Linguist Forum
General Linguistics => Linguist's Lounge => Topic started by: waive15 on July 01, 2020, 03:18:07 AM
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Hi,
The "pros" and "cons" of something are its "advantages" and "disadvantages".
/it will be done in a relaxed way, so there will be mistakes/
I yam what I yam.
Popeye the Sailor
Native speakers don't notice some features of their "language" ("language" is a habit). Foreigners on the other hand are more critical/nitpicking.
"pro": English nouns have not grammatical gender. They lost their case endings (they have only one form, apart from genitive) - so: no endings - no gender! (very few exceptions) /look at the mess in German/
"pro": English pronouns - the same: Nom. form and the Other form (apart from genitive)
"con": One cannot say have not, read not, ...(in general) (which is normal in other languages) - don't/doesn't have, read ... is a little bit too ... posh.
"pro/con": Prefixes which are prepositions are set/put after the verb where they belong. This makes verb short (which is good) but it is hard for the foreigners to decide if it is a Preposition or a Verb particle.
/This is extremely elegant. But I as a foreigner make the Verb particle a Prefix and then the phrasal verb sounds "normal" /like German, Russian, Latin, ... verbs//
"pro/con": "What are you talking about?" The "normal" way would be "About what are you talking?" It is a simplification - if you have a question word (and a preposition) in a question - the question begins with the question word (and the preposition is at the end).
"pro": Perfect tenses use only HAVE (they are made regular!!!). /see German as a bad example/
"pro": Conditionals are simplified (due to simplified future, regular perfect tense and losing Subjunctive) /on the other side German is a way more punctual (with Subjunctive), Russian Conditionals are simplified but one cannot see the "logic"!!! (SO EVEN "RUSSIANS" cannot understand the "logic" of their own Conditionals (I prefer to leave that without comment)) /
...
P.S.
It will take time.
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The pros and cons of something are its advantages and disadvantages.
Languages don't have advantages and disadvantages. They just have features (and from an outside perspective, variation).
Advantages and disadvantages only exist in a context. If a language is insufficient for the purposes in which it is used, it will surely be adapted and expanded to become sufficient. I suppose you might think of some features are more convenient than others as a learner (or maybe just simpler to learn), but I don't agree with the premise of this. This really is part of what having the perspective of a linguist will do: we pick up a different perspective on languages that results in different questions.
Now, there certainly can be some conditional advantages or disadvantages. Having a language that distinguishes gender can be extremely useful in some cases, and extremely unfortunate in others. For example, if you want to distinguish between a male friend and a female friend, Spanish "amiga" and "amigo" are useful! But if you don't want to specify the gender of that friend (or their gender identity is non-binary) then you're going to be stuck! In English we just say "friend", for better and worse. It depends on context. One fundamental ability that language speakers have and use is vagueness, which isn't always available in some languages. That's interesting. Translators face this all the time, when something isn't specified (or is intended as a mystery) in the original text, but a choice must be made in the new language!
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I contrarily think that languages and tools in general do have advantages and disadvantages, but that is a relationship between the think in question and the "experiencer" of the advantage. It's not intrinsic to the language (thus I end up agreeing with Daniel, just phrased differently). A torx screwdriver has definite advantages and disadvantages. If you have a torx screw, a torx screwdriver clearly advantageous and a flat-head screwdriver is clearly disadvantageous. Norwegian is clearly advantageous when talking to village elders in remote valleys of Norway, and clearly disadvantageous when talking to village elders in remote parts of the Atlas mountains. The lack of pharyngeal consonants and ridiculous consonant clusters makes English disadvantageous when one strives to speak Moroccan Arabic; the presence of such things in Tamazigh is advantageous when one strives to speak Moroccan Arabic. The ability to breathe air and water is a clear advantage for certain kinds of fish. "Advantage" is about goals, which is a thing that living beings have.
As for your specific examples, esp. the last point, you assume that foreigners need to perform a theoretical analysis whereby they label tings as Particle vs. Preposition. That's not necessary. Such a classification is one way of learning a language, but not a necessary way.
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Hi,
You are right. The name of the topic is not right. I have changed it.
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“Snatch” (2000)
“Bullet-Tooth Tony: A bookie's got blagged last night.
Cousin Avi : Blagged? Speak English to me, Tony. I thought this country spawned the f***ing language, and so far nobody seems to speak it.”
{Cousin Avi ( Dennis Farina )is an American who has just arrived in London
{Bullet-Tooth Tony ( Vinnie Jones ) is British
P.S.
panini : " ... "Advantage" is about goals, which is a thing that living beings have."
Daniel : " Advantages and disadvantages only exist in a context. ..."
waive15: I understand. In a way this was meant as English version of (The) Three trifles in/of/about Russian
Thank you for the interest.
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> For example, if you want to distinguish between a male friend and a
> female friend, Spanish "amiga" and "amigo" are useful! But if you don't
> want to specify the gender of that friend (or their gender identity is
> non-binary) then you're going to be stuck! In English we just say "friend",
> for better and worse.
