Re: Let's talk about langages (Advice/Help)

From: DeMaisonneuve (lucr_at_me.ca)
Date: 08/20/04 

Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 21:47:53 -0400

"devil" <devil@attglobal.net> wrote in message
news:pan.2004.08.20.01.39.01.378165@attglobal.net...
> On Fri, 20 Aug 2004 01:54:37 +0100, Neeraj Mathur wrote:
>
> >
> > "devil" <devil@attglobal.net> wrote in message
> > news:pan.2004.08.20.00.00.51.869637@attglobal.net...
> >> But was there really such a thing as "French" in the 12th century?
There
> >> were a bunch of local dialects, from which modern French would
eventually
> >> emerge, but I would not call these "French."
> >
> > That's up to you. Do you not, then, see the Chanson de Roland as French
of
> > any sort? Anyway, the particular point I mentioned would be valid for
all of
> > the dialects.
>
> It's not written, so the point is more or less moot.
>
> >> And when modern French
> >> eventually starts settling down, this thing has already more or less
> >> happened.
> >
> > Now I understand what you meant by 'born that way'.
> >
> > Alright, that's fine - but the difference still exists. For example,
written
> > French indicates the plurals of nouns, while spoken French (often) does
> > not - mot, mots are distinguished on paper only. Therefore, there is a
> > difference of the grammar of the two forms of the language: the oral
> > language has few plural nouns, the written language has many.
>
> When the pronounciation rule is that the final s is not pronounced, then
> written and spoken language are absolutely consistent from a grammatical
> standpoint. In contrast with your example with past tenses. Which I am
> arguing is just one of very few discrepancies.
>
> > It can be seen, of course, that all this amounts to a question of 'how
> > does one pronounce the words of a given language'. But this is not the
> > best approach, since children learn to speak their language before they
> > learn to pronounce its written equivalent; the spoken language changes
> > quickly, but the written only slowly.
>
> That may be true in English but, bringing in cultural differences, in
> french one is more or less taught that the written and spoken language are
> one and the same. Which acts as a powerful brake with respect to rate of
> change of the spoken language.
>

Vous avez tout faux désolé. Il a raison, en français, le parlé et l'écrit ne
correspondent pas toujours. Le pralé évolue beaucoup plus vite que l'écrit.

