I recently looked up 'oh dear' in Wiktionary, hoping to find information about the phrase's origin. Whilst it was not terribly informative, I was amused by the example sentence: Oh dear, you seem to have forgotten to wear clothes.
This is an entry about language! Here are some facts about language that I enjoy.
- Children just beginning to learn to speak will often correctly use irregular verbs: for example, I went. However, when they are slightly older, they will begin to say I goed before returning to I went.
The theory is that at first the children are simply repeating what they hear. However, at some point they realise that adding -ed onto the end of a verb puts it into the past tense, and so they apply that rule universally, saying not only I looked and I wanted but I goed. Later, they realise that some verbs are exceptions to this rule and begin to say I went again.
This is interesting because it shows that children aren't simply parroting back what they hear; they are actually learning and applying grammatical rules. Awesome.
- In a verb string, the form of each verb is determined by the verb preceding it. For example:
I ride the unicorn
I am riding the unicorn - the use of am, a form of the progressive auxiliary to be, puts ride into the progressive form, riding.
I have ridden the unicorn - to have puts ride into the past/perfect* participle, ridden. (The past participle is not necessarily the same as the simple past (I rode the unicorn), but in regular verbs the two forms are the same (I licked the unicorn; I have licked the unicorn.))
I have been riding the unicorn - to have puts to be into the past participle, been, and that in turn puts to ride into the progressive participle, riding.
* This is also called the passive participle, because it is used with to be to form the passive voice: The unicorn was ridden by me.
What fascinates me about this is the fact that it all seems so complicated, and yet people follow all these convoluted grammatical rules without really thinking about it. Does it occur to you, when you ask 'Does Riona realise how boring this is?', that what you're essentially doing is taking the sentence 'Riona realises how boring this is', adding the optional auxiliary to do to make 'Riona does realise how boring this is', and then switching the subject and auxiliary around to form a question? (German can do this without the auxiliary verb: 'liebst du mich?' is essentially 'love you me?', but because in English we can only switch auxiliary or modal verbs with the subject we have to add a 'do'.)
...well, I think it's interesting. I love grammar! I can't help it!
- I imagine many of you will already know about pidgins and creoles, but they're so fascinating that I want to mention them anyway. A pidgin is a simplified language, developed as a means of communication between groups of people who don't share a common tongue. It doesn't really have grammatical rules; the idea is just to convey meaning. However, if the speakers of a pidgin have children, and if those children grow up hearing the pidgin, they will spontaneously give the pidgin grammatical rules. It will become a full-blown language, called a creole. Without consciously knowing what they're doing, these children will give the pidgin a whole new level of consistency and complexity, just in the process of learning it. THAT'S CRAZY.
(I should note that my knowledge of the pidgin-creole relationship came from Stephen Pinker, rather than my course, and as Pinker is an advocate of Chomsky's theory that language is innate he may have an interpretive bias.)
This is an entry about language! Here are some facts about language that I enjoy.
- Children just beginning to learn to speak will often correctly use irregular verbs: for example, I went. However, when they are slightly older, they will begin to say I goed before returning to I went.
The theory is that at first the children are simply repeating what they hear. However, at some point they realise that adding -ed onto the end of a verb puts it into the past tense, and so they apply that rule universally, saying not only I looked and I wanted but I goed. Later, they realise that some verbs are exceptions to this rule and begin to say I went again.
This is interesting because it shows that children aren't simply parroting back what they hear; they are actually learning and applying grammatical rules. Awesome.
- In a verb string, the form of each verb is determined by the verb preceding it. For example:
I ride the unicorn
I am riding the unicorn - the use of am, a form of the progressive auxiliary to be, puts ride into the progressive form, riding.
I have ridden the unicorn - to have puts ride into the past/perfect* participle, ridden. (The past participle is not necessarily the same as the simple past (I rode the unicorn), but in regular verbs the two forms are the same (I licked the unicorn; I have licked the unicorn.))
I have been riding the unicorn - to have puts to be into the past participle, been, and that in turn puts to ride into the progressive participle, riding.
* This is also called the passive participle, because it is used with to be to form the passive voice: The unicorn was ridden by me.
What fascinates me about this is the fact that it all seems so complicated, and yet people follow all these convoluted grammatical rules without really thinking about it. Does it occur to you, when you ask 'Does Riona realise how boring this is?', that what you're essentially doing is taking the sentence 'Riona realises how boring this is', adding the optional auxiliary to do to make 'Riona does realise how boring this is', and then switching the subject and auxiliary around to form a question? (German can do this without the auxiliary verb: 'liebst du mich?' is essentially 'love you me?', but because in English we can only switch auxiliary or modal verbs with the subject we have to add a 'do'.)
...well, I think it's interesting. I love grammar! I can't help it!
- I imagine many of you will already know about pidgins and creoles, but they're so fascinating that I want to mention them anyway. A pidgin is a simplified language, developed as a means of communication between groups of people who don't share a common tongue. It doesn't really have grammatical rules; the idea is just to convey meaning. However, if the speakers of a pidgin have children, and if those children grow up hearing the pidgin, they will spontaneously give the pidgin grammatical rules. It will become a full-blown language, called a creole. Without consciously knowing what they're doing, these children will give the pidgin a whole new level of consistency and complexity, just in the process of learning it. THAT'S CRAZY.
(I should note that my knowledge of the pidgin-creole relationship came from Stephen Pinker, rather than my course, and as Pinker is an advocate of Chomsky's theory that language is innate he may have an interpretive bias.)
