


And these:

This book reads well.

The door opened.

The water froze overnight.

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