>
> I want to return to the original claim: that focus on just form is
> less helpful in applied linguisitics than showing how form/meaning
> are related. There might very will be intonation differences in my
> example sentences with `but,' `however,' `although.' I wonder, even if we
could
> get the facts right, whether we would want to explain the difference with
> intonation differences or with movement differences.
I think your agreement that formal syntax is not very helpful above the
sentence level shows that functionalism is 'helpful in applied linguistics'.
As to intonation differences, they are hard to study, but not impossible,
and there is a lot of literature on this (Bolinger, I believe, is a star
in this area). Certainly, there are basic patterns that can be varied to
change the function of a sentence of a particular structure.
My appeal to intonation was more in the way of a proof that there is a
meaning/purpose difference that goes with the structural difference.
> Again, the claim was what explanations are helpful in applied linguistics.
> I can't come up with any clear discourse difference between please and enjoy
> and I doubt any one else can without doing some kind of corpus analysis.
But how else besides corpus analysis would you come up with it? Corpus
analysis is linguistics, and it renders explanations. it's doable, as
we've agreed, and has results. And students of language need to know
about language beyond the level of the sentence. Indeed, it is the
extreme focus on sentence-level form that a lot of people point to as the
cause of the failure of grammar teaching (not to mention formal linguistics!)
> Two points: 1) The difficulty of defining those discourse contexts
> as opposed to the absolute certainty we all have that the "experiencer" of
> enjoy is in the subject position and the "experiencer" of please is in the
> object position shows that we are dealing with different kind of knowledge
> about language.
Huh? What different kind of knowledge? lexical semantics (the argument
structure of verbs) vs. our knowledge of how those verbs get used in
discourse, and what kind of sentence patterns occur in which discourse
contexts? It may be true that lexical semantics is more specific and
regular than discourse patterning, but that doesn't mean that discourse
patterning doesn't exist, and that it can't be explanatory. I would fully
expect the 'enjoy' and 'please' sentences to occur in predictable
contexts. Some discourse analysts believe that our construction and
interpretation of large chunks of language is guided by structured
patterns that are associated with certain functions/meanings (using
meaning, again, in a very broad sense of how elements are foregrounded
and backgrounded for various purposes at various levels of language).
Their work is devoted to developing a vocabulary for talking about
discourse contexts and defining them such that they can be used to
explain usage.
It seems to me you're knocking the explanatory value of a kind of
linguistics that you aren't terribly familiar with. is this true?
2) Let us assume that the "bet" is right: there are different
> discourse contexts. What has been shown? Not a whole lot. Language use
> is creative. There are any number of sentences in this passage that are new,
> at least to me. I am using constructions that I have never used in any
> text before. Other than the typos that are here what kind of
> discourse principles are work that explain why any one structure is used over
> another?
I beg to differ -- you are using construction _types_ that recur again
and again and again; you are filling slots in them with different stuff.
That's the creativity of language -- being able to recombine stuff
according to a _restricted_ number of patterns. If you were being totally
creative, as we all know, communication would be impossible, because we
wouldn't know your rules for building the constructions! Those rules tell
us how to mesh the meanings of the slot-fillers in ways we can make sense
of. That's the meaning of syntax.
>
> The boundaries are notoriously hard to draw. I refer you do The Linguistics
> Wars by Randy Harris. From an applied linguistics perspective it is
important
> to look at some of the discourse contraints on certain forms but distribution
> is not explanation.
It is one _kind_ of explanation. It explains (a) why passive sentences
exist at all; (b) why they appear where they do in discourse.
>
> >Bob, can you tell me why we can say 'John resembles his father' but not
> >'John is resembling his father'; and why 'Sue knows the answer'can have
> >moment-of-speaking reference, while 'Sue builds a canoe' cannot?
>
> I will grant there are meaning contraints in the root verb on morphology.
> The progressive morphology changes aspect in other ways, too.
>
> 1) The girl hit the bully in the stomach.
> 2) The girl was hitting the bully in the stomach.
>
> In (1), one blow was made while in (2) several blows were made.
Except that (2) can be read as zeroing in (in slow motion, for example)
on a single event of hitting in progress. Not the default reading, though.
On the other,
> Quirk et al observe there is no difference between (3) and (4).
>
> 3) The weather changed before midnight.
> 4) The weather was changing before midnight.
>
I disagree with Quirk et al/.!!!
Can we add 'and it kept on changing through the wee hours' to both
sentences with equal facility? I can't.
As to the verb's semantics constraining the morphology, the morphology
has its own semantics that have to match up with the semantics of the
verb, and that's what causes the mismatch with 'John is resembling his
father'. One function of progressive is to indicate ongoing action
that involves change over time. Look how we can make the progressive OK
if we add the right adverbial:
Little John is resembling his father more and more every day.
In this sentence, the adverbial 'adjusts' the meaning of the verb such
that it suddenly is no longer stative, but indicates change over time:
increasing resemblance rather than just resemblance. The meaning of the
adverbial meshes nicely with the meaning of the progressive aspect, and
the sentence is OK. (The fact that 'resemble' admits degrees is also very
important here.)
> constraints in the root word on morphology. This is not to say that ALL
> form is related to meaning differences.
That's an empirical claim. Cognitive linguists would dispute it, and
claim that, indeed, all form differences reflect meaning differences, and
in fact, form differences exist IN ORDER TO convey meaning differences.
Some of these differences are very tiny, very hard to pin down or
describe, or the work has yet to be done to show them; sometimes the
differences amount to virtual zero, for practical purposes.
It's an extreme claim, and as such more of a challenge to us to test it
than something to put our absolute faith in. But it's the working
hypothesis of cognitive (and much functional) linguistics, and it is
getting results, from what I see in research and at conferences.
>
> I like the competence/performance distinction. As an applied linguist, I
> find it very useful to keep in mind when I am thinking about what kind of
> knowledge about language I am teaching. It seems that many do not find it
> a useful distinction and that is unfortunate.
>
You mean you never teach performance? Pragmatics, etc.? How to _use_
language in real situations? What good is mastery of a form if you don't
know the moment to use it?
Johanna
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Johanna Rubba Assistant Professor, Linguistics ~
English Department, California Polytechnic State University ~
San Luis Obispo, CA 93407 ~
Tel. (805)-756-2184 E-mail: [log in to unmask] ~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
|
