Kiani's TAC 2016 (French, Croatian, German, Latin)

[dEhiN]

But poor or non-existent explanation about common grammatical devices within the language is (to me) totally different from explanation of grammatical rules being broken by natives within certain contexts.

[linguoboy]

But poor or non-existent explanation about common grammatical devices within the language is (to me) totally different from explanation of grammatical rules being broken by natives within certain contexts.

How do you distinguish the two?

[dEhiN]

But poor or non-existent explanation about common grammatical devices within the language is (to me) totally different from explanation of grammatical rules being broken by natives within certain contexts.

How do you distinguish the two?

Well I'll use Meera's example from a few posts back of main don hoon.

If a text aimed at teaching basic grammar to Hindi children never explained that basic word order is SOV, that would be an example of the former. As a result, while a Hindi speaking child might internalize the SOV word order, and yet still understand the lyrics in the song Main Hoon Don, a foreigner would probably have a harder time realizing one is the common pattern and the other is an exception.

But if that text did explain the basic word order in Hindi, the foreigner would know the common pattern. And upon seeing the exception, be able to recognize it as such in the same way the Hindi child would.

[vijayjohn]

But you can't tell whether it's one or the other without already knowing a lot about the construction in question beforehand, can you? That's the problem I see. It's precisely because we know that Hindi is SOV that we can say that a grammar that fails to mention SOV word order at all is failing to explain a basic rule of the language's grammar, whereas a grammar that doesn't talk about when word order in Hindi can be something other than SOV is failing to explain the exceptions to that rule. But the problem is that we don't even know a lot of these languages' rules, so we're not really in a position to say whether this is about grammars failing to explain the rules or failing to explain the exceptions.

If that makes sense.

[dEhiN]

Yeah that makes sense.

[linguoboy]

But you can't tell whether it's one or the other without already knowing a lot about the construction in question beforehand, can you? That's the problem I see. It's precisely because we know that Hindi is SOV that we can say that a grammar that doesn't talk about variations in word order is failing to explain a grammar rule being broken in certain contexts, whereas a grammar that fails to mention SOV word order at all is failing to explain a basic fact of the language's grammar. But the problem is that we don't even know a lot of these languages' rules, so we're not really in a position to say whether this is about grammars failing to explain the rules or failing to explain the exceptions.

Don't you see that it begs the question to say "we know that Hindi is SOV" if we also know that it has "variations in word order" which are not SOV? SOV is only a tendency (just as SVO is for English--Or is this not a grammatical English sentence because it's VSO?) so no actual grammatical rule is necessarily being "broken" when it isn't strictly followed, only a paedagogical one.

[vijayjohn]

So then what's the definition of a "grammatical rule"? What's the difference between a "rule" and a "tendency"?

[Meera]

But poor or non-existent explanation about common grammatical devices within the language is (to me) totally different from explanation of grammatical rules being broken by natives within certain contexts.

How do you distinguish the two?

Well I'll use Meera's example from a few posts back of main don hoon.

If a text aimed at teaching basic grammar to Hindi children never explained that basic word order is SOV, that would be an example of the former. As a result, while a Hindi speaking child might internalize the SOV word order, and yet still understand the lyrics in the song Main Hoon Don, a foreigner would probably have a harder time realizing one is the common pattern and the other is an exception.

But if that text did explain the basic word order in Hindi, the foreigner would know the common pattern. And upon seeing the exception, be able to recognize it as such in the same way the Hindi child would.

David when that movie came out I wasn't that far into Hindi and still understood he was saying "I am Don." It really isn't that bad to figure out. I think that Hindi textbooks actually do a good job at teaching word order, I mean the good textbooks anyway. Word order in songs and poetry and slang and even dialects change considerably in a lot of languages. A lead gangster in a mafia movie like Don is probably not going to have perfect word order, neither is a lower class person uneducated is not going to have perfect word order or perfect grammar. This is true in all languages. Plus many people speak Hindi as a second language and incorporate the grammar of their mother tongue.I If you stick to textbook grammar you should be understood and generally understand whats being said. I thought word order in English was pretty confusing too.

[vijayjohn]

Non-SOV word order is pretty common outside songs in Hindi, too.

[dEhiN]

But you can't tell whether it's one or the other without already knowing a lot about the construction in question beforehand, can you? That's the problem I see. It's precisely because we know that Hindi is SOV that we can say that a grammar that fails to mention SOV word order at all is failing to explain a basic rule of the language's grammar, whereas a grammar that doesn't talk about when word order in Hindi can be something other than SOV is failing to explain the exceptions to that rule. But the problem is that we don't even know a lot of these languages' rules, so we're not really in a position to say whether this is about grammars failing to explain the rules or failing to explain the exceptions.

If that makes sense.