Please, believe me, the native English speakers have absolutely the same problem as the rest of the world – if you need to replace your abstract friend or person with a pronoun, you are stuck. I believe the total majority of languages use “he” by convention. So do the Brits. But politically incorrect choice of an American linguist may cost him (I am a foreigner, I could say that I did not know) his (oh…) teaching license nowadays.
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Hi,
Participles are verbal adjectives (adjectives which come/are made of/ from verbs).
Past participles in "English". I suppose it is no big deal for anyone to figure out when it is past active and when it is past passive participle.
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"-ing (2)
suffix used to form the present participles of verbs ... "
" ... The vowel weakened in late Old English and the spelling with -g began 13c.-14c. among Anglo-Norman scribes who naturally confused it with -ing (1)."
https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=-ing
The question is if the suffix is used for the present active or the present passive participle.
Is there present passive participle anyway in English?
Let's see what's in "Latin":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OcJXc_jGrQ
Is there present passive participles in Russian? - Yes.
In the "logic" of ("Indo-European") "Languages" one has to have past active and passive, present active and passive and future active and passive participles (past, present, future as exact moments in 1d Time).
or (in other words)
According to any exact moment of/in Time (1d: now; then: past; future) participles (active and passive) are: past, present, future. In a "Simple sentence" (when it is needed) one has two verbs - the 2nd is RELATIVE to the 1st (which "has/takes" the exact moment in 1d Time). In 1d one has 3 possibilities: before, "during", after. Participle is the 2nd verb and it takes form of :
* adjective - after the 1st verb "be". One is ACCUSTOMED in "Simple sentence" after the INTRANSITIVE verb "be" (is') to PUT/PLACE second Quality(adjective). "Apple is' red'."/"He is' gone' (past active participle) (dead')." {after transitive "be" (is'') one puts NOUN (Man is'' animal.)}
* adjective before missing noun (which is always meant) and this way adjective becomes a "noun"(or its "name"). This happens after "has" as the 1st verb (after "have" one has a noun or its "name" (the possessed)).
/tenses' formulae could have been way, way, ... complicated(exact) but one is a simple creature and that is why one uses the very simplest of the possible tenses' formulae/
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Let's say it once more ...:
* according to a TRANSITIVE verb ("directed graph") one has 1st (doer) and 2nd (sufferer).
* (but) let's see: "Someone_1 give present (to) Someone_2 / Someone_1 give Someone_2 present."
Now we have: doer, sufferer (in Connection) and direction (in another Connection (the 1st 3 (doer, sufferer, connection) with direction). So we have to have 3 participles: active, passive, directive. And 3 "pieces" (exact moments) of Time. ...
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The term "copula verb" means nothing.
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There are holes in "logic" of any "language". What holes in "English logic" from the "English" point of view are there? English orthography is a "small change", it is not a problem at all.
Have a nice day.
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You seem to be writing about traditional labels rather than underlying "logic". And there are always logical holes in traditional labels.
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There are holes in "logic" of any "language". What holes in "English logic" from the "English" point of view are there?
"Logic(al)" is not really a helpful word to use in describing any language. The word can have different shades of meaning according to context. The basic meaning indicating valid reasoning is certainly not appropriate, nor really are any uses suggesting coherence, consistency or reasonableness. The thing to ask in respect of any language is what you can and must do, and not why it cannot do what some other language can do.
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"Logic(al)" is not really a helpful word to use in describing any language.
Agreed.
The thing to ask in respect of any language is what you can and must do, and not why it cannot do what some other language can do.
No language is more capable than another. Some can more efficiently express certain things, but circumlocution/paraphrase is always an option.
It seems to me the problem is the analysis, not the language. And it's the goal of Linguistics to better ways to understand languages.
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Hi,
Grammatical gender
You may or may not have it (in "your language").
Grammatical gender is (simply) a feature/aspect/dimension/... . One could live with and without it. It is just another layer of encoding (among others), nothing special.
"pro": English is simple (simplified): no endings signifying Grammatical gender - every noun (with very few exceptions) is in neuter.
/English - simplified, logical
Russian - complicated, logical
German - out of hand
Turkish - nice, logical/
Thank you and have a nice day.
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> English - simplified, logical
Simplified? Probably, yes. Logical?.. People are still not agree if English has a grammatical gender or not. Though it looks like we – you and I – believe in grammatical gender in English.
> Russian - complicated, logical
Well, though the rules of Russian language (adopted by three official bodies of the Soviet Union in 1956) survived two of its countries and four Constitutions its grammatical gender is probably not more logical than its deceased and still functional companions. While reading this forum I have come to the conclusion that Russian grammatical gender is mainly like the English spelling – there are (almost) no rules and you just have to memorize every single usage of it. For example, let us consider “he/she is such a pig” sentence. The pig word is feminine in Russian the speaker must make agree the pronoun “such” with either subject or object. Let us define them as fsuch (feminine) and msuch (masculine). In this very case, both variants are acceptable: “he is [fsuch a pig]” and “[he is msuch] a pig” and I believe there is no difference in them. (There is a slight difference in default meaning for he and she though: “she is such a pig” will probably more likely mean she is a kind of fatty and “he is such a pig” defaults to he is dirty and slovenly). But a lot of other Russian feminine nouns will require fsuch adjustment for “he” only. And I believe there are no rules to handle these situations – one have to memorize them or to develop a feeling of the language. Moreover “he is fsuch a bitch” is absolutely identical to its English counterpart but “he is msuch a bitch” turns the “bitch” into interjection (exclamation) and the phrase begins to require an object as “he is msuch a bitch idiot” that means “he is such a fking/damn idiot”.
