English, Jack
Second thoughts on English and how she's taught
Thursday, December 04, 2014
Thursday, November 06, 2014
Useful examples for language learners
The odd choices of example sentences that sometimes show up in these "teach yourself to speak..." type books along with phrase books has been rightly mocked in the past. In fact, the subtext of this blog's title references just such a phrase book.
Monday, October 06, 2014
On meeting 'otiose' twice again
I asked Mark Liberman to have a look at what I wrote yesterday since I was struggling to get my head around the probabilities. He was kind enough to write the following guest post:
Maybe a better way of thinking about it is this:
The above is a guest post by Mark Liberman.
Maybe a better way of thinking about it is this:
Say
the probability that word w_i will be selected at random from a
collection of text is P(w_i). Then assuming independence, the
probability that the next word will NOT be w_i is (1-P(w_i)), and the
probability of failing to find w_i in N successive draws is
(1-P(w_i))^N
If P(w_i) is 1/10^7 (one in ten million), and N is 1000, then we get
(1-(1/10^7))^1000
which
is 0.9999. So if we take notice of a rare-ish (P = 1/10000000) word,
and draw 1,000 other words at random looking to see it again, then 9,999
times out of 10,0000, we'll fail to find the moderately rare word we
were waiting for. And if we draw 10,000 additional words instead of
1,000, the probability of failure is still
(1-(1/10^7))^10000 = 0.999
so we're still gonna fail 999 times out of a thousand.
But
the thing is, Rare Words Are Common. That is, a large proportion of
word tokens belong to relatively rare types. So suppose that there are
10,000 other words of approximately equal rareness, and every time we
see one of them, we set a subconscious process to watch for recurrences
of that word within the next thousand instances
If
we do this a thousand times, then the chances of failure (for a
thousand instances of noting a rare word and looking for it to occur
again) become
((1-(1/10^7))^1000)^1000 = about 0.9
or
((1-(1/10^7))^10000)^1000 = about 0.368
So
if you do enough reading for these conditions to be satisfied once a
day, you should expect to have this experience several times a week.
Now,
none of this reasoning really applies, because you aren't picking words
at random from a well-mixed urn, you're reading them in order in
coherent text. And words in coherent text are far from independent
Bernoulli trials -- when a rare word appears, the probability that it
will appear again before long in the same text is massively increased by
topic effects (and to a lesser extent style and priming effects). But
this just means that the experience should be more common rather than
less common -- unless you insist that the texts be separate and on
different topics, and so forth, in which case it gets complicated.
But
still, I think that the real puzzle is not why you had this apparently
odd experience, but why such we occasionally notice the kinds of
coincidences that are in fact rather common.
This
is not an unimportant question, since it has a lot to do with the
genesis of superstition (and probably science, for that matter...)
The above is a guest post by Mark Liberman.
Sunday, October 05, 2014
On meeting 'otiose' twice in a day
Well, not in the same day, but certainly within a 24-hour period. As I was lying in bed last night, reading Charles Mann's 1493, I came across the phrase the otiose Percy on p. 78.
As of this morning, I've read to p. 90, so that's about 4,500 words later. I also read a few NY Times articles, adding perhaps another 1,200 words. And then I set about to edit an article for Contact, the TESL Ontario magazine for which I'm the editor. Almost immediately, I came across a quote from David Crystal in which he wonders,
As of this morning, I've read to p. 90, so that's about 4,500 words later. I also read a few NY Times articles, adding perhaps another 1,200 words. And then I set about to edit an article for Contact, the TESL Ontario magazine for which I'm the editor. Almost immediately, I came across a quote from David Crystal in which he wonders,
whether the presence of a global language will eliminate the demand for world translation services, or whether the economics of automatic translation will so undercut the cost of global language learning that the latter will become otiose.
Tuesday, September 02, 2014
A title misparsed
This morning, I was reading this article at New Statesman, when I came across the following:
That is to say, I took orange to be a postpositive modifier of clockwork (like proof positive, governor general, the city proper, etc.) instead of clockwork as an attributive modifier of orange, like this:
This was, I must admit and odd and, even to me, puzzling title, but then it's an odd and puzzling book, so I just rolled with it. As I say, it was the plural oranges that made me see the light: adjectives don't do plurals.
I somehow overlooked the frequency of clockwork as a modifier, which should have tipped me off: in COCA, almost 40% of all instances of clockwork are attributive modifiers. Another thing that I was aware of, but which just seemed like more of the weirdness, is that clockwork is rarely--but sometimes--countable, so a clockwork is kinda weird, but not totally beyond the pale.
Perhaps one thing the pushed me to the first analysis was the stress pattern. Usually, an NP with a noun as modifier gets the main stress in the NP. It's a
Whatever the reason, what really impressed me is how decades of misapprehension can be overcome by a single choice example.