Actually I'm editing what I wrote earlier. What you wrote makes sense in a way, but it doesn't invalidate my point.

When I wrote common grammatical devices, I meant things like word order, which exists in every language. The details vary - what order, how fixed it is, etc. But my original point was that if a language text didn't explain what words go where, to me that's totally different from saying "this word goes here" and then failing to include an exception like “except in poetry where it can go there.” Stop thinking of my example with Hindi as specific and extrapolate and generalize.

So that's how I distinguish the two - the first is the bare bones of grammar for that language being talked about, and the second is details for specific situations.

Keep in mind this I make this distinction because linguoboy's original point was that some native language texts don't teach the rules as pertaining to a subset of reality. (IE, the word normally goes here but in poetry goes there). And Vijay you then talked about native language texts for Malayalam which don't teach common everyday usage. (IE, this word goes here). So again I say, to me these are two different things.

[vijayjohn]

OK, I guess I kind of see your point, because sometimes it's pretty obvious that grammars are just leaving information out and at other times, you don't find something they failed to account for until you encounter certain examples IRL. That being said, I don't think linguoboy was only talking about songs or poetry or saying anything about whether something normally occurs or not within the language (how is he supposed to know that anyway?).

Also, from my perspective, I would say the thing is that both of these problems are common enough in grammars for these languages that I'm not sure I see the practical purpose of making a distinction between them. If you're learning one of these languages, you have to figure out how to fill in the gaps either way, right? What is the crucial difference between "huh, these grammars don't even answer this basic question about the language's grammar. I wonder what the answer is!" and "huh, I have a question about this real-world example, and these grammars don't even answer it. I wonder what the answer is!"?

[dEhiN]

What is the crucial difference between "huh, these grammars don't even answer this basic question about the language's grammar. I wonder what the answer is!" and "huh, I have a question about this real-world example, and these grammars don't even answer it. I wonder what the answer is!"?

Dac, je comprends ton point. Et oui, t'as raison.

[Meera]

OK, I guess I kind of see your point, because sometimes it's pretty obvious that grammars are just leaving information out and at other times, you don't find something they failed to account for until you encounter certain examples IRL. That being said, I don't think linguoboy was only talking about songs or poetry or saying anything about whether something normally occurs or not within the language (how is he supposed to know that anyway?).

Also, from my perspective, I would say the thing is that both of these problems are common enough in grammars for these languages that I'm not sure I see the practical purpose of making a distinction between them. If you're learning one of these languages, you have to figure out how to fill in the gaps either way, right? What is the crucial difference between "huh, these grammars don't even answer this basic question about the language's grammar. I wonder what the answer is!" and "huh, I have a question about this real-world example, and these grammars don't even answer it. I wonder what the answer is!"?

Because with the languages that I have at least studied, if you have studied the formal grammar or textbook grammars you will be able to figure it out like natives do. You can not rely on a book to tell you every colloquialism the language has, they are teaching you the educated version of the language. Textbooks and grammars will never make you like a native in a language, you have to have real life examples but if you have a foundation you can likely put it together if you listen to it constantly. You can train your ear to hear it once you have a good grasp on standard grammar rules. When you are first learning English it is nearly impossible to understand what they are saying in an English song. I never learned in ESL why so many singers say "baby" in their songs. I wondered why English had so many songs about babies. No English textbook ever taught things like saying "you know? You know what I mean?" or why native speakers say things like "And yeah." I was taught in ESL never to start a sentence with and, but natives do it all the time and I picked that up just listening to natives. I'm in Philly where people say "yous/yous guys" all the time. ESL never taught me this. A grammar book never taught me this. When people first said that to me you know? I was like "do I know what?". I learned from other native speakers people mainly just answer "yeah." You learn from watching and listening. Natives break rules and use colloquialisms, it doesn't mean a foreign beginner should do it. A grammar and textbook is teaching you the most formal and standardized way to talk so you can make yourself understood when talking to other speakers. If you have that foundation you can easily start to guess at things and pretty much figure out what is being said. Some things just come with knowing the language.

[linguoboy]

So then what's the definition of a "grammatical rule"? What's the difference between a "rule" and a "tendency"?

For instance, it's a grammatical rule that certain inflectional endings are suffixed. The plural of dog is dogs; *sdog is simply not a wordform which belongs to the recognised lexicon of English.

On the other hand, number agreement in verbs is more a tendency. When a Yorkshireman says "It were magic!" or a Texan sings "She don't love you", I still recognise that as English--nonstandard, dialectal English, to be sure, but it doesn't jar me to hear it and, under the right conditions, either sentence is one I might say myself. I wouldn't teach people learning the language to speak that way, but I would warn them that this is something they should be prepared to hear.

Does that help?

[vijayjohn]

Yeah, I think it does. Thanks!