Search results for 'tag:Learning English tag:Constructions' matching tags 'Learning English' and 'Constructions'

Re: Books

Peaceblinkfriend — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 03:08:13 GMT

Just to add to my previous post. Since The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time is told from the eyes of a child, the vocabulary and sentence constructions used are not awfully difficult or obscure, yet I think the book does serve the purpose of learning English.

PBF

Re: Learn English Online

Grammar Geek — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 13:31:07 GMT

thaibinhtran
Hi there,

I wish to share with you other site for learning English

http://www.englishgoes.com

Have a good day!

I regret to say that I cannot recommend this site at all. While the level of English is certainly understandable, it falls short of what an English learner should be modeling. Additionally, so much of the site appears to still be under construction that there is very little content at this stage. This site needs a very advanced ESL learner or native speaker to clean up the errors before an ESL learner should use it as their source of learning.

Re: Hey Guys, Need Help

Tanit — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 12:37:47 GMT

Hi,

New2grammar
Could you try to convince me why the abrupt change of tense makes sense?

Why should it make sense? After all, we're talking about English grammar!
Anyway, somebody says it's an instance of unreal past ...

BBC Learning English

We sometimes use past tenses to describe things in the present or future that are imagined or unreal.
It's time we went.
We are using It's time... here to say that something is not happening, but it should be happening. Compare also the following:
It's time we left. Our son will be home soon and he doesn't have a house key.
It's about time you started looking for a job. You can't depend on us all the time. It's high time you started to fend for yourself.

...we can use the construction it's time to or it's time for + object + to as alternatives to the unreal use of past forms to express this idea:
It's time for you to think seriously about what you want to do in your life.
It's time you thought seriously about what you want to achieve in your life.
It's time to reflect on how you want your life to proceed.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/learnit/learnitv347.shtml

UNREAL PAST

The past tense is sometimes used in English to refer to an 'unreal' situation. So, although the tense is the past, we are usually talking about the present, e.g. in a Type 2 conditional sentence:
If an elephant and a mouse fell in love, they would have many problems.
Although fell is in the past tense, we are talking about a hypothetical situation that might exist now or at any time, but we are not referring to the past. We call this use the unreal past.
Other situations where this occurs are:

after other words and expressions like'if'(supposing, if only, what if);
after the verb 'to wish';
after the expression 'I'd rather..'
(http://www.edufind.com/English/Grammar/IF10.cfm)

... and somebody says it's subjunctive. See also:
http://www.englishforums.com/English/ChangingTenses/dqcdx/post.htm
http://www.englishforums.com/English/WhichSentencesAreCorrect/zjbhp/post.htm

Re: the middle voice option

Dawnstorm — Tue, 27 May 2008 08:09:34 GMT

Hi,

I'm really enjoying this. You're making me think.

I'm going to take your points out of sequence. I think I'm still replying to your post; if I misrepresent what you're saying, please correct me.

First, the summary of what I'm going to say: A lot depends on theory, and how you frame your terms. To me, ergativity in English is primarily a side topic to voice, and the only "marked" voice in English is the passive. All others rely on semantics and indirect evidence (such as your very detailled and useful post about the transitivity system in English). BUT: how do you frame the evidence there is systematically? In syntax? Make it part of the lexicon? In other words, what exactly is it that the term "ergative" adds to a combination of transitivity and lexical tagging? I'm still thinking about your suggestion to speak of "ergative structures" rather than "ergative verbs". This is an interesting approach, de-emphasising the lexicon in that respect; but I'm trying to ignore it for this post, mostly because I'm not done thinking it through.

