tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43841076946735347182024-03-07T05:01:34.781-05:00ikasi z'iyet liw, aikUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4384107694673534718.post-48738094953812590442008-03-31T13:45:00.007-05:002008-06-03T09:45:16.715-05:00on the purpose of grammar<a href="http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/%7Emyl/languagelog/archives/005506.html">While reading some new Language Log posts</a> on this guy named Kilpatrick, I came up with some lines of thought I'd like to run through.<br /><br />1. Planned economics != socialism. In this case, it's planned linguistics. But of course I am picky on this because I call myself a <span style="font-style: italic;">libertarian</span> socialist.<br /><br />2. One ought to be careful about prematurely assigning "purposes" to grammar. It seems to me for example, many elements of universal grammar arise because of the common structure to the way we think (without a need for an explicit Chomskyian "module" and all its parameter-setting). The language universal for languages to use prepositions (as opposed to postpositions) for SVO word order may arise not because it's easier to understand, but just how we tend to be guided by existing mental structure when we create words.<br /><br />3. We ought not to confuse "pain" with necessity. Speakers of pidgin English tend to be mostly comprehensible, if not totally so, save that alarm bells go off in our ears, declaring, "this isn't right!" Some language pedants are observant enough to notice the alarm bells do go off. Yet trying to rationalise the presence of the alarm bells as, "oh, grammar is important for clear communication," is a bit like saying, "oh, the inflammation and irritation associated with peanut consumption is biologically necessary to keep my body free of nutritional decadence." (Yes, I am allergic to peanuts.) The allergy may have developed for a reason, but note that G6PD deficiency (which yes, I also have) confers a protection against malaria. As an allergy may develop for purposes of immunity, not nutrition, aversion to non-standard grammar may have developed for purposes other than fostering clear communication. (A wild guess would be to foster an aversion to outsiders, which might have been useful for telling different groups apart, back in our hunter-gatherer days for example.)<br /><br />4. Language contains many fascinating features and patterns, many of which might be unrelated to clear communication. These make it very interesting to study, but simply because these are very salient features of language doesn't mean these features are <span style="font-style: italic;">required</span> for effective communication (as I have hinted above and will develop below).<br /><br />5. Grammar may be a "crytographic" measure to check the integrity of the message. This can occur in two contexts.<br /><br />6. In the first one, you might be communicating across an unreliable medium (such is the nature of speech, in which one phoneme might be confused for another), so features of grammar help rule out ambiguous messages. I noticed that until I got into Bizet's <span style="font-style: italic;">Carmen</span> fairly recently, I had never really picked up on the French lyrics. Opera is an extreme example because the sound formants at high notes are especially distorted from the ones in speech, which results in a higher number of confused phonemes, but it will be good for illustrating my point. Until I actually realised that the townspeople people in <span style="font-style: italic;">Habanera</span> were actually saying something ("<span style="font-style: italic;">prends garde à toi!</span>"), I thought they were a background chorus, because all I heard previously (in various cultural contexts, like the part where the film plays Carmen when Hitler goes on his campaign trail in the film <span style="font-style: italic;">Hitler: the Rise of Evil</span>") were the vowel sounds: <span style="font-style: italic;">honn har a hah</span>!. Notably, when I didn't realise it was speech (as opposed to an "effects" chorus), many portions of the linguistic part of my brain remained unactivated, such that all the consonants (which also happened to be all plosives, which have the lowest audibility compared to the other consonants like sibilants, liquids, nasals, etc.) sounded like /h/. (This sort of makes interesting sense, because plosives have an "aspirated" [h] element to them, even somewhat for voiced consonants like /g/.)<br /><br />Note that in spectrographs, it's often hard to tell the different kinds of plosives apart! Indeed, unless our linguistic portion of our brain is switched on, the normal auditory portion of our brain (and it is sensitive enough to pick up the nuances of music!) can't tell them apart. In this case, the patterns of language help with clear communication, but it wasn't so much about making semantics clear directly as ruling out message possibilities that didn't comply with the rules, as "improbable to have been sent". Note that it's been shown with the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGurk_effect">McGurk effect</a>, where patterns from usual visual cues like the shape of the lips of the mouth have an influence upon perception. Why would it exist? Given that many consonants have quite fine distinctions (note that we are often unable to differentiate between many languages' exotic consonants if we haven't learnt them explicitly), it seems likely that it exists as part of an integrity check, confirming that a /g/ is in fact, /g/, and not a /b/, or a /d/, by ruling them out.