Yet surely, when night after night atrocities are served up to us as entertainment, it's worth some anxiety. We become clockwork oranges if we accept all this pop culture without asking what's in it.The plural clockwork oranges suddenly threw into sharp relief the title of Burgess's book A clockwork orange. For some reason that I am unable to articulate now, if I ever was aware of it, I had always parsed that title like this:
That is to say, I took orange to be a postpositive modifier of clockwork (like proof positive, governor general, the city proper, etc.) instead of clockwork as an attributive modifier of orange, like this:
This was, I must admit and odd and, even to me, puzzling title, but then it's an odd and puzzling book, so I just rolled with it. As I say, it was the plural oranges that made me see the light: adjectives don't do plurals.
I somehow overlooked the frequency of clockwork as a modifier, which should have tipped me off: in COCA, almost 40% of all instances of clockwork are attributive modifiers. Another thing that I was aware of, but which just seemed like more of the weirdness, is that clockwork is rarely--but sometimes--countable, so a clockwork is kinda weird, but not totally beyond the pale.
Perhaps one thing the pushed me to the first analysis was the stress pattern. Usually, an NP with a noun as modifier gets the main stress in the NP. It's a
- FAculty office, not faculty OFfice,
- SOCcer ball, not soccer BALL, and
- poLICE officers, not police OFficers.
Whatever the reason, what really impressed me is how decades of misapprehension can be overcome by a single choice example.
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
Antedating "determinative"
The OED gives:
§180. We should expect the genitive of the personal pronoun ("of me," &c., as in Modern German)—and there may have been a time when this use prevailed—but, so far as I know, the language decided in favour of the more complicated construction "of mine, of thine," &c.
This was, in all probability, brought about by the analogy of the very numerous cases in which the indeterminative noun connected with mine, &c., had a really partitive sense (cf. the examples below), and, further, by the remembrance of the old construction with the possessive pronoun.
And later:
b. Gram. determinative adjective, determinative pronoun, etc. (see quots.); determinative compound = tatpurusha n.
Today, I was reading Kellner's Historical outlines of English syntax from 1892 and came across the following on pp. 113–114 (emphasis added):1921 E. Sapir Lang. vi. 135 The words of the typical suffixing languages (Turkish, Eskimo, Nootka) are ‘determinative’ formations, each added element determining the form of the whole anew.1924 H. E. Palmer Gram. Spoken Eng. ii. 24 To group with the pronouns all determinative adjectives..shortening the term to determinatives.1933 L. Bloomfield Language xiv. 235 One can..distinguish..determinative (attributive or subordinative) compounds (Sanskrit tatpurusha). 1961 R. B. Long Sentence & its Parts 486 The, a, and every are exceptional among the determinative pronouns in requiring stated heads.
In Old English the possessive pronoun, or, as the French say, "pronominal adjective," expresses only the conception of belonging and possession ; it is a real adjective, and does not convey, as at present, the idea of determination. If, therefore, Old English authors want to make such nouns determinative, they add the definite article :
"hæleð min se leofa" (my dear warrior). —Elene, 511.
"ðu eart dohtor min seo dyreste" (thou art my dearest daughter). —Juliana, 193.
§179. In Middle English the possessive pronoun apparently has a determinative meaning (as in Modern English, Modern therefore its connection; German, and Modern French) with the definite article is made superfluous, while the indefinite article is quite impossible. Hence arises a certain
embarrassment with regard to one case which the language cannot do
without.
Suppose we want to say "she is in a castle belonging to her,"
where it is of no importance what-ever, either to the speaker or
hearer, to know whether "she" has got more than one castle how could the
English of the Middle period put it? The French of the same age said still "un sien castel," but that was no longer possible in English.
§180. We should expect the genitive of the personal pronoun ("of me," &c., as in Modern German)—and there may have been a time when this use prevailed—but, so far as I know, the language decided in favour of the more complicated construction "of mine, of thine," &c.
This was, in all probability, brought about by the analogy of the very numerous cases in which the indeterminative noun connected with mine, &c., had a really partitive sense (cf. the examples below), and, further, by the remembrance of the old construction with the possessive pronoun.
Later on, the possessive pronoun apparently implies a determinative meaning (as in Modern German and Modern French) ; therefore its connection with the definite article is made superfluous, while the indefinite article is quite impossible. Instead of the old construction we find henceforth what may be termed the genitive pseudo-partitive. See above, 178–180.
Monday, July 07, 2014
Proscribing, narrowly
Over at the NYT, Alexander Nazaryan has a rather strident article about "The fallacy of balanced literacy." Therein, he writes, "balanced literacy is an especially irresponsible
approach, given that New York State has adopted the federal Common Core
standards, which skew toward a narrowly proscribed list of texts,
many of them nonfiction." [Now changed to narrowly prescribed.]
These texts are prescribed. That is, they're imposed, not declared unacceptable or invalid. Nevertheless, the Google Books corpus suggests narrowly proscribed is a new and growing phrase.
So, I'm curious: was this simply a typo, or did he have in mind some metaphor of narrowing down by proscription. Or was it something else?
These texts are prescribed. That is, they're imposed, not declared unacceptable or invalid. Nevertheless, the Google Books corpus suggests narrowly proscribed is a new and growing phrase.
So, I'm curious: was this simply a typo, or did he have in mind some metaphor of narrowing down by proscription. Or was it something else?
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