Second, I think I've used the term "semantic" very loosely in my other post. There's reference, and then there's cognitive framing. (Or content and point of view.) The cognitive framing is harder to get at and interpret, mostly because these things aren't always immediately visible. We're talking about "ergative structures" in English, or the "middle voice", because we've noticed these constructions in other languages (Basque for ergativity; Ancient Greek for Middle voice; etc.). That is we have to strip away the structure and get down to the point-of-view meaning that the structures imply. And then we have to go back to English and look for expressions of said point-of-view meaning in this language. (Something similar is going on when linguists are probing "shall/will" along the lines of futurity/modality, within the discussion whether English has a future tense or not. The consensus is it doesn't, but the discussion - assuming "will/shall" as tense-modals - has been productive, if not conclusive.) But the thing is this: if you're bringing concepts to a language from outside (which is usual in comparative linguistics) you need an anchor; conventional structural methods - such as your "what syntactic operations yield well-formed usage?" approach - have their limitations. So do semantic (referential or framing). This makes ergativity/unaccusativity hard to think about, before you choose your approach.

Examples follow:

This is about the sentence, "He died a cruel death."

MrPedantic
The object here is a cognate object (it is implied in the verb itself) and thus belongs to a slightly different model. (I would say that it only exists to provide an adverbial opportunity: "he died a cruel death" = "he died in a cruel way".)

I agree that, framing-wise, the object functions much like an adverbial. But it's an "object" in syntax, which has implications that are incompatible with adverbials. Most relevant, here, "die" is now prone to passivisation.

"A cruel death was died," does sound odd (I'll get to it in a minute), but I wouldn't bat an eyelid at "Many deaths were died that night." Interestingly, it's hard to put this into the active voice, mostly because no subject seems appropriate. (?"The Soldiers died many deaths that night."; ?"The army died many deaths that night."...). To me, all the examples I can think of (plural nouns, collective nouns...) don't express the passive meaning. The closest I come is "Many people died that night." Anything else I can think of is of questionable grammaticality.

However, "A cruel death was died," although it sounds odd, doesn't sound ungrammatical in the least (at least not to me). It's also not a semantic problem; I understand the sentence perfectly well, both reference- and framingwise.

The reason, I think, this sounds odd is a pragmatic one. I think this one sounds odd because it's hard to find a context for this utterance that justifies the passive, which is a "marked construction". You generally expect "marked" constructions to be there for a reason. I suspect in the right context the above sentence would be perfectly fine. (It's a matter of Grice's conversational maxims, the maxim of manner, in particular.)

This is where the "frame-semantics" of syntactic constructions become complicated, I think. How do language structures tie in with cognitive structures (e.g. To what extent do we buy the Sapir-Worf hypothesis?)

So, from this I go to self-observation:

MrPedantic
and precisely because of that distinction, I would call "break" here ergative (ex. 5) , and "die" unaccusative (ex. 2).

See, I had the hardest time even to grasp what that meant, not now in this thread, but when I first discovered the distinction. That's because, learning English, I didn't train to see the difference. It wasn't necessary, as ergativity/unaccusativity isn't expressed through syntactic structures, but only indirectly through what operations are possible on the verb; this I pretty much took care off either through lexical list-tagging, or through collocation. If there is a hidden logic to it that I applied in learning, it never became conscious. (It's quite possible that I had a practical knowledge, but no discoursive one of this subject; but why, then, is it so hard to grasp?)

If we go back to the list and sift through the operations there, we'll find that "die" behaves different from "break" in the way we specified. But here's the catch: to apply that structural method, we have to assume that "break" in 5.a = "break" in 5.b = "break" in 5.c etc.; i.e. that "break" is the same lexical item in all these instances. That's because syntax has a hard time to differentiate between "signifier" and "signified", or "sign" and "concept".

Notice, for example, how your 5.a is already the transitive, while systematically it should be the intransitive agentive: 5.a *He broke. (i.e. "He caused/performed the action of breaking." as opposed to "He underwent the process of breaking," which is 5.b, now, and would be 5.c)

So I'd amend this, to:

5a. *He broke.

5b. He broke the plate

5c. The plate broke.

5d. The plate was broken.