<br /><br />My example so far has been mainly phonological, not morphological -- but it can be extended there too. Consider a sentence like, "I'm <span style="font-style: italic;">right</span> here at the bedside." If you heard the /m/ intact, then you know you can rule out the verb for <span style="font-style: italic;">writing</span> because it would be an ungrammatical sentence. Many pedants are asinine when it comes to, "Oh! But you must recognise the fine distinctions between this verb and that verb!" But it doesn't have to be that way at all. When pedants are thinking about confusions in meaning, they might be on your backs on how "blame X on Y" is '<a href="http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/%7Emyl/languagelog/archives/005260.html">confused usage</a>'. But they might never think that a sentence like, "I'm <span style="font-style: italic;">but</span> a rock by the wayside" could pose a problem. How do you know for example, that you didn't really hear, "I<span style="font-style: italic;"> put</span> a rock by the wayside?" /p/ and /b/ are both bilabial plosives, save that one is unvoiced and semi-strongly aspirated while the other is simply voiced. They are phonetically similar.<br /><br />But ah! Because of the presence of the copula (as the phoneme /m/) you know it cannot have involved the action of putting. What if you didn't pick up on the /m/? Ah, but you might pick up on the numerous other linguistic patterns too, from other sentences, or suprasegmental features like stress. In this case, the presence of rules is sort of like a linguistic version of an md5 hash or a cyclic redundancy check: for a message to have integrity (i.e. you are sure you're hearing the right message), rules might develop to develop information redundancy in case one portion of a message gets obscured. In language, this redundancy is stored in grammar, and can then be part of grammar's purpose. In fact, we rely on these rules so automatically that we don't realise how frequently we rely on a variety of cues to comprehend language.<br /><br />In the case where we hear ungrammatical pidgin sentences, the "jarring" effect might come from the fact that our minds have automatically ruled out every possibility, and yet, our conscious mind knowing there is a message there, must "override" the automatic processes, declaring that, "yes, there is actually a valid message here." (This is where it would be pertinent to discuss Freudian theories about repression and the subconscious, but I will refrain from it.) Note for example cases where non-native English speakers might use a syllable-timed rhythm and put the primary stress on the wrong syllable -- or perhaps a more pertinent case for Singaporeans, where a Western-born teacher tries to use Singlish and fails miserably because he didn't realise how important tone was. If you inflect "lah" wrongly (excluding question inflections, which would be even more awkward), it's not like you've affected the meaning or you've made yourself unclear -- it just sounds weird. What does it tell us? The speaker is an outsider. This leads me to my seventh point.<br /><br />7. In the second type of integrity check, grammar may exist for security purposes. Suppose you are competing with a nearby tribe. Maybe it's even Neanderthal! Before they invented military codes, it might have been advantageous to come up with grammar in language. It would be a sort of shibboleth: firstly, it obscures information from the enemy. (It might be hard to comprehend a simple enemy sentence like, "we will attack them at dawn," if you have no idea what their locative or accusative cases are.) Secondly, the enemy can't "pose" among you very easily if he uses sentences that don't comply with your rules. Perhaps this would have been sufficient cause for our genome to code for "alarm bells" whenever one heard an ungrammatical sentence. Now in the modern day globalised-world, it's just a pain in the you-know-what, but it could have been critical in the evolution of our species.<br /><br />8. Drawing from such a need, a reason for constant language change might be a need to change the code constantly. Note that in real life, implementing a code change is a real pain. In language, you rely on spontaneous order, and how magical it is! I am also reminded of the Tower of Babel story -- perhaps grammar was invented to divide up the human population and set them into disassociating nations.<br /><br /><br />9. Pragmatics and ease of organisation. Stuff influencing the development of grammar might not only be comprehension, but the efficiency in storing information. Creating a system with elaborate patterns increases processing time, but decreases the space and memorisation required to use the signs required for language. If messages must be of finite length, and yet the signs in them must be capable of representing an infinite number of thoughts, the tradeoff for more processing time might be attractive. It is recognised through many recorded incidents that strict Skinner behaviouralism fails to fully explain language acquisition, and hence the attractiveness of Chomskyian nativism. I like Chomsky's UG theory somewhat (though I think that the idea of explicit modules and parameters is an overly elaborate explanation for a much more subtler reason for UG), but this can be noted in the way children can recognise productive inflections and create them for words they might have never heard of before. In more powerful examples, they can synthesise their own grammars and creoles and create regular systems where pidgin-using migrant parents might not. My point here is to point out that the development of grammar might also have arisen out of a convenient way to acquire language, as opposed to comprehension.