There are more examples of strange Russian grammatical gender behavior I do not understand.
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People are still not agree if English has a grammatical gender or not. Though it looks like we – you and I – believe in grammatical gender in English.
That has to depend on what you mean by grammatical gender. It seems to me that there are two possible definitions:
The first is to say that a language has grammatical gender if it has the ability to distinguish between things male and things female. Since distinguishing between things male and things female is very important to humans I would be very surprised if there is a language which does not do so. I think we can say with some measure of confidence that under this definition all languages have grammatical gender.
The second is to say that a language has grammatical gender if its nouns are divided into two or more classes and it has a system of agreement which requires words associated with the noun (articles, adjectives, pronouns or verbs) to change their form according to which class the noun belongs.
English has words to distinguish males and females, such as "man" and "woman", "boy" and "girl" and "actor" and "actress", but no system of agreement. The fact that it has "he", "she" and "it" does not mean that English has three grammatical genders any more than having the words "man", "woman" and "thing".
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> That has to depend on what you mean by grammatical gender. It seems to me
> that there are two possible definitions:
I do not like the first one. It requires exceptions for pronouns and brunette girls. (Probably, blonde ones too). It will most likely require a distinction between grammatical and natural gender (and probably introduction of some other gender kinds) of animate creatures, anthropomorphic robots and artificial intelligences. It will also need to somehow eliminate native English speakers who still refer to ships, cars and countries as feminine. I have been told otherwise but I still believe/feel that Proper Nouns that are names like Mary and Thomas (even if he is a stream-engine) require the definite agreement with their pronouns. And despite you may give the name Mary to a male and refer to him as “he” this will have nothing to do with the grammatical gender. You may name Mary a male in Russian too and this very Mary will be “he” as well (though he would be a very unhappy Mary) but the word Mary will continue to associate with females.
I also believe I know the third possible way of definition of the grammatical gender. If linguistics were a real science, it would have a set of basic axioms. One could postulate the grammatical gender as a basic axiom of the linguistics. I do feel there shall be a better way but IMO such a solution could do until one invents a better one.
> English has words to distinguish males and females, such as "man" and "woman",
> "boy" and "girl" and "actor" and "actress", but no system of agreement.
Formally speaking you are still required/allowed to agree at least pronounces with them.
I also believe that a language that used to have a grammatical gender system would never be able to get rid of it completely. IMO the only way to do it is to destroy the knowledge about such fact. And despite England and the US have started the process of destroying I hope Australia and Russia will rescue the English language. Personally I own several books that mention Celtics and Germanic (the languages with normal grammatical gender) roots of English.
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Linguistics is a real science even if for the most part it is not a hard science. Linguistics does not and cannot have axioms because it starts by looking at stuff rather than from abstract principles. Anyone postulating that grammatical gender should be a basic axiom of linguistics is likely to have as his mother tongue a language with grammatical gender. It is entirely understandable that the native speakers of a language consider all its features to be natural and necessary. When learning a language which lacks a feature their language has they may consider it defective, and if it has a feature their language lacks they may consider that it makes unnecessary distinctions. Whatever features a language may have or lack it will be an adequate vehicle of communication for it speakers.
Whether or not you believe in universal grammar, actual languages come in all shapes. Whilst every language is best described in its own terms technical terms are still needed. That may lead to terms perfectly suitable for one language being applied to another. In that respect many linguistic features come on a continuum. To descibe English as an inflectional language would not be incorrect as it has inflections (nine on most counts) but it would nevertheless be misleading.
if a language has a feature you have to ask the degree to which it has it before you insist that the feature is a significant aspect of the language. I recall a discussion I had on another forum with a Chinese speaker who insisted that English had classifiers because of phrases such as "a herd of cows" and "a bunch of grapes". She wanted English to have classifiers because a language without classifiers did not seem right. The point is though that whilst a language with classifiers may require you to use a classifier if talking about more than one cow or grape, English is quite happy with "four cows" and "many grapes" without further elaboration.
Insisting that English has grammatical gender is like insisting it has classifiers. The essence of grammatical gender is not that nouns are grouped in different classes, but that there is a system of agreement based on on the classes. Chinese may be said to have different classes of nouns according to which classifier is required, but it does not have grammatical gender because it does not have a system of agreement.
It is stretching things to breaking point to say that there is a system of agreement in English. The use of "he", "she" and "it" is entirely predictable according to whether what is being talked about is male, female or inanimate. Referring to ships and cars using "she" is metaphorical or fanciful and no different from giving such a thing a name. Using the right word is a question of semantics and not morphology or syntax. Even if you insist that in some sense using the correct word is a question of grammar, it is not sufficiently pervasive to justify classing English as a language with grammatical gender. If you tell someone starting to learning English that it has grammatical gender and they know a language Like French, German, Russian or Arabic, it will not be long before they declare: "I thought English was supposed to have grammatical gender."
