Native-speaker intuition.

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Annvan

#283548 Fri, 20 Oct 06 03:56 PM

Nicely put, Anonymous!

Annvan

Joined on Mon, Sep 4 2006

The Philippines

Regular Member (614)

Alienvoord

#283578 Fri, 20 Oct 06 05:28 PM

I agree. A long time ago I took a course in field methods, where we transcribed phrases spoken by the speaker of a mystery language and tried to discover something about his grammar. We would ask questions of the speaker about why he said one thing and not another, but his answers were usually not very helpful. Usually we had to try to interpret his answers using our knowledge of linguistics, or ignore the answers altogether.

Here's one, probably bad, example. Ask a native English speaker why they say "it's me" instead of "it's I" and they might talk about logic, or politeness, or make reference to Latin, or they might insist that "it's I" is correct even though they never say it. These are interesting facts about how they think about English, but have nothing to do with the grammar of English.

Alienvoord

Joined on Tue, Jul 25 2006

Toronto

Full Member (318)

I'm a Canadian English speaker

Grammar

Englishuser

#283582 Fri, 20 Oct 06 05:52 PM

Hi Cool Breeze,

You wrote:

Yes, I agree, but a native speaker's command of his language is usually superior to that of those who have not lived in total immersion. It is practically impossible to master a language if you are not in constant contact with those who speak it - and mould it unwittingly - all the time.

Yes, I would say that this tends to be true - most of the time. However, as some of you have noticed, many native speakers tend to use pretty much the same items of vocabulary and grammatical structures in their everyday lives. A non-native speaker who has immersed himself or herself with highbrow literature written in a foreign language could very well have a more vivid vocabulary and a better knowledge of the grammar of the language than the average native speaker. At least as far as the 'standard version' of the language is concerned.

Englishuser

Joined on Thu, Mar 30 2006

Regular Member (717)

Grammar, Vocabulary, Literature

Englishuser

#283584 Fri, 20 Oct 06 05:56 PM

Hi MrPedantic,

You wrote:

But I'm not quite sure about the ways in which native-speaker intuition could be unreliable.

I think that it has to do with the fact that no matter how much of a native speaker one is of a language, one tends to make mistakes and produce ungrammatical sentences in that language. Just think of how often people disagree about the correct usage of a grammatical structure or idiom.

Englishuser

Idioms

Alienvoord

#283607 Fri, 20 Oct 06 07:29 PM

I disagree, Englishuser. I think when we talk about native speaker intuition being unreliable, we mean that native speakers cannot articulate the unconscious knowledge they have about how to use their language. Most of the rules of language are so tacit and unconscious that we do not think about them at all.

For example, consider these sentences

Who do you want to fight?
Who do you wanna fight?

The first sentence is ambiguous - the subject of "fight" can be "you" or it can be someone else. But the second sentence is not ambiguous. It can only be interpreted with the subject of "fight" being "you". Another interpretation is not possible.

Most native English speakers cannot articulate why this is. I'm a native speaker, and I don't know why it is. They may not even be able to articulate the difference between the two sentences.

Alienvoord

Difference Between

MrPedantic

#283700 Sat, 21 Oct 06 12:20 AM

Alienvoord wrote:

Who do you want to fight?
Who do you wanna fight?

Thank you, AV! That's a very interesting example. I wonder whether the inseparability of the "want" and "to" in the "wanna" sentence is the cause of its non-ambiguity, i.e.

Meaning 1: "Who | do you want to fight?" ] "wanna" possible.

Meaning 2: "Who do you want, | to fight?" ] "wanna" not possible.

MrP

MrPedantic

Joined on Tue, Oct 12 2004

Veteran Member (12,168)

...opella forensis / adducit febris...

milky

#283704 Sat, 21 Oct 06 12:39 AM

Try putting back the ellipsis:

1. Who do you want to fight Benny?
2. Who do you wanna fight, Benny?

And answering the questions:

1. I want Duke to fight Benny.

2. I wanna fight Duke.

Not that wanna cannot be used when want is separated from to.

Who is gonna fight Benny?

Duke is gonna fight Benny. ("going to" remains intact)

Who is gonna fight, Benny?

Duke is gonna fight. ("going to" remains intact)

And on:

Who is going up river to see Mary?

Jake is going up river to see Mary.

*Jake is gonna up river to see Mary. ("going to" is separated)

But, the sentence below works because "going to" is intact. It is an auxiliary expression there and not the present progressive.

Jake is gonna go up river to see Mary.

milky

Joined on Thu, Jan 15 2004

Senior Member (3,149)

Hume said that if we had perfect or complete descriptive knowledge of reality, we could not, by reasoning, derive a single valid "ought".

Auxiliaries, Expressions, Present Progressive

Alienvoord

#283714 Sat, 21 Oct 06 01:00 AM

MrPedantic wrote:

Thank you, AV! That's a very interesting example. I wonder whether the inseparability of the "want" and "to" in the "wanna" sentence is the cause of its non-ambiguity, i.e.

Meaning 1: "Who | do you want to fight?" ] "wanna" possible.

Meaning 2: "Who do you want, | to fight?" ] "wanna" not possible.

MrP

Who do you wanna fight?

cannot be interpreted to mean

Which person or persons do you want to see fighting?

It can only be interpreted to mean

Which person do you want to fight?

Whereas "Who do you want to fight?" can have both interpretations. I wouldn't say that the "wanna" is the cause of the non-ambiguity, but it has something to do with it.