5e. The broken plate

5f. The plate broke easily

And the comparison with "die" would be two-fold:

1. = sign; 2. = concept

5.1a He died.

5.2a He killed.

5.1b *He died the man.

5.2b He killed the man

5.1c The man died.

5.2c *The man killed.

5.1d *The man was died.

5.2d The man was killed.

5.1e *The died man [cf. The dead man.]

5.2e The killed man.

5.1f The man died easily. (<-- What's the difference to 5.1a? Should I add an * before it, as this is out of place, here?)

5.2f *The man killed easily. (<-- Is this not available, because 5.1f is available?)

5.1a, 5.1c, and 5.1f seem to be much the same. And this is the problem I have systematising a structural comparison. One possibility, I see is to re-cast 5a as reflexive 1. *He died himself./2. He killed himself. I might try to justify this through dying being a process you undergo, thus if you add an agentive/causative to core meaning (which is not in slot a, but in slot c) the verb becomes by necessity reflexive ("He caused himself to die.")

But these things are all a bit... tentative. I fear it's more rationalised than rational, if you get my drift.

[Interesting aside: you used the term "anticausative" alongside "ergative" and "unaccusative" for break in your thread. Bears repeating, as it's something I'm also still thinking about; a very interesting concept I haven't come across yet.]

MrPedantic
But I find a semantic difference too: the first presents the sign from the point of view of the reader, and the second, from the point of view of the writer.

Now, that's an interesting observation. I'd argue that the semantic difference is not referential (it refers to the same state of affairs), but it's a framing difference. If we view the sign as a proxy for the agent, we're importing the difference of active vs. voice into a construction that's free of the syntactic properties that normally accompany this framing device in English. "Reads," then, is ergative, while "says is a straightforward accusative verb (one that takes the accusative (which isn't marked in English - except, perhaps, for pronouns, where it's indistinguishable - morphologically - from the dative; the conventional term would be "direct object").

MrPedantic
Also, although the same few verbs tend to recur as examples in these discussions, actual usage is more imaginative.

That's what makes language so fascinating, isn't it? Nice example, there, too.

Re: would / used to ?

Philip — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 16:23:49 GMT

Anonymous wrote:

Hello! I've got a question about a word usage. Hope someboy to help me.

There would be a big tree near the pond. ----1 This is the beginning of a conditional sentence, so an if-clause is necessary.

A grammar test book says that the above sentence is wrong. It should be,

There used to be a big tree near the pond. -----2TThThis sentence is correct

When I read the two sentences, I think # 2 sounds better. But why is the # 1 wrong?

If anybody knows the reason, would you please help me?

thank you ...

I believe that what you are alluding to is the use of either 'would' or 'used to' to describe habitual action in the past. "When I was a child, I would/used to get up much earlier than I do now". It is unfortunate that we use the two constructions to say the same thing, when 'would' has another use that is altogether different. It makes it very difficult for those learning English as a second language. It's an example of what I affectionately call "sloppy English".

Re: It was happy...

Clive — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 06:27:51 GMT

Hi,

A student learning English as a second language used this sentence construction:

It was lucky that we could see you.

to make this sentence:

It was happy that the man did not die.

Is that second sentence right or wrong. And, if it is wrong, why does this sentence work:

It was a happy event that the man did not die.

'It was lucky that . . .' is an idiomatic phrase. We say this because we like saying it. 'It was happy that . . ' is not an idiomatic phrase.

'It was a happy event' is just standard, common grammar.

Best wishes, Clive

It was happy...

Anonymous — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 04:53:36 GMT

A student learning English as a second language used this sentence construction:

It was lucky that we could see you.

to make this sentence:

It was happy that the man did not die.

Is that second sentence right or wrong. And, if it is wrong, why does this sentence work:

It was a happy event that the man did not die.

???

