English questions

[Travis B.]

I'm used to names/adjectives referring to religious groups being capitalized in English myself; not just Catholics or Protestants, but also Lutherans, Calvinists, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Pentecostals, Mormons, Orthodox, Muslims, Sunnis, Shi'ites, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains, Taoists, Shintoists, Rastafarians, Scientologists (whether these form a religious group, of course, is a question unto itself), and so on and so forth.

[Raphael]

I'm used to names/adjectives referring to religious groups being capitalized in English myself; not just Catholics or Protestants, but also Lutherans, Calvinists, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Pentecostals, Mormons, Orthodox, Muslims, Sunnis, Shi'ites, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains, Taoists, Shintoists, Rastafarians, Scientologists (whether these form a religious group, of course, is a question unto itself), and so on and so forth.

Thank you! Hm, out of your list, Lutherans and Calvinists are named after the surnames of specific men, and Anglicans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Pentecostals, Mormons, and Scientologists all seem to take their names from specific organizations, but the other groups are valid reasons to capitalize "Protestants" by analogy.

[WarpedWartWars]

(new subtopic-thing)

How much does English weigh?

(you can interpret that however you wish.)

(I just made a parenthetical-breaded sentence sandwich.)

[Kuchigakatai]

How much does English weigh?

6.23 pounds.

I suppose you may interpret this answer as you wish.

[WarpedWartWars]

How much does English weigh?

6.23 pounds.

I suppose you may interpret this answer as you wish.

Interesting. Or, as I'm learning German: Interessant.

May thou interpret this as thou wishest. (please correct any mistakes in my Early Modern English)

[LingEarth]

How much does English weigh?

Get an unabridged English dictionary, and a complete grammar of English, and a complete reference to English idioms. Put them on a scale together. That's how much English weighs.

[Raphael]

Get an unabridged English dictionary, and a complete grammar of English, and a complete reference to English idioms.

Do any of these actually exist?

[Rounin Ryuuji]

We do have the multi-volume OED.

[Travis B.]

A complete grammar of English, when one takes into account English dialects, almost certainly does not exist. Hell, we keep on discovering new things about English to this day, e.g. that there are non-voicing quality differences between English final /s/ and /z/ in many dialects.

[zompist]

Get an unabridged English dictionary, and a complete grammar of English, and a complete reference to English idioms.

Do any of these actually exist?

I haven't yet seen it, but Pullum & Huddleston's Cambridge Grammar of English, at 1860 pages, surely comes close to #2.

On the other hand, linguistics has traditionally shoved a whole bunch of phenomena outside the grammar: pragmatics, rhetoric, intonation, style, discourse analysis, and most of sociolinguistics.

when one takes into account English dialects

Linguistic grammars normally describe a single dialect. Besides, if we had a full description of standard UK or US English, describing another dialect would probably be only a fraction of the work.

An interesting question is how to treat language acquisition. Is child grammar part of adult grammar?

[Richard W]

Linguistic grammars normally describe a single dialect. Besides, if we had a full description of standard UK or US English, describing another dialect would probably be only a fraction of the work.

An interesting question is how to treat language acquisition. Is child grammar part of adult grammar?

ฺีBut there would be millions of idiolects! And many of us have several English idiolects.

Would child grammars be uniform enough for that not to also balloon?

[zompist]

ฺีBut there would be millions of idiolects! And many of us have several English idiolects.

Sure, but why does that matter? Do we need full documentation on every idiolect?

Now, what might be useful (e.g. for a foreign learner) is to know the range of variation.

Would child grammars be uniform enough for that not to also balloon?

Who knows? I think acquisition researchers fully expect both general tendencies, and massive individual variation.There's a lot of interest in what the stage are, when they appear, how they differ from adult grammar. But a lot of the data is based on individual children.

[Ares Land]

Who knows? I think acquisition researchers fully expect both general tendencies, and massive individual variation.There's a lot of interest in what the stage are, when they appear, how they differ from adult grammar. But a lot of the data is based on individual children.

That's about my conclusions, judging from a sample size of two

The general principle in toddler's grammar seems to overgeneralize all patterns. There are some different results (Kid #2 doesn't really speak quite in the same way Kid #1 used to), but a lot of overlap anyway.
Both my kids use/used the same brute-force approach to the passé simple (*il disa) and to the verb complex (*je me suis enallé instead of... eh, come to think of it, I'd say je suis parti instead.)

Kids pick up a lot from their older siblings. All in all I think Kid #2 picked up a lot from her sister and picks up language faster as a result.

[zompist]

Both my kids use/used the same brute-force approach to the passé simple (*il disa) and to the verb complex (*je me suis enallé instead of... eh, come to think of it, I'd say je suis parti instead.)

That's really interesting... for an anglophone learner en is not easy, but neither is learning which verbs use être and which use avoir.

But... passé simple?? When do you actually speak using the passé simple?

(BTW I was watching an Astérix cartoon in French a bit tonight-- Astérix en Brétagne. It seems very faithful to the comic, but I feel it's worsened by being too slow. The British accents are cute, though again I like them better in print. Just suggesting a British accent with word choice was very clever; hearing it is merely what one would expect.)

[Ares Land]

Both my kids use/used the same brute-force approach to the passé simple (*il disa) and to the verb complex (*je me suis enallé instead of... eh, come to think of it, I'd say je suis parti instead.)

