The reform of linguistics

Share on Facebook

Forbes

#234009 Fri, 09 Jun 06 12:56 AM

Anonymous wrote:
Forbes has made it clear that any discussion with him entails convincing him that my arguments are superior to those that he has read elsewhere, which he demands that I challenge head-on.

I am not sure that I made any such thing clear and I certainly did not make any demands. I unwisely got drawn into an argument about whether Chinese was monosyllabic. Over the last few years I had read in numerous places that this was not the case and assumed that this was accepted. Someone said that Chinese was monosyllabic and I, relying on what I thought was a consensus amongst linguists, suggested that it was not. I made it very clear early on that I could not argue the point first hand. I found some sites which seemed to me to confirm what I had thought was the case and published the links because I thought they would be of interest. I certainly did not ask Anon to challenge them head-on, but hoped they would draw some interesting observations. I have, perhaps, been a little surprised by the vehemence with which any notion that Chinese was not monosyallabic was dismissed. Indeed, when I mentioned that I had read a suggestion that English was more inclined to monosyllabalism than Chinese Anon went so far as to say that s/he did not believe this and I was obliged to find the site to prove that I had read such a thing.

Having engaged in the discussion I am now inclined to be agnostic on the question and think that it probably comes down to how you look at it.

Forbes

Joined on Thu, Jun 16 2005

Regular Member (837)

Forbes

#234021 Fri, 09 Jun 06 01:38 AM

Chinese languages require tones due to the poverty of their phoneme set. English cannot and has no need or value in tones.

Did either Anon1 or Anon2 say that or was it another Anon?

Forbes

Anonymous

#234033 Fri, 09 Jun 06 02:15 AM

It wasn't me.

Anon2

Anonymous

#234040 Fri, 09 Jun 06 03:11 AM

Forbes wrote:
In your comments you are assuming that I am imagining a real life situation where I am taking a class. Rather, I am assuming a hypothetical person I am addressing who has the same level of education as I have, but who has not considered the phenomenon of language and knows only English. I really only want to make the point that a given phenonemon can be looked at from different angles, just as a glass with water halfway up can be described as half full or half empty.

I agree that when a person learns a foreign language it is useful to begin with concepts that are familiar.

I feel I must try and make my point about classifiers.

I first make the following points with which you cannot disagree:

My dictionary (a large one) does not define classifier
The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language does not contain the word classifier in the index
At no point in my education, considered by English standards to be a good one, did any teacher ever mention the word classifier

So far so good.

Now of none of that is conclusive.

Let me explain why I think that the statement: “English does not have classifiers” is correct.

It is true that in English one can say “a bunch of grapes” or “a head of lettuce”, but these expressions refer to grapes and lettuce in a particular form and I can still refer to them them in that form without using the words “bunch” and “head”. Equally, use of the phrases is incorrect in certain situations so that one cannot for example say “there is a bunch of grapes in the bowl” when the bowl contains a few grapes that have been plucked from the bunch.

This contrasts with Thai where in certain situations, for example when using demonstratives or counting things, classifiers MUST be used. In Thai and Malay (I cannot speak for any other languages from direct knowledge) classifiers correspond to loose semantic categories and will indicate something like “rod-like object” “flat round object” “human being other than monk or king” “animal with tail”. There is no way that English grammar can be said to function like that.

If one is trying to explain classifiers to my hypothetical seeker of knowledge one may start by bringing in phrases such as “a bunch of grapes” and “a head of lettuce” just to give him something to “get a handle on”, but the fact that these phrases may be useful to help explain the concept of a classifier does not mean that they are instances of English using classifiers.

Saying that English does not have classifiers is not the same as saying that English speakers do not or cannot classify things when they feel they need or want to.

I disagree. So what. There is no great harm is disagreement. I do not care if the word classifier does not exist in the same way in English. I have agreed that the concept if far more important in many Asian langauges. However, I think that the concept is also important in English. Not as important, but still important. You disagree. OK. I consider that claissifiers are more slightly important in Cantonese than in Chinese, and that they are more important in Chinese than in Japanese. I believe that they are far more important in Japanese than in English. However, if I say "a sheet of paper" you know the basic shape of what I am referring to. The fact that we are not required to use such constructions does not, in my mind, reduce the availability of such words. In English, we can use words such as head and sheet in counting objects, just as in Asian langauges. Do you disagree? One sheet of paper, two sheets of paper. If this is not a good way to count, how do you typically count paper? Structurally, what difference do you recognize between one sheet of paper/plastic and the equivalent in Chinese or Thai? I still do not understand why you consider that there is no relationship. In both cases, objects are counted by referring not to the objects directly but by counting a counter, where the counter identifies nothing about the object but the baiscs of its shape.

Anonymous

Constructions, Grammar, Expressions, English grammar

Anonymous

#234041 Fri, 09 Jun 06 03:13 AM

Forbes wrote:
Chinese languages require tones due to the poverty of their phoneme set. English cannot and has no need or value in tones.

Did either Anon1 or Anon2 say that or was it another Anon?

I made the first statement, with the qualification that this should be considered in company with the monosyllabic nature of the words. The second sentence sounds familiar, but it seems to be lacking in context, as this statement as-is does not seem to be how I would have phrased it.

Anonymous

julielai

#234049 Fri, 09 Jun 06 03:51 AM

If I'm not mistaken, Forbes, the last two posts came from Anon1, while the one right after yours came from Anon2...(I think) Tongue Tied [:S]

julielai

Joined on Sun, Oct 24 2004

Planet earth

Senior Member (3,576)

Just another blogger (http://hk.myblog.yahoo.com/julie-lai)

Anonymous

#236213 Thu, 15 Jun 06 03:11 AM

Anon2 here.

Anon1 has failed to respond to my challenge to come up with an alternative analysis of Chinese that doesn't use words. Perhaps he/she is:

1. Too busy.
2. Couldn't be bothered to deal with people who obviously "don't get it".
3. Has decided that he/she was wrong and doesn't want to comment.
4. Is busy working on a new analysis of Chinese that uses "phrases" as the basic syntactic unit rather than "words".

I was actually looking forward to Anon1 coming up with a different and possibly eye-opening grammatical model of Chinese.

It would also be interesting to contemplate the implications of this for students' strategies in learning English. If Chinese are unable to conceptualise "words" in their own language, then the structure of English would be mystifying indeed. If, on the other hand, they are familiar with the idea of a "word" but find the relative opaqueness of word-building in English difficult to master compared with the emphasis on morphemes in their own language, then the problem is not one of fundamental concepts but of radically different empahses in morphology, especially as seen in the written language.

Anonymous

Morphemes, Learning English, Morphology

julielai

#236236 Thu, 15 Jun 06 04:20 AM

Anonymous wrote:
Anon1 has failed to respond to my challenge to come up with an alternative analysis of Chinese that doesn't use words. Perhaps he/she is:
1. Too busy.
2. Couldn't be bothered to deal with people who obviously "don't get it".
3. Has decided that he/she was wrong and doesn't want to comment.
4. Is busy working on a new analysis of Chinese that uses "phrases" as the basic syntactic unit rather than "words".

Thanks for identifying yourself again, Anon2, and contributing to this thread regularly.

I'm not sure if we should attribute motives into other people's silence. Anon1 may simply be away.

Anon1 is welcome to continue this discussion whenever he/she has a moment. Big Smile [:D]