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> Linguistics does not and cannot have axioms because it starts by looking
> at stuff rather than from abstract principles.
I do not think a thing can work without axioms because it will mean everything in the thing can be formally proved and this is impossible due to the Godel’s theorems.
> That may lead to terms perfectly suitable for one language being applied
> to another. In that respect many linguistic features come on a continuum.
> To descibe English as an inflectional language would not be incorrect as it has
> inflections (nine on most counts) but it would nevertheless be misleading.
So the amount of irregular verbs (I do believe there are more than nine of them – I just try to say they would be enough alone) may someone make to doubt about inflectionality of English? I do understand your point and I do agree with the possibility of different treatments of any aspects depending on the purpose, audience or other needs. I do admit that someone (with a special notification) may choose a suitable formulation that has exceptions in general. But the exceptions shall not be that numerous or important. So, I would definitely agree that English is absolutely unaffected by the pronouncing length of the syllables though I know at least one exception.
> Insisting that English has grammatical gender is like insisting it has classifiers.
Yeah, the English classifiers are something way out of head for unprepared audience. It took me years to convince myself that “pieces” in the “furniture pieces” phrase is the classifier and are not parts of a broken chair. Again, I can admit that a native English speaker could probably have never thought about such a small thing. It looks like native English speakers are inattentive and incurious (and strange) about their language – even the Great Vowel Shift was discovered by a foreigner...
> If you tell someone starting to learning English that it has grammatical gender and
> they know a language Like French, German, Russian or Arabic, it will not be long before
> they declare: "I thought English was supposed to have grammatical gender."
Ok. I will wait.
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Hi,
Thank you Rock100 and Forbes. Your writings are very interesting to me.
table - feminine (for me, in my mind, in "my language"), but there is nothing in "table" which to suggest/point out its femininity in English, so rationally (and happily) I use "table" as it.
money - singular/money is .../ (for me, in my mind, in "my language, now" money is plural BUT a hundred years ago (or so) money was singular, so as I have read classics I am aware of it but it (English) feels like a dialect which I don't want to speak (yes, literally, I refer to English as a dialect of waive15's language).
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Demonstrative pronouns (especially for the far) are used as:
* 3rd person singular/plural (personal pronoun)
* Definite article
There may be more than one demonstrative pronouns.
Example:
bu - su - o (Turkish)
(near) (far)
Personal pronouns in Turkish
Ben Biz
Sen Siz
O Onlar ( O + n(connective "consonant") + -lar (plural ending))
/by the way there is no Grammatical gender in Turkish. Woman is O, Man is O, dog is O, table is O, .../
Demonstrative pronouns as Definite articles may stand before the word or after as a part of it.
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"pro": Definite article the alongside Indefinite article a/an is Handy! (just as "I do ..." and "I am doing ...")
"...
Old English used 10 different words for "the" (see table), but did not distinguish "the" from "that." That survived for a time as a definite article before vowels (that one or that other).
..."
https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=the
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Thank you and have a nice day.
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The practice of linguists has been very mixed especially since 1951, tending toward heavy reliance on axioms vs. minimal reliance on axioms (historically, trending in that direction). I disagree with the position that "that has to depend on what you mean by grammatical gender", as admitting a fundamental methodological error, namely the arbitrariness of concepts and their names. This error is related to the error of improper axiomatization. An axiom is not an arbitrary stipulation that defines what words and relations you allow in your particular theory, it is a self-evident truth. Allowing the meaning of terms to be arbitrarily stipulated on an individual basis means that rational discussion and knowledge itself is impossible, instead we just have vague feelings that so-and-so might be right. Because we can never talk about reality without invoking some words – "gender", "noun", "person", "subject", "agree", "dog", "eat" – and I have no reason to believe that when you say "person", you're referring to what I'm referring to when I say "dog".
The logical error that I see here (in these pages), is that the putative ontological status of grammatical gender is utterly in flux. Does it refer to a causal principle of linguistic theory, in the same way that Merge is claimed to be a causal principle of linguistic theory (specifically, about the syntactic component). Or does it refer to an abstract class of phenomena? The same question comes up with "agree(ment)" – is this a fundamental operation in the theory, or is this a carving-out of observed data patterns? How does "agree" have any relationship to "grammatical gender"? Is there even a difference between linguistics as data-fitting and linguistics as real science seeking causal principles? I suppose you can tell where I stand on the matter.
The discussion is about the data-fitting approach. How do we validate terminological choices when we are only talking about the nature of communicative behavior, and not about the nature of the underlying grammatical computations? Let's take German and French as examples of data patterns. The gender-related facts of French are not the same as those of German – does that mean we have to construct separate terms for German grammatical gender versus French grammatical gender? How can we talk about the unity of these systems, or should we even try?
Immediately above, I may have appeared to advocated a Kantian disintegration of the concept of "gender" into myriad special cases – that is exactly the opposite of what I am advocating. Science operates by integrating observations, and not by an infinite regress of hair-splitting. However, in the context of a discussion of communicative behavior as opposed to grammatical theory, there is an important distinction between gender and grammatical gender. Social theorists have all sorts of classifications, but in ordinary usage the term refers to male versus female. Grammatical gender, a terms of linguistic theory, has nothing to do with genitalia and everything to do with agreement governed by a property of a noun. That is how it is used by the overwhelming majority of linguists. An individual can declare that they hereby define "grammatical gender" to be any means of distinguishing males from females (having words for "man" and "woman" for example), or animate from inanimate (any language with a distinction between "dead" and "alive"). But this is not how linguists talk about grammatical gender.
