Search results for 'tag:Present tenses tag:Morphemes' matching tags 'Present tenses' and 'Morphemes'

Re: The reform of linguistics

Anonymous — Mon, 22 May 2006 03:01:26 GMT

Forbes wrote:

A word about classifiers.

I looked up "classifier" in my dictionary (a very good one) and it does not define it! I turned to dictionary.com and found the following definition:

A word or morpheme used in some languages in certain contexts, such as counting, that indicates the semantic class to which an item belongs. For example, hon is used in Japanese in counting long slender objects such as sticks or pencils.

I do not think that classifiers in that sense exist in English. Whilst one can say "a head of lettuce" that way of speaking is something of an optional extra and one can say "some lettuce" or even just "lettuce". When you use "a head of" you are not putting "lettuce" into any semantic class, but rather referring to the particular form the lettuce is taking at the moment you are talking about it.

I agree that this definition is simple, but I also consider it to be simplistic.

According to dictionary.com, the meaning of semantic is:

Of or relating to meaning, especially meaning in language

I do not understand how you consider that Chinese classifiers divide nouns into semantic categories. The Bantu languages do this, but not the Asian languages. Classifiers divide nouns not based on semantic categories, but on arbitrary attributes, the most common one being physical attributes. âLong slender objectsâ is not a semantic distinction, is it? In Chinese, the classier zhang is used for objects that are thin, small, and basically rectangular. Paper fits into this category, and so is counted using zhang. So are things such as blankets and sheets. What is the semantic relationship in your mind between sheets and paper? I consider their relationship to be a sharing of physical attributes, not a relationship of the semantics of the nouns.

Speaking of sheets, there is a noun in English, sheet, that refers to a type of object that is thin, flat, and rectangular. When we count objects of a similar shape, regardless of semantics, the word sheet is often used to assist in counting. For example, when we count paper, we count the number of sheets. When we count plywood, we count the number of sheets. When we count plastic, if it is in the shape of small, thin rectangles, we count the number of sheets. There is no semantic relationship implied, yet this is similar to the Chinese concept of counting objects based on similarity of shape.

When we count objects using the word cattle, we count using their heads. When we count cabbage or lettuce, we often employ the same concept, the similarity of shape with a head to count how many head of lettuce/cabbage. This is in my mind similar to the Chinese system of counting using words that indicate shape, rather than the semantic distinctions that you alluded to.

I do no know any Chinese, but I do know a little Thai. The following are examples of how classifiers work in that language:

English is not like that. I think if you say that English has classifiers you are trying to explain English in terms of Chinese!

Cute. Because you can demonstrate that Chinese uses more classifiers than English, then you think that you have demonstrated that English has no classifiers.

In a very important sense, I quite agree with you. However, I think that your definition is made for utility reasons. If we ignore all of the semantic implications of tense and focus only on structure, then your definition is far more useful than mine. If we wish to probe the semantic implications of tense, then your definition is worthless, as it ignores the situation entirely.

Similarly it is often said that Thai nouns have no plural, but it is equally reasonable to say that they have no singular. It is more useful to say that the noun is invariable and that "barn" can mean "house" or "houses".

Again, you seem to be focusing entirely on superficial structure, without regard to the deep meaning. Thai nouns have a singular form. They never evolved to plural forms. Your definition skirts the issue of what this phenomenon is and why it occurred, and instead focuses on a useful way to describe only the superficial structure. I agree that you definition is useful. I do not think that it is more useful, unless we stipulate that we care only to describe superficial structure, which it does seem that you are doing.

Anyway, I think I had better not get into a discussion about these matters.

Thank you for your participation; it has been a very interesting debate.

OK. Thanks for the talk.

Re: The reform of linguistics

Forbes — Sun, 21 May 2006 12:37:09 GMT

A word about classifiers.