That's really interesting... for an anglophone learner en is not easy, but neither is learning which verbs use être and which use avoir.

But... passé simple?? When do you actually speak using the passé simple?

(BTW I was watching an Astérix cartoon in French a bit tonight-- Astérix en Brétagne. It seems very faithful to the comic, but I feel it's worsened by being too slow. The British accents are cute, though again I like them better in print. Just suggesting a British accent with word choice was very clever; hearing it is merely what one would expect.)

Bedtime stories! The passé simple comes up a lot in kid's stories. Both my kids use it when playing or telling themselves stories. The surprising thing is that they figured out really quickly when to use it... though not the actual verb forms.

Astérix chez les Bretons was, like, my favourite movie ever when I was six. I rewatched a few years ago, and well, it didn't live up to my childhood memories. It's really boring: way too slow and the jokes fall flat.
Check out Les Douze Travaux d'Astérix and Astérix et Cléopâtre (both the cartoon and the live action movie) though, they're very good!

(Speaking of children's classics, the Tintin animated series is highly watcheable. I didn't care for the Spielberg version though.)

[Raphael]

Check out Les Douze Travaux d'Astérix

I love the mountaintop scene so much!

[zompist]

But... passé simple?? When do you actually speak using the passé simple?

Bedtime stories! The passé simple comes up a lot in kid's stories. Both my kids use it when playing or telling themselves stories. The surprising thing is that they figured out really quickly when to use it... though not the actual verb forms.

Ah, that makes sense, neat!

Check out Les Douze Travaux d'Astérix and Astérix et Cléopâtre (both the cartoon and the live action movie) though, they're very good!

I'll look for them. Astérix et Cléopâtre is my favorite Astérix— the wit never flags.

[Travis B.]

when one takes into account English dialects

Linguistic grammars normally describe a single dialect. Besides, if we had a full description of standard UK or US English, describing another dialect would probably be only a fraction of the work.

The question this raises to me is "what is standard US English?" Are we speaking of an idealized General American, or the broad spectrum of varieties that most American would agree are "standard"? The former is likely to be detached from reality and anachronistic, while the latter runs into the immediate problem that "standard" US English isn't really all that coherent in the first place, which complicates writing a grammar for it.

An interesting question is how to treat language acquisition. Is child grammar part of adult grammar?

Interesting question - I remember from when I was little of having speech that really did not differ much from my adult English, except I used forms like caughten up more than I do today, I did not realize that drownded was deprecated (even though it is still natural for me to say that as an adult), and I did not strongly affricate /tr/ and /dr/ and both affricate and palatalize /str/ (which appears to me the case for some adults here today), and pronunciations such as si[ɕtɕ]er and ye[ɕtɕ]erday rather than si[sʲtʲ]er and ye[sʲtʲ]erday (even though I continued to still sporadically use the former pronunciations, and more recently I've largely re-adopted them). In many ways, how my speech changed was less changing from child speech to adult speech to changing from the English I learned at home to the English I interacted with with other kids at school. The only main exception to this was that at some point in middle or high school I adopted [z] for initial /ð/ instead of my native [t~t̪~d~d̪], which I then later abandoned, reverting to [t~t̪~d~d̪]; I am still not sure why I did this, considering that [z] is not a pronunciation found here for /ð/ at all except when assimilating to a preceding sibilant.

[keenir]

when one takes into account English dialects

Linguistic grammars normally describe a single dialect. Besides, if we had a full description of standard UK or US English, describing another dialect would probably be only a fraction of the work.

The question this raises to me is "what is standard US English?" Are we speaking of an idealized General American, or the broad spectrum of varieties that most American would agree are "standard"? The former is likely to be detached from reality and anachronistic, while the latter runs into the immediate problem that "standard" US English isn't really all that coherent in the first place, which complicates writing a grammar for it.

Long ago, it was explained to me that people on the national news try to speak in such a way as to not use regional dialects. State or county news sometimes does the same, and sometimes leans heavily on local dialects.

Assuming that that is true, would that make national newsreporters' English be a standard to use for this, or would it be classed as one more dialect to have listed in the table of contents?

[Travis B.]

Linguistic grammars normally describe a single dialect. Besides, if we had a full description of standard UK or US English, describing another dialect would probably be only a fraction of the work.

The question this raises to me is "what is standard US English?" Are we speaking of an idealized General American, or the broad spectrum of varieties that most American would agree are "standard"? The former is likely to be detached from reality and anachronistic, while the latter runs into the immediate problem that "standard" US English isn't really all that coherent in the first place, which complicates writing a grammar for it.

Long ago, it was explained to me that people on the national news try to speak in such a way as to not use regional dialects. State or county news sometimes does the same, and sometimes leans heavily on local dialects.

Assuming that that is true, would that make national newsreporters' English be a standard to use for this, or would it be classed as one more dialect to have listed in the table of contents?

But let's say we restrict our grammar to the speech of newscasters and news reporters. A newscaster from California is very likely to be cot-caught merged, while a newscaster from Illinois is almost certainly not going to be. Conversely, a newscaster from Illinois is very likely to have conditional raising of /aɪ/ before fortis obstruents while this is likely not going to be the case of a newscaster from California. These two cases represent very broad internal variations within even very "standard" US English.