Again, "grammatical gender" is a data-classification term employed in aid of constructing grammatical theory, it is not the same as "gender" as used by social theorists. It's not a question of "how you define grammatical gender", it is a question of what the term actually means in the context where it is used. It refers to the partitioning of nouns into two or more subsets, according to some criterion (including lexical marking), where other elements in the sentence "agree" with that noun, analogous to agreement in person, number and case. Lushootseed has a marker -s- that can be added to determiners to indicate "female", and it has absolutely no grammatical gender or agreement. Niger-Congo languages often have complex noun classifications and agreement patterns which are partially semantic and partially lexical – but have zero correlation with biological gender. It is impossible to distinguish "he fell" and "she fell", at best you can say "(singular human) fell".
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> …
> It is impossible to distinguish "he fell" and "she fell", at best you can say
> "(singular human) fell".
I do see that you are occasionally or deliberately incomplete while talking about “agreement” though your arguments are correct. Somewhere above or in another thread I have mentioned that I believe the following case does require the proper agreement: “This was Mary/ballerina/stewardess/woman. She fell”. I do not have a native English speaker at hand to check it but I am dead sure that when such speaker sees “This was Mary/…” he will naturally agree the next statement with the pronoun “she”. The speaker does not know who or what the Mary is. It may be the name of a car or the name of the male. It does not matter. The subject of subsequent coupled statements will be “she”. You may name the nouns above as “social” and do not count them in grammatical gender, you may exclude pronouns she/her/herself and declare they do not have a grammatical gender, you may consider your examples of agreement as first class agreements and my interstatement agreements as second-best/less coupled ones so they do not count. But I bet that if you see a ballerina in a tutu from far away you will refer to her as “she” even if on closer look she looks like the illustration from the Merriam-Webster dictionary (www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tutu).
Ok, this is fresh and cool for me. If you, please, explain me the mechanism of necessity to agree Mary/ballerina/stewardess/woman with the pronoun “she” in subsequent coupled statements as above I will give it a try in a conversation with a next native English speaker (I usually bump into them every other year). All the arguments I have read on this forum and the Internet so far make me feel uncomfortable and unsure.
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What we have here is a case of equivocation. The problem is the very word "gender". In linguistics in the phrase "grammatical gender" it means little more than "class", but because outside linguistics it has connotations of "male/female" and because grammatical genders have names like "masculine" and "feminine" notions of natural gender interfere. The fact that (at least in the languages I know) most things male may have masculine gender and most things female may have feminine gender does not help, but should not be allowed to get in the way. If instead of "grammatical gender" we referred to "agreement requiring noun classes" and feminine gender was called "agreement requiring noun class 1" and masculine "agreement requiring noun class 2" we would not be having this discussion.
Grammatical agreement is no more than saying that the form of a word depends on other words related to it. A language may require agreement for any one or more grammatical category such as number, case, person or gender or indeed none. If English is studied you will not find anything indicating the possibility of grammatical gender except in third person personal pronouns. Since that is the only instance you can reasonably ask: "Does this justify me asserting that English has grammatical gender?" The answer is "no" because there is another explanation. Which pronoun you use is determined entirely by the nature of the thing referred to. In "My wife is out - she will be back soon" using "she" depends on knowing that "wife" refers to a female and not on it belonging to any noun class other than nouns which refer to things female or some class such as "beginning with the letter w".
If you want to know whether a given language has grammatical agreement, and if it has if it has grammatical gender, all you have to do is study it. You do not need axioms or a detailed methodology.
I started off by saying "that has to depend on what you mean by grammatical gender" and offered two possible definitions. I could have taken a different tack which I do now:
Rock100
You take the view that English has grammatical gender. It is my view, based on wide reading over many years, that there is a consensus that English does not have grammatical gender. What is you understanding of what grammatical gender involves which leads you to conclude that English has grammatical gender?
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The problem here is really simple. In the science of linguistics, "agree" and "gender" have a specific meaning. Rock100 is using words in a completely different way. "She fell" is not an example of agreement, by linguistic standards. If you want to have a rational discussion of linguistic matters, you either have to declare your theory of what technical terms mean, or you have to learn what those words mean in the context of linguistic science. As I said. The linguistic theory of "gender" has very little relation to social theories of "gender".
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> Grammatical agreement is no more than saying that the form of a word
> depends on other words related to it.
If it were like this, it would be enough to claim that English has a grammatical gender. There is the requirement to agree some nouns with different pronounces. And this requirement is conditioned by something other than number, case, etc. You see, you must justify such agreement with something different from the existing features of the language. And if you name such an additional feature I will rename it to the grammatical gender and vu a la. Technically speaking you must either justify the feature with existing features (or axioms if you will) or add a new one. The adding a new one is the disaster because it leads us to the grammatical gender. Though you may argue about it does not look like grammatical gender in other languages I will call the grammatical gender because it looks enough close for me. You have no choice but to prove that your new feature has an equivalent in another language and it is not the grammatical gender in that language.