I looked up "classifier" in my dictionary (a very good one) and it does not define it! I turned to dictionary.com and found the following definition:

A word or morpheme used in some languages in certain contexts, such as counting, that indicates the semantic class to which an item belongs. For example, hon is used in Japanese in counting long slender objects such as sticks or pencils.

I do not think that classifiers in that sense exist in English. Whilst one can say "a head of lettuce" that way of speaking is something of an optional extra and one can say "some lettuce" or even just "lettuce". When you use "a head of" you are not putting "lettuce" into any semantic class, but rather referring to the particular form the lettuce is taking at the moment you are talking about it.

I do no know any Chinese, but I do know a little Thai. The following are examples of how classifiers work in that language:

(I) have	children	two	persons
mee	look	sorng	khon
	noun	number	classifier

there are	houses	two	buildings
mee	barn	sorng	lang
	noun	number	classifier

English is not like that. I think if you say that English has classifiers you are trying to explain English in terms of Chinese!

You also say that the Chinese verb has a present tense. Again going by the example of Thai, I think it is more useful to say that the verb is invariable for tense, as well for for person, number, mood, etc. Alternatively, one could say that it has only one tense if by tense you mean "form". (We can get into difficulty here as many linguists use "tense" in that narrow sense and insist that English only has two tenses.)

Anyway, I think I had better not get into a discussion about these matters.

Thank you for your participation; it has been a very interesting debate.

Re: The reform of linguistics

Forbes — Sat, 20 May 2006 16:45:06 GMT

I have got to the stage where I am not sure excatly what it is that we are argiung about, other than whether or not Chinese is monsyllabic. Perhaps you could explain again waht the basic points are that you wish to make.

My basic point is that Chinese is monosyllabic, and that contentions that it is not are attempts to make sense of Chinese grammar from a non-Chinese standpoint. I do not consider such attempts or contentions are useful.

The trouble I have with that is that no modern linguist attempts to describe one language in the terms of another. Any recent description of Chinese I have read does not do it when it talks about other aspects of the language and I am left puzzling as to why whether or not the language is monosyllabic should be the exception to the rule.

I have the following questions:

1. It seems to be important to you to maintain that Chinese is monosyllabic; why is this?

I believe that it is so, and I think that this is critical to understanding Chinese well. I wonder why you insist that it is not, considering your lack of direct evidence.

Whilst the question is interesting, it seems to me that ultimately it is not that important.

As a person who does not understand Chinese, and who perhaps has no desire or goal in learning Chinese, I can certainly recognize why you might consider it to be unimportant. Given that, I wonder why you would have come to developp an opinion.

Whether it is or not does not help a foreigner to learn the language

I wonder on what basis you make this claim.

Although not many people would perhaps think of it that way, learning any language is a question of learning what syllable should follow another to express something. Whether the individual syllables form words or not is not important. What is important is getting the right syllables in the right order.

2. Are you suggesting that the number of words in Chinese is equal to the number of possible syllables?

I specifically did not say that. I said something similar to the point that the number of distinct vocalizations that constitute words is far less in Chinese. Therefore, each of these vocalizations must constitute a far greater number of words, and context becomes far more important than in languages such as English.

I am glad we agree that context is more important (that is to say comes up more often) in Chinese than in English. However, there are perhaps more homophones in English than people realise.

3. The system of writing Chinese known as "pinyin" seems to accept that Chinese is not monosyllabic.

You are reading more into it that exists.

Consider the following that I have found:

None of the words are written as disyllables. In Chinese, certain words require or prefer the accompanyment of pairing words. It is common in pinyin to write such pairs without an intervening space. In China, it is also common to introduce no spaces at all in the string of pinyin. Notice that many of these are duplications. In English, we might say "ho ho". We might change this to "ho ho ho". Would you call this extra emphasis to constitute a distinct word, such that ho ho and ho ho ho are two distinct English words?

