Bob tells me this message came through to him as blank. Was that true
for everyone? At any rate, I'm resending it below, using this reply to
my own message as a mechanism. It's not the most articulate response I
have ever given, but I'll resend as is.
Craig>
Bob,
> Glad to have that fundamental agreement.
> I think this is less of a problem in speech. In sentence one, tonic
> prominence falls on "for." In sentence two, it falls on "him."
> From our interactions with the world, we learn that people can work
> for people and people can have people work for them, and we evolve
> ways to articulate that relationship.
> I think we would both agree that there is an unconscious knowledge
> that allows us to understand/interpret these constructions. I believe
> that the knowledge about the world, the ways in which we perceive that
> knowledge, and the ways we have evolved to construe that (or talk/ask
> about it) are deeply interwoven.
>
> Craig
>
> Robert Yates wrote: Colleagues, Whether grammar is a set of rules or
> a set of patterns (learned from the input we get) is a discussion that
> has occurred before on this list. If I understand the following
> correctly, (Craig writes:) "we are dealing with flexible, dynamic
> patterns sustained and reinforced by use" then the claim is that we do
> not know very much about grammatical categories. Such categories are the
> result of the "patterns" we are exposed to. There are all kinds of
> examples I could cite to show how such a common sense idea is
> problematic, but let's consider two pairs of sentences. Sentences 1 and
> 2 clearly have different meanings. 1) Bob needs someone to work for. 2)
> Bob needs someone to work for him. In 1, Bob wants to be the worker, and
> in 2, Bob is an employer. What is the "pattern" we acquired that lead to
> those interpretations? It is not just the presence or absence of the
> pronoun. Sentences 3 and 4 have the same meaning. 3) These are the
> letters Bob threw away without reading. 4) There are the letters Bob
> threw away without reading them. Without making reference to abstract
> grammatical categories, I have no idea how to explain the meanings of
> sentences 1-4. These sentences suggest there is something incomplete in
> a claim that our knowledge of language is based on patterns we perceive
> from the input. Finally, Craig and I fundamentally agree on one point.
> There are those who say there is little value in making these conscious.
> I would disagree with that as well. I could not agree more -- there is
> great value in making conscious the knowledge of language that we all
> have. Bob Yates, University of Central Missouri
> Craig Hancock 9/16/2010 7:47 AM >>> Eduard,
> I agree that we are in rough agreement and apologize for making my
> post seem like something else. A big question might be whether the
> "rules" are there before use (and thus predetermine it to large extent)
> or whether we are dealing with flexible, dynamic patterns sustained and
> reinforced by use. I would embrace the latter, sometimes called
> "usage-based." Some people would see grammatical forms as meaning-neutral
> (semantically and pragmatically), with meanings added through the
> lexicon. It is also possible to see that they are meaningful in their own
> right, deeply tied to both cognition and discourse. Patterns are
> sustained to the extent that we find them highly productive. From this
> view, form ENABLES rather than constrains. The rules of prescriptive
> grammar tell us what we are not supposed to do. But without the natural
> grammar, no substantial meaning is possible. Frequency of a construct can
> also make us unaware of the contributions it is making. There are those
> who say there is little value in making these conscious. I would disagree
> with that as well. To me, the challenge has always been how to present
> views like this on the list as perspective, not as argument. People like
> Bybee are doing wonderful work along these lines, and it would be good
> for the list to be aware of it. Craig Eduard Hanganu wrote:
> Craig, I have no problem with the way you express the matters because I
> don't see too much of a difference between what I state and what you
> state. True, some elements of a category (word class) are more central
> and reflect better the basic characteristics of that class. Other
> elements are borderline or peripheral, and their characteristics
> intersect with or overlap the characteristics of peripheral or borderline
> elements of another class. On the whole, though, there are "standard"
> elements of word classes, and there are "peripheral" elements of such
> word classes. Denial of such facts, though, is a denial of the empirical
> evidence that concerns what I stated above. Some people continue to
> believe that the Latin language structure is artificially superimposed on
> the English language, but they forget that language is a social
> phenomenon, and that we humans do construct language structure implicitly
> or explicitly. This fact is evident from information collected from
> humans who had never been socialized in language. Those people don't
> speak a human language, and if they are beyond the critical period of
> language acquisition they are never able to acquire language, except for
> a few unstructured rudiments. If there is an "universal grammar" as
> Chomsky has been claiming for more than five decades, no linguist or
> other kind of scholar has been able to provide evidence for the claim.
> So, we remain with what is observable: language is a human construct, and
> whether we differentiate between acquisition and learning or not, the
> bare truth is that without socialization in language no human will speak
> a human language. Eduard ----- Original Message ----- From: Craig
> Hancock Date: Wednesday, September 15, 2010 19:16 Subject: Re: like To:
> [log in to unmask] Eduard, I would express it
> somewhat differently. Frequency is often self-reinforcing. Frequency
> makes something more accessible for use, which in turn makes it more
> frequent. And so on. I just asked a friend how she likes her new job
> (from teacher to counselor), and she said "I'm liking it." It occured to
> me that she might not have said that without the influence of the
> McDonald's ad. Progressive is not common with stative verbs, but an ad
> campaign can change that. Rather than intersection of word classes,
> it might be more of an issue of centrality. Some elements of the category
> are more central than others, some more borderline or peripheral. You
> also have a tendency (from that cognitive frame of reference) to see far
> more lower level constructions. It's much more a lexico-grammar than a
> set of abstract rules. (Pattern is closer than rule.) A great deal of
> language includes set constructions, many of them with their own more
> local patterns. So it could be that "like" brings with it a unique kind
> of grammar. Craig> Geoff, You probably did not
> have time to read "Frequency of Use and the Organization of Language" by
> Joan Bybee, in which the author, after decades of research, documents
> that language organizes itself, and that
> parts of speech or word classes are not an idiot's fantasy,
> but one way in which language
> acquires and shows structure. These word classes
> are real, and understanding them makes a great
> difference when one learns a
> language. That difference goes beyond boundaries, which are
> nothing more than points at which word
> classes intersect. To inflate the importance of
> these points of intersection to a generality (which is
> a fallacy) shows lack of
> understanding of the role of morphology and syntax in the production and
> conveyance of meaning - the main functions of
> language.> Eduard ----- Original Message -----
> From: Geoffrey Layton Date: Wednesday, September 15, 2010 16:13 Subject:
> Re: like To: [log in to unmask] Craig
> - I know we've had this discussion before, but my reaction is "what
> difference does it make what we call it?" I don't see how you can have
> anything except flexible boundaries, which then leads to the more
> interesting question of the rhetorical effect of "shading" into a verb -
> what happens to the meaning of the sentence? Labeling the choices as
> preopositions, adjectives or verbs really doesn't go very far to answer
> this question. Geoff Layton Craig,
> My first reaction was that this use of "like" was adjectival,
> but since you want a traditional treatment I
> checked the OED Online and Merriam Webster Dictionary Online. Both treat
> as an adjective, although MW doesn't have an example with BE.
> Herb
> I am curious about how traditional grammar handles "like"
> in a
> sentence like "One of these things is not like the others." (I know;
> Sesame Street). My instinct is to say
> "like the others" is prepositional
> phrase, complement to "is", therefore referring back (adjectivally?) to
> "One of these things." Would that be standard?
> If it can be easily replaced by "resembles" (or "doesn't
> resemble"), does that mean "be like" is shading
> into a verb like status with "the others" as object? Are we OK with
> flexible boundaries around our categories?
> Craig To join or leave this
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