So, there must be a helper for your position somewhere else. Most likely this would be sociology. It looks even less science than linguistics, so it may help. And it really does and I do feel there might be something in it – you may introduce different kinds of gender, different classifications (humans, other animates, robots, artificial intelligences, etc.), and so on and so forth. All you (the followers of the absence of grammatical gender in English) need is to provide some good enough grounds. Good enough means that total majority of, say, Russian textbooks stops claiming that English has the grammatical gender at least for pronounces and you may not take into account my personal opinion.
So far your arguments are not good enough. Let us consider your sociological example
> Which pronoun you use is determined entirely by the nature of the thing referred to.
> In "My wife is out - she will be back soon" using "she" depends on knowing that "wife"
> refers to a female and not on it belonging to any noun class other than nouns which refer
> to things female or some class such as "beginning with the letter w".
The Putin’s propaganda tells us that many of American wives have penises nowadays. In my opinion such propaganda ruins your argument completely. You claim that if you see the word wife you imply “she”. But I bet (I have no physical possibility to check it now) if you come closer and see the wife’s penis you will refer to her as he. Like “This is my wife. He is cute.” Believe it or not but the same thing will happen in Russian – he will be cute but the feeling of the situation will be different as if the wife is Pamela Anderson (I am not sure if my subjunctive mood is correct but it is supposed to be it). There is sociologically something that makes us to expect the agreement of wives with “she”. And there is no doubt that you either shall eliminate every single one who thinks that way (the propaganda says you have already started that) or as in case with technical point of view you have to provide some solid explanation why would we like to associate the word “wife” with “she”. So far your arguments does not look very convincing (at least for me and many authors of English textbooks in Russia).
And I do believe that it might be technically possible to provide technical and sociological (and any other if there is a need) justifications (just to make Russians to rewrite their English textbooks). Apple Inc. costs nowadays more than all Russian assets, including Gazprom, Sberbank and my microwave. So, there are enough resources why do not give it a try?..
> What is you understanding of what grammatical gender involves which leads you
> to conclude that English has grammatical gender?
1. There is a grammatical need to agree some nouns with other words in the text.
2. The need (1) cannot be satisfied with existing grammatical feature of the language such as number, case, person, etc.
3. There are non-grammatical (sociological, etc.) needs to agree some nouns with other words in the text.
4. The features (1) and (3) can be combined and the resulting feature looks very like the grammatical gender in other languages.
> panini
> The problem here is really simple. In the science of linguistics, "agree" and "gender"
> have a specific meaning. Rock100 is using words in a completely different way. "She fell"
> is not an example of agreement, by linguistic standards. If you want to have a rational
> discussion of linguistic matters, you either have to declare your theory of what technical
> terms mean, or you have to learn what those words mean in the context of linguistic
> science. As I said. The linguistic theory of "gender" has very little relation to social theories
> of "gender".
You are right. But I do not think linguistics has a full featured unambiguous theory beneath. So far you, linguists, are as the ancient Greeks talking about atoms – you may be right or you may be wrong. The good thing is that this forum is not a private party.
-
Okay,
There are at least 3 points where there is simplification:
* Grammatical Gender;
* Grammatical Case;
* Strong - Weak verb (Irregular - Regular verb).
===
===
Grammatical Gender (and case) in English
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_in_English
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnF1ycgelUY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ED45vL7KNW0
...
---
Latin Grammatical Gender
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgNAANyE8rs
---
Russian Grammatical Gender
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTlWzdlVzK0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKxdRffS_9I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhof4SqbWBI
/папа (ends in -a), the word is MASCULINE but -a is a nominative case ending for FEMININE. So папа gets all feminine grammatical case endings./
***
Grammatical gender
Grammatical gender is (simply) a feature/aspect/dimension/... . One could live with and without it. It is just another layer of encoding (among others), nothing special.
"pro": English is simple (simplified): no endings signifying Grammatical gender - every noun (with a few exceptions) is in neuter.
===
Grammatical Case
"pro": English is simple (simplified): no endings signifying Grammatical case (except Gen.) - all Grammatical cases (except Nom. and Gen.) are referred to as "Objective" case.
===
Irregular - Regular verb
"pro"(?): Strong ---> Weak verb (Irregular ---> Regular verb) /simplification/
not so long ago:
https://www.websters1913.com/words/Help
help - holp - holpen;
more long ago:
https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=help
helpan - healp - holpen
now:
help - helped - helped
===
===
"pro": Demonstrative pronoun is important as Definite article(in 1d-Time ). It is natural for that purpose and simplifies language.
* I, You/This/Here (in 3d space)
* (he, she)It/That/There (in 3d space)
---
* The,That/Then(past)/There <---> Now/This/Here (in 1d space - Time)
===
===
Thank you and have a nice day.
-
> /папа (ends in -a), the word is MASCULINE but -a is a nominative case ending
> for FEMININE. So папа gets all feminine grammatical case endings./
Technically speaking the grammatical case endings are controlled by declension and not by grammatical gender. Father and mother are the nouns of the first declension so they change the same way. There are not many such masculine common words indeed but they do exist. Plus nouns that are Proper Names. Plus common gender nouns.
But you might probably double-check the info above -- I can easily be wrong in details (I just hope it is acceptable for the lounge section).
-
> But if one goes to the Russian version of that page (in the beginning "... See
> Russian version of this page. " on the 8th line of the text)
>
> https:
> папа is in the 2nd declension.
I do believe there is an error in numbering somewhere. Or some sources may use an alternative numeration. But I vote for the error.
> Some people even talk about the 4th declension - that of the Plurals.
Technically speaking the scientific classification counts 50 or something like this paradigms of declension. But there are only 3 + non-declensional words in public schools (and 6 grammatical cases while the next 9 ones will be revealed to the students of linguistic universities only). The rest “strange” words are declared as exceptions.
> Languages are taught in a such a pompous manner. Russian (and not only) needs
> some rectifying.
Languages shall be taught terribly in every country and linguists shall act as if it is normal to look good. The general theory behind real languages is either extremely complicated or has not even been discovered yet. So they have to simplify things and this cannot but lead to different problems.
-
> There is no mistake/error. There is politics.
You have left me no choice but to check it. This book www.ozon.ru/context/detail/id/30048120/ (probably the most reputable one if you are interested) reads on the page 188 that nouns declension numeration is relative and the first and the second declensions are rearranged in school program.
> "There is no swifter route to the corruption of thought than through the
> corruption of language."
> George Orwell
>
> For the last 100 years (give or take) some language reforms have taken place
> in Russian. Not always for the best.
Yeah, probably that Orwell was a little bit Russian too. Russians indeed like to change something in schoolbooks to make parents (or schools) to buy new ones. For example, it is possible in math to reorder the theorems so that the resulting whole sets will be equivalent but the look and idea of derivations will be completely different. That is how, for example, the new geometry (> 1000 years old knowledge) school textbooks appear in Soviet union/Russia.
-
Grammatical agreement is no more than saying that the form of a word depends on other words related to it. A language may require agreement for any one or more grammatical category such as number, case, person or gender or indeed none. If English is studied you will not find anything indicating the possibility of grammatical gender except in third person personal pronouns. Since that is the only instance you can reasonably ask: "Does this justify me asserting that English has grammatical gender?" The answer is "no" because there is another explanation. Which pronoun you use is determined entirely by the nature of the thing referred to. In "My wife is out - she will be back soon" using "she" depends on knowing that "wife" refers to a female and not on it belonging to any noun class other than nouns which refer to things female or some class such as "beginning with the letter w".
I agree. If it were accepted that English has grammatical gender, then there would be two different kinds of grammatical gender: (a) the agreement of adjectives with nouns, and (b) the use of gendered pronouns. This would be confusing, because a language (real or hypothetical) could be of any of the following types:
1. It has (b) but not (a) — as in English.
2. It has both (a) and (b), and the gender of the pronoun depends on the gender of the noun used or implied.
3. It has both (a) and (b), and the gender of the pronoun depends on the nature of the thing referred to.
4. It has (a) but not (b) — i.e. there are grammatically gendered nouns, but all pronouns are of common gender (e.g. there is no 'he'/'she' distinction).
It seems simpler to restrict the term 'grammatical gender' to its established meaning, i.e. (a), and to use some other term for (b).
-
It seems simpler to restrict the term 'grammatical gender' to its established meaning, i.e. (a), and to use some other term for (b).
Agreed, though I would expand (a) to include verbs, articles and pronouns, though not necessarily all of them in every language which has grammatical gender.
There is another term for (b): "pronominal gender system". See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_neutrality_in_genderless_languages#English where it says:
"English lacks grammatical gender, but can be considered to have a pronominal gender system with semantic gender represented in the pronouns. This system of gender is quite minimal compared to languages with grammatical gender."
-
Hi,
"pro?!/con?!": "Words" like on, off, ... "work like" prepositions, adverbs, ...
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/on
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/off
...
without changing their form (they look the same). This is simplification.
===
bite off
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bite_off
1. (transitive, idiomatic, sometimes followed by on) To accept or commit oneself to a ...
2. (transitive, idiomatic) To acquire, especially in an abrupt or forceful manner.
---
https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=accept
https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=commit
https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=acquire
https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=abrupt
---
ad-
https://www.etymonline.com/word/ad-
---
com-
https://www.etymonline.com/word/com-
---
ab-
https://www.etymonline.com/word/ab-
--- --- ---
idiom, idio-, idiomatic
https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=idiom
===
Phrasal Verbs (those of them which have on, off, ... as an adverb (and not only)) are English knockoffs (an illegal/cheap imitation of a well-known product).
"Adverb" in that case means (is a) word-forming element (giving new/different meaning to the two(three,...)-word verb/phrasal verb).
Thank you and have a nice day.
-
without changing their form (they look the same). This is simplification.
That has to be moot.
It is all too easy to equate complexity with morphological complexity. However, the word "on" having so many different meanings in English has to be a complexity. Native English speakers do not regard it as a complexity, just normal. It must though be a nightmare for those learning English as a second language - it would certainly seem so if all the information on the Wiki page were presented to them at once.