I was simply going by the fact that I find forms such as "hÃ³nglÃng". If you say that this is two monosyllabic words written together then I do not think I am going to be able to argue with you, though I wonder why they are written together.

4. I have read a suggestion that everyday discourse in English is in fact more monosyllabic than everyday discourse in Chinese.

I don't really believe that you read this. If so, you should really be careful about what you believe. Your cherry-picked example notwithstanding, how can you consider this more monosyllabic than Chinese? Many words in English of Germanic origina are monosyllabic. How can you consider that the ability to construct an entire sentence of such words is somehow evidence that you can generalize to the entire language?

Well, I did read it. I do not of course believe everything I read. I think the point was made that it is everyday English that is being talked about. I did not say or try to prove that everyday English is monosyllabic, as it clearly is not. That very long passages can be constructed using only monosyllabic words is nevertheless quite interesting, even if a passage is, on examination, contrived. I did not make any generalisation about English, only pointed out its tendency (and it is no more than a tendency) to be monosyllabic in everyday speech. I did not cherry-pick the passage I quoted, it was genuinely chosen at random â OK I admit that my eyes first fell on Aldous Huxley, so I have remedied that and picked up "Brave New World" and opened it at random. Here is a passage that is not dialogue.

"A few drops fell, and suddenly the drums broke out again into a panic of hurrying notes; there was a great shout. The dancers rushed forward, picked up the snakes and ran out of the square. Men, women, children, all the crowd ran after them. A minute later the square was empty, only the boy remained, prone where he had fallen, quite still. Three old women came out of one of the houses, and with some difficulty lifted him and carried him in."

According to my calculation 80% of the words are monosyllabic. It is also instructive to note that the number of syllables (approximately 115) does not exceed the number of morphemes (approximately 100) by that much. This is not scientific, but I hope it proves a point.

I sincerely believe that a truly monosyllabic language can only be spoken by a people who have reached such a state of enlightenment that they feel the need to do very little and say less.

I think that the reason that you say this is that you do not understand Chinese. Are you aware that Chinese has only a single tense, the present tense? Do you now think speakers of Chinese simple for not having a past or future tense? If you do not understand a langauge, then you cannot understand how and why they do not necessary need all of the features that your langauge has.

I was aware that Chinese verb has no tenses (I read it!). I do not of course think that this makes the speakers of Chinese simple, any more than I think that the lack of classifiers in English makes the speakers of English simple. It is a common misconception amongst people who speak a language with tenses and only speak that language or have not given the matter that much thought, that people who speak a language without tenses are unable to speak about, and therefore not conceive, past and future time and accordingly must be simple.

At school I studied French, Spanish, Russian and Latin. Each of these languages is different from the other and from English in varying degrees, but not so different that they present any tremendous conceptual hurdles for a native speaker of English to overcome. Nevertheless, they are sufficiently different for me to have realised that what one language deems necessary to express another language may not, and that what one language can express another may be incapable of expressing. Later in life this was emphasised when I looked into some non-Indo-European languages such as Arabic, Malay, Japanese and Thai. Each of these languages belongs to a different language family and are as different from each other as each is different from English. What I came to realise is the astonishing variety in the way something can be said.

I should perhaps have explained what I meant by a "truly monosyllabic language". I meant a language where every entity is expressed by a single syllable and any possible syllable expresses a single entity. If Chinese is like that I should be astonished.

There is a natural tendency for the native speakers of a language to believe that it is special. Whilst every language is unique, no language is more "special" than another. For whatever reason, the speakers of Chinese seem to believe that what they feel to be special about their language derives, at least in part, from its being monosyllabic. I do not believe that to be the case. I fully and freely admit that I believe this without having any first hand knowledge of Chinese and perhaps I ought really not to express an opinion on the matter.

Can we nevertheless agree?

1. It is possible to express complex ideas in English at length using only monosyllabic words, even if the language may be somewhat contrived.

2. Some entities can only be articulated in Chinese by uttering more than one syllable