<br /><br /><img src="http://improbable.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/11/Wug.jpg" /><br /><br />10. We ought not to be so quick to accept arbitrariness of sign as an axiom. My tenth and last point -- phonetic signs in language are often referred to as arbitrary -- e.g. outside of their association they have no real correlation with their meaning. But I think it would be rather hasty to call this an axiom. There are many words which I suspect have a degree of correlation with their sound. It just so happens for example, that "hostile," "harsh" and "hiss" are well --- harsh sounding. Of course, one must issue the caveat that it may sound harsh to us because the semantic association with the sounds of the words developed *after* we learnt the sign, but at the same time, I must also issue a counter-caveat that just simply because the patterns following the correlation between sound and sign are too complex to be analysed so far doesn't mean they don't exist -- there might be just so many rules and interferences, and so forth. The debate over the origin of language, which as of yet we have no convincing mainstream explanative theory for, and how the first words originated, perhaps tells us we should not be quick to dismiss current signs as arbitrary, for they might just have a very complex development.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4384107694673534718.post-84245848703318027172007-08-22T11:50:00.000-05:002007-08-24T13:48:32.970-05:00minimal pairCompared to other companies, McDonald's "I'm loving it" ad campaign is only tolerable, though I must say they are heading in the right direction when their ads endorse you wearing that second-hand shirt. To be thrifty is a "cool" thing, today anyway. The ad in particular that I wish to comment about (and which I have come so long-windedly to say) concerns that part where someone knocks on a girl's door. When it opens, immediately, a rapper starts belting out several (impressive) lines in Spanish. The girl acts all confused, and her friends helping her move into her house stop, half out of curious shock. The boy next to the rapper then appends his own line, greeting his girlfriend. At first, it might seem that the rap didn't suit the girl's tastes. However the girl says, "I asked you to bring me a <span style="font-style: italic;">wrap</span>, not a rap!" The boyfriend smiles cheekily and reveals that he has that too. Cue McDonald's plugging in their chicken mustard wraps or whatever, and happy youths plonked down on the couch eating.<br /><br />The part that gets my attention linguistically is not the pun, but rather the different stresses on "wrap" and "rap". Under the traditional analysis of the English dialects, nearly all dialects treat both of them as homophones, save true mavericks like Scots (and not just Scottish English!). In linguistic speak, it is generally said that for the sheer majority of English dialects, there is no <span style="font-style: italic;">minimal pair</span> to distinguish both of the words phonemically. Because we can distinguish "but" from "putt", for example -- there is a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimal_pair">minimal pair</a> distinguishing /b/ and /p/ (specifically, regarding voicing/aspiration). In contrast, according to the mainstream analysis of the English dialects, there usually is no minimal pair for /wr/ and /r/.<br /><br />In the commercial, one can rule out suprasegmental stress, e.g. "I asked you to bring me <span style="font-style: italic;">A</span>, not B," and stressing the A. If we had another example that went, "I asked you to bring me flour, not a flower!" the stress might even be placed on the second item, rather than the first. Furthermore, on second analysis, the girl does more than just to merely <span style="font-style: italic;">stress</span> the word "wrap", she seems to employ extra <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_articulation">secondary articulation</a>, if not use a different consonant altogether.<br /><br />This seems to imply that perhaps there is some distinction, even in the common dialects, considering that we can find this distinction in a <span style="font-style: italic;">McDonald's commercial</span>. Yes, part of an ad campaign that McDonald's spends tens of millions of dollars on in order to get a rather simplistic observation of the youth demographic, while ironically seeming to support thriftiness. Anyway, the basic question to ask is, do the standard dialects (General American, Londoner, even "Singaporean Standard English" etc.) make a distinction, however fine, between, /wr/ and /r/?<br /><br />In Old English, the distinction was by lip rounding. For example, "right" and "write" would be distinguished by the fact that in the first word, the consