~contraction chat ft. Louie~

[Kovvy]

Sentence-diagrams. I use the X-bar method. Basically, when you're saying something like "you can not go to the movies", if you write out a syntax tree you can plainly see that "can" and "not" aren't really connected. "Not" is basically on the same level as "go to the movies".

Word. I haven't diagrammed sentences since elementary school (and that might have just been labeling which ones were nouns and which were verbs), but I don't have any difficulty understanding the differences.

So what is the verdict on contractions, then?

Also, another comment about that hilarious Louie.

[Edminster]

I have never diagrammed a sentence in my life nor do I have the language to explain anything about grammar aside from knowing what nouns, verbs, adjectives, and prepositions are. What I am saying is that LR even if you went to the trouble of making pictures you would have to make more pictures explaining what the hell those pictures mean.

[Kovvy]

There will be a test.

[LordRetard]

Word. I haven't diagrammed sentences since elementary school (and that might have just been labeling which ones were nouns and which were verbs), but I don't have any difficulty understanding the differences.

Oh I never did sentence diagrams in elementary school. I went to college for drawing sentence diagrams. I think my parents had much higher hopes for me, but hey, I'm not the one in music so at least I'm not the most disappointing child.

I have never diagrammed a sentence in my life nor do I have the language to explain anything about grammar aside from knowing what nouns, verbs, adjectives, and prepositions are. What I am saying is that LR even if you went to the trouble of making pictures you would have to make more pictures explaining what the hell those pictures mean.

If you want, you can take my word for it that under certain conditions contractions can become "blocked". A fun example is "gonna"; you can say "I'm going to watch a movie" or "I'm gonna watch a movie" but you can't say *"I'm gonna a movie". You have to say "I'm going to a movie". This is often used as evidence of some of the underlying grammar structures that have been speculated.

[Edminster]

So what you are saying is: English is so complicated that even the people who study it for a living have no idea how the hell some of it works. Correct?

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

But yeah I managed to get the bit about how sometimes contractions don't work from wikipedia before I became stranded in a sea of words I don't understand so I am kinda glad that even linguists don't understand why it works like that and not just me.

[LordRetard]

So what you are saying is: English is so complicated that even the people who study it for a living have no idea how the hell some of it works. Correct?

That's something very far from what I'm saying. I don't study English, I don't make any money yet, and I don't understand it very well only because I haven't really studied this very well, while people who are very familiar with universal grammar understand it quite well. Also, I've never said that English is more complicated than other languages because frankly that doesn't make any sense.

[Kovvy]

Yeah, so I'm pretty sure I've never diagrammed a sentence then. I wanted to major in linguistics, but by the time I realized just how much I would have preferred it to literature, I was only a semester from graduating and far too lazy and broke to deviate from my plotted course. Linguistics is way more interesting to me, though. I recently read the book Proust and the Squid; have you heard of it? A friend of mine lent it to me, and I really liked it, though I'm afraid I don't have very good fact retention... I should re-read it. Anyway, it would probably all be old hat to you, but you might like it.

I think English is so complicated because it's basically a mish-mash of a bunch of other languages. That's something that I really like about it, though I understand it makes things different for ESL people. Also, language keeps evolving as time goes on, and I'm pretty sure that no one knows why most of the changes happen. Fascinating, and frustrating.

[Edminster]

Oh. Well damn I feel stupid now. I guess I looked too far into what

This is often used as evidence of some of the underlying grammar structures that have been speculated.

was intending to say. To me it sounds like the experts haven't proven why things work that way, just that they do.

e: also i never said English was more complicated than any other languages, i just said it's pretty damn complicated

[LordRetard]

Yeah, so I'm pretty sure I've never diagrammed a sentence then. I wanted to major in linguistics, but by the time I realized just how much I would have preferred it to literature, I was only a semester from graduating and far too lazy and broke to deviate from my plotted course. Linguistics is way more interesting to me, though. I recently read the book Proust and the Squid; have you heard of it? A friend of mine lent it to me, and I really liked it, though I'm afraid I don't have very good fact retention... I should re-read it. Anyway, it would probably all be old hat to you, but you might like it.

I'm not familiar with this book. What's it about?

I think English is so complicated because it's basically a mish-mash of a bunch of other languages.

This is not true. It is a west germanic language with lots of borrowings from Old French due to historical reasons. A creole like Haitian is a better example of a "mish-mash of languages", but again the vocabulary is French and the syntax is from a West African language.

Oh. Well damn I feel stupid now. I guess I looked too far into what

This is often used as evidence of some of the underlying grammar structures that have been speculated.

was intending to say. To me it sounds like the experts haven't proven why things work that way, just that they do.

In all fairness I kind of look at Chomsky's universal grammar and go "how could this possibly seem natural? How does this make sense?" It works in a lot of ways but it's elegant in all the wrong places. In all honesty I think that these contractions are invalid for a better reason, but I can't really explain my ideas that well at this juncture so I'm sticking to the "accepted" answer.

e: also i never said English was more complicated than any other languages, i just said it's pretty damn complicated

This is true. Language is, well, kinda complicated. I don't really understand it myself!