> >> None of this is particularly true, I am afraid.
> >
> > Lol - thanks! :-)
> >
> >> People whose mother
> >> tongue is french don't seem to have much of an issue with plurals, most
> >> likely because they get taught early on, more or less together with
> >> discovering written language.
> >>
> >> I would also take exception with your statement that written and spoken
> >> languages have different grammar. What you are talking about is people
> >> who take liberties with grammar when seaking. Who make mistakes when
> >> speaking, technically. But you are not going to see people in the
> >> grammar business recognizing it's OK to speak that way.
> >
> > You and I are using different definitions of grammar. I mean grammar
> > from a linguistic point of view - the set of rules which describes what
> > speakers actually do when they produce their language. I suppose this is
> > kind of a Chomsky-esque definition. From this definition of grammar, it
> > is necessarily accepted that a native speaker, when speaking 'honestly'
> > (ie, is not consciously affecting his speech for some purpose), cannot
> > make a mistake. When a southern American says 'I done caught me a fish',
> > the role of the linguist (as I see it) is to find the grammar rules that
> > that person has used to create the sentence. I realise that this is
> > different from what we learn as 'grammar' in schools, and I apologise
> > for not clarifying my usage in the first instance.
>
> To the extent that French grammar is more or less enforced on the spoken
> language, what you see as a difference in definition isn't really one.
> There is no big difference between spoken and written French
> grammatically. Kids are being taught that proper spoken French is just
> the same as proper written French.
>
> > Viewed from this angle, most people's spoken French allows them to count
> > [a~ mo], [du mo] etc. (apologies again for my poor IPA approximations) -
> > in other words, their grammar does not realise any difference between
> > singular and plural.
>
> The pronounciation rule (i.e. grammar) does not provide for any
> difference. Incidentally, one area in which French is very consistent is
> pronunciation: written language fully determines how it's pronounced.
>
> > On the other hand, the same person when writing
> > produces 'un mot, deux mots' - thus using a grammar that does
> > distinguish singular and plural.
>
> > Thus, from the descriptive linguistic grammar perspective, different
> > rules are used for the spoken and written language, and thus there are
> > different grammars for the spoken and written language.
>
> Perhaps, but this will be perceived by most French native speakers as an
> exercise of semantics on your part.
>
> >> You have a choice between either (1)
> everything is determined by rules
> >> or (2) there are few rules and most of the language is made of of
> >> special cases. French or german are more like (1) and English is more
> >> like (2).
> >>
> >> Although I was first explained this point by a mative English speaker,
> >> I suspect it may not be all that obvious to most native speakers.
> >> Presumably because they learned most of the stuff in their infancy, so
> >> they never rationalize it. But one result is that non-native speakers
> >> will have a hell of a time learning, except if they get immersed for a
> >> signifcant time in the language.
> >
> > I actually arrived at my 'different grammar' approach by considering
> > English.
>
> Obviously :-).
>
> And yes, we had figured that out. :-)
>
> > I noticed that: 1) people who had never lived in Anglophone
> > society often had no problem producing idiomatic written English, but
> > had great oral difficulty;
>
> That is particularly true of people whose cultural background is either
> French or Chinese. Not as much otherwise, but still often true.
>
> > and 2) people who came to live in Canada with
> > no English background and were put into English schools were very
> > quickly able to communicate orally with their peers, but struggled
> > endlessly with the written language.
>
> Undoubtably true. When you were a kid, you first learned your mother
> language by speaking, didn't you?
>
> In other words, the explanation is quite simple: if you try to teach
> people to read and write before they can speak, the result you get is that
> they get influenced too much by the written stuff and they end up
> mislearning the spoken language. Lerning to pronounce the written stuff
> based upon their often wrong understanding of pronounciation rules.
>
> Typically people are being taught languages at school at a point in life
> when it's already much easier to learn to read and write than it is to
> learn to speak a new language. Often the damage is irreversible.
>
> > From this, and from my studies of linguistics as a Classicist and as a
> > historical linguist, I decided that this situation could be best
> > accounted for by considering written English and spoken English as
> > essentially independent languages. The rules that govern written English
> > (in other words, the grammars that English writers use to generate their
> > language when writing in a non-affected way) are different from the
> > rules that govern spoken English in any given situation. This is
> > complicated by the fact that sometimes people speak aloud in what are
> > essentially written idioms (like academic lectures) and sometimes people
> > write down spoken idioms (the most extreme example is the the poem
> > ygUDuh by E.E. Cummings - read it here
> > http://members.tripod.com/arlindo_correia/210800.html if you can; it
> > took me a while!) but the principle essentially holds.
> >
> > For example, compare these two English sentences (from Michael Coulson's
> > _Teach Yourself Sanskrit_): 'An unexpected arrival will admittedly
> > affect our numbers'; 'It's true that how many we're going to be will
> > depend on whether anyone turns up that we aren't expecting'. The grammar
> > of the first is based on a simple SVO- type sentence; the second is
> > replete with subordinate clauses. Yet both are typical sentences - the
> > first of written, the second of spoken English.
>
> That fits the English model well. Based upon a pragmatic attitude with
> respect to language. Which contrats with the French prescriptive
> approach.
>
> > What I was hoping is that you would tell me what sort of 'special cases'
> > you think English grammar is made up of. If you mean simply the
> > confusing orthography of the language, of the sort of 'through / though
> > / cough / enough' etc, then what you are talking about is exactly what I
> > am getting at: that the main difficulty in learning English is
> > correlating its spoken and written languages. Other than that, there are
> > always rules that govern the grammar of a language; apparent exceptions
> > simply mean that the stated 'rule' was incomplete or overhastily drawn.
>
> How will a non-native English speaker ever learn that the plural of "deer"
> is normally "deer?" I thought "grouses" looked funny; apparently is not
> quite incorrect but surely the same form as the singular "grouse" is OK,
> what a relief.
>
> The bottom line remains that English is replete with idiomatic
> expressions, that the list of things that one needs to learn on a one by
> one basis is endless.
>
>
> > Yes, that is what I meant above: 'pedants' are usually those who
> > recognise language change - meaning that the grammars of native speakers
> > are shifting from the grammars of earlier generations - and then proceed
> > to insist that the earlier rules be used. From the linguistic
> > perspective that I talked about above, of course, this doesn't matter -
> > the grammars of all native speakers must be accepted and the job of the
> > linguist is descriptive, not prescriptive. Thus the fact that you call
> > it 'the familiar oral expression' is support for that the language
> > change is more or less complete in the spoken language.
>
> Point is, in French, what the rules are supposed to be carries much more
> weight than in English. (Although it's possible that this might be slowly
> changing. I have been living for too long in a non-French speaking
> environment to make a stronger statement about that.)
>
> >> Should be :-). I still occasionally hear TV news programs where they
> >> do it right.
> >>
> > You say that you hear it in news programs - what is the norm for
> > newspapers? What about fiction authors and school textbooks? I'm
> > interested in the statistics.
>
> I am pretty sure I still see the proper form on French newspaper web
> sites, which as far as French is concerned is what I am most exposed to
> these days.
>
> >> So then you think English is the hardest?
> >>
> >> I am not convinced this is as big an issue as you seem to make it. Is
> >> it harder for an English-speaker to learn French than the opposite? I
> >> suspect it's very hard to give a one-size fits all answer to this
> >> question.
> >
> > I do think that English is harder to learn, both spoken and written,
> > than French, for the reasons I outlined above. If I haven't convinced
> > you, I'm not surprised - my argument and my thought are still in their
> > infancy. I will be studying more general linguistics over the next two
> > years, and am grateful for any input I can get from anybody here while I
> > learn so that my theories can be developed within an academic framework
> > so that I can make them more convincing (if I still believe them after
> > two years of course!).
>
> I remain unconvinced. Bringing up a different issue, however, what is
> difficult about English, and not so hard in most other languages I have
> been exposed to in comparison, is processing the sounds of the spokin
> language and translate them into identifiable sequences of sounds and
> ultimately words.
>
> For most languages, it's harder to learn to speak than to understand.
> Which is not unexpected since speaking is active wile understanding is
> reactive. But in English the opposite is true.
>
> > Thanks again for the discussion.
>
> My pleasure.
>