Re: and I, and me

Alienvoord — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 17:50:46 GMT

Kitkattail:
"Hitchhiker: Yes, but that line of reasoning breaks down when you get to the verb "to be." People's ears will tell them that it is correct to say, "It is me," and so they will then also say, "It is Theodore and me." But since they were wrong in the first place, they will still be wrong when they add another noun. This is one of the best examples of why it is dangerous to rely on your ear alone without understanding the grammatical concept behind what you are saying. Ears need to be refined constantly. I'm still working on mine... sigh..."

I disagree with this. Native English speakers should rely on their ears. They are the best judges of what is normal usage in their native language.

As a native English speaker, these sentence are acceptable to me:

John and I went to the store.
Would you like to go to the store with me?
Would you like to go to the store with John and me?
Would you like to go to the store with John and I?
John got that sandwich from Suzie and I.
John got that sandwich from Suzie and me.
It is me.

I would never say this, however some people do say it and it is comprehensible:

John and me went to the store.

These are unacceptable:

Would you like to go to the store with I?
John got that sandwich from I.

This is acceptable, but sounds very old-fashioned:

It is I.

Overcorrection might be to blame for the confusion, but that doesn't change the fact that "with John and I" is acceptable.

People learning English as a foreign or second language might want to learn the prescriptive rules so that they are not stigmatized for using something that some people consider wrong. But they should also be aware of how the constructions are used in conversation.

Re: "will be going to + Vb. inf." Is this expression common?

paco2004 — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 20:15:25 GMT

Soylista wrote:
I am confused with this expression, "will be going to + Vb".
eg. I will be going to visit Aunt Carol tomorrow.
To me, this expression is sort of redundant. Why do you need to use both "will" and "be+going to"? I somewhat understand the differences between future meaning expressions; "be+going to", "be ~ing", "will" and "will be ~ing" but I've got confused since I heard this "will be going to ~".
Is this expression common to use? Is there any specific meaning on this? What kind of occasion or circumstances should I use this expression?

Stanford Linguistics/Grammaticalization of "Be Going To"
The full semanticization and grammaticalization of "be going to" is evidenced when the following subject and/or the verb is incompatible with purposiveness, for example, an inanimate subject or a verb of mental experience such as "hear". Once the semanticization of later time/future had occurred, the "will" future could no longer be used with "be going to", presumably because it had become partially redundant, and did not fit the auxiliary verb structure into which the construction had been absorbed. (Note, however, that the "will"-future can still occur in the main verb construction "be going to", as in "I will be going to visit Aunt Mildred tomorrow.")

BBC World Service/Learning English Grammar (Future Tenses)
[QUESTION]I have heard people mixing tenses - for example, saying, "I will be going to see him". Isn't that just the same as, "I'll be seeing him."?
[ANSWER]We choose between a wide range of future tenses and sometimes combine these tenses. Each possibility expresses a different attitude towards the event.
"I will be going to see him" has a different meaning from either "I'll be seeing him." or "I'm going to see him." It suggests that at a particular moment in the future I will be preparing to see him.

paco

Re: tense?

paco2004 — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 01:23:13 GMT

From "English Grammar in Familiar Lectures"
(authored by: Samuel Kirkham)
(published from Robert B. Collins, New York, 1828)

When the perfect participle of an intransitive verb is joined to the neuter verb "be", the combination is not a passive, but a perfective form; as,
        "He is gone"
        "The birds are flown"
        "The boy is grown"
        "My friend is arrived"

The following mode of construction is, in general, to be preferred.
       "He has gone"
       "The birds have flown"
       "The boy has grown"
       "My Friend has arrived"

paco

[PS]It's a wonder to me that some English people say the language spoken by their ancestors a few generations ago are all wrong or incorrect just on the reasons they are not speaking it or have not learned it. Please know some of us ESL learners want to know historical backgrounds of the collocations that cannot be explained by the current grammar systems and some of us are learning English to read classic novels written by great English writers of th past.