[FengharTheNord]

The latest episode of louie was really funny. I especially like the part where the plane looks like it's about to crash. Louie says some really funny stuff at that part. Also I like when Louie kisses the policeman. That was also funny. No depressing parts in this one though. Just really really funny.

[Kovvy]

I'm not familiar with this book. What's it about?

I think English is so complicated because it's basically a mish-mash of a bunch of other languages.

This is not true. It is a west germanic language with lots of borrowings from Old French due to historical reasons. A creole like Haitian is a better example of a "mish-mash of languages", but again the vocabulary is French and the syntax is from a West African language.

Well, it's more a book about the science and origin of written language than linguistics, but it's still very interesting. I think it was in this book (though it might have been a different book that I read just before it... I can't remember the title of that one, though) that had some interesting sentence diagramming in it toward the beginning. I think it used the syntax tree format that you mentioned.

Hmm, maybe I shouldn't be talking about this since I don't know too much about it, but this is the Internet, so I'll go ahead anyway.
I've only studied three languages: English, Japanese, and Spanish. Now, obviously English is hardly a creole or a pidgin language, but it does seem to me that it is much less homogeneous than other languages. As you said, it is West Germanic with lots of French in it, and it has many grammar rules from Latin and words and pronunciations from still others.
Again, this might just be because of my limited exposure to foreign languages, but I think that might be part of what makes English such a hard language to learn if you're not a native speaker. Though I guess "mish-mash" might have been an exaggeration.

The latest episode of louie was really funny. I especially like the part where the plane looks like it's about to crash. Louie says some really funny stuff at that part. Also I like when Louie kisses the policeman. That was also funny. No depressing parts in this one though. Just really really funny.

Whaaat, no depressing parts? Now this I have to see. What episode number is it on now?

[LordRetard]

Ooh, ¡he estudiado español también! Also I'm really bad at it. Going to Spain in half a year!

I don't really know why English has a reputation of being hard to learn aside from not having phonemic spelling like, say, Spanish. I'll look into it later today; I need to go now. The syntax of English is in fact far more complicated than Latin, actually (though the morphology is extremely analytical, like Chinese; not so say that this is more than coincidence), so I don't really see why you think English has grammar rules from Latin. The phonology of English is also pretty different from any language I know of.

[smiley_cow]

One of my French professors was a linguist and he once said that one of the things that makes English hard to learn (he was a francophone, and actually the only French prof I ever had who could speak proper English) was a lack of clear grammatical rules.

For example, if you want to use the past tense in French, there are clear rules telling you which tense to use when. Passé composer is used to talk about a finished fact in the French, while imparfait is used to describe the past, while plus que parfait is used for the past of the past, etc... In English, though native speakers have no problems knowing when to use the did tense, they have a hard time explaining it.

I imagine the fact that English has one of the world's largest vocabularies doesn't help things much either.

That being said, I've also heard English is one of the easiest languages to be understood in. i.e. you don't need a really strong grasp of the language in order to speak it and be understood. It's only a hard language to learn if you want to learn to speak it perfectly.

[Kovvy]

Ooh, ¡he estudiado español también! Also I'm really bad at it. Going to Spain in half a year!

I don't really know why English has a reputation of being hard to learn aside from not having phonemic spelling like, say, Spanish. I'll look into it later today; I need to go now. The syntax of English is in fact far more complicated than Latin, actually (though the morphology is extremely analytical, like Chinese; not so say that this is more than coincidence), so I don't really see why you think English has grammar rules from Latin. The phonology of English is also pretty different from any language I know of.

Haha, well, I just studied it for a few years in middle and high school, so I've forgotten most of it by now anyway. Sweet, Spain sounds awesome! And I'm sure it'll improve your skills to be immersed in a Spanish-speaking country. Where will you be? My sister really wants to go there to teach English. Her Spanish is way better than mine.

Man, why do you have to keep doing things like throw an "I don't really see why you think" in there? I'm a delicate flower and it makes me feel dumb and sad.
Obviously the grammars are not identical, but there are some rules that were explained to me as being that way since that's how it was in Latin. I think they come from people long ago deciding that English should be more like Latin, since Latin was the language of scholars... The only examples I can think of at the moment are not splitting infinitives and not ending sentences with prepositions.
I think the phonology and inconsistent pronunciation have a lot to do with English being difficult, and all the homophones and the like. We also have a lot of irregular verbs, and the ordering of words in a sentence or phrase is pretty important. Just the little things that we all know subconsciously that allow us to sound 'natural.'

That being said, I've also heard English is one of the easiest languages to be understood in. i.e. you don't need a really strong grasp of the language in order to speak it and be understood. It's only a hard language to learn if you want to learn to speak it perfectly.

That's true, we can make up words and do pretty much any crazy thing we want and still be understood, if we do it right.

[FengharTheNord]

@Kovvy - It's episode 5!