English is an analytic language with isolating tendencies and words can have multiple meanings and functions. Sometimes it is difficult to say immediately what the function of a word is.
-
Hi,
Part 0. Verb
- transitive (see'', ...) /have ... active participle and ... passive participle/
Doer, Active, the 1st
Sufferer, Passive, the 2nd
- intransitive (go', ...) /have only ... active participle/
Doer, Active, the 1st
Part 1. "Participles"
- noun from Verb
- adjective/Participle/ from Verb
- adverb from Verb
Part 2. Adjective/Participle
John read'' book.
/read as Connection of John (the 1st) and book (the 2nd); read is transitive (read'')/
John - Doer, Active, the 1st
Book - Sufferer, Passive, the 2nd
===
https://www.etymonline.com/word/participle#etymonline_v_7257
-
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/participle?s=t
"(Grammar)
An adjective or complement to certain auxiliaries that is regularly derived from the verb in many languages and refers to participation in the action or state of the verb; a verbal form used as an adjective. It does not specify person or number in English, but may have a subject or object, show tense, etc., as burning, in a burning candle, or devoted in his devoted friend."
===
a. Participle after be'
John read''(any tense) book.
-
John be' (any tense) past active participle of read.
The book be' (any tense) past passive participle of read (by John).
-
John be' (any tense) present active participle of read.
The book be' (any tense) present passive participle of read (by John).
-
John be' (any tense) future active participle of read.
The book be' (any tense) future passive participle of read (by John).
===
b. Participle after have''
/a small detour - again participle after be
/
/ boss: Go and get me the evening paper.
/ a worker: I will go.
/ a good worker: I am going.
/an excellent worker: I am gone. (go' is intransitive, it has only ... active participles. In this case gone is a past active participle - no Passive Voices on the horizon.)
/
/A man finishes his meal an says "I'm done". (in this case done is also a past active participle. He means "I have finished (...)." - no Passive Voices on the horizon.)
/
/From the Context (one level up) One guesses the type of the participle in English.
/
/be' and go' (and ...) are intransitive and yet they make Perfect Tenses in English with Have. This is illogical. They had to make Perfect tenses with Be.Because after Have in Perfect tenses stands past passive participle AND intransitive verbs Do Not Have past passive participle. BUT for Simplification/Standardization in English was taken The "illogical"/Formal approach (Formal past passive participles of Intransitive Verbs are used in Perfect tenses (after HAVE) and that keeps Passive Voice Clear/Simple - only with BE). In German was taken "more logical" approach which brings werden in Passive Voice (which is on the other hand illogical).
/
/
After HAVE one expects SOMETHING.
Past passive participle after HAVE (both for Intransitive(Formal approach) and Transitive verbs)(is an adjective which) states the NAME of the action/state(Verb). It is that SOMETHING.
And that SOMETHING is in (has) Neuter Gender.
(1.) John has an apple.
(2.) Jane has a written (by John) book.
(3.) Jane has a book written (by John). /"And I'm not insane, my mother had me tested."/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mr6XHJ7qcSE
(4.) Jane has [written a book (by Jane)].
(5.) Jane has [written (by Jane) a book].
(6.) Jane has been to Australia. /be' - intransitive; been is Formal Past passive participle in neuter gender (adjective) which is
/perceived as noun/name of the verb
(7.) John has gone to Spain. /go' - intransitive; - " -
===
In English one can sense:
* past active participle
* past passive participle
* present active participle
* absence of present passive participle
* absence of future active participle
* absence of future passive participle
/Words from Latin like summand, addend, subtrahend,
/multiplicand, dividend, referendum ...
/
/ -end
/ /E - A/
/ -and
/
/ https://www.affixes.org/alpha/e/-end.html
/
/ https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Main_Page
/
/one for simplicity may take them as
/present passive participles which NAME (are used as names/nouns for) things.
/
/ https://www.affixes.org/alpha/e/-end.html
/-en3, also ‑n form past ... participles of strong verbs.
/
/ https://www.affixes.org/alpha/e/-en3.html
* noun (from a verb) "Participle" /the "time" of nouns is (always?) "now"?/
* adverb (from a verb) "Participle" /probably only(?) present active "Participle"/
===
"Con": Participles in English are well swept under the rug. And "(grammatical) Voice" is a collaborator/an accomplice.
-
"pro": Shall, Will /alongside can, must, may, ought to ..., have to .../
===
To keep it simple:
Will Shall
Used to express the future tense Used to express the obligation
I will do we will do I shall do we shall do
you will do you will do you shall do you shall do
he/she/it will do they will do he/she/it shall do they shall do
/one may use shall in 1st person singular and plural as/for Future tense as well/
---
John will do.
The Doer is the 1st (Main), the "Environment" is the 2nd(not Main).
/the meaning of the Future as an Intention (Freedom) of the Doer/
John shall do.
The "Environment" is the 1st (Main), the Doer is the 2nd(not Main).
/the meaning of Obligation as the Dependency of the Doer/
===
Consciousness and the "Environment" are Complementary.
-
===
John can do. / John will do.
John may do. / John shall do.
-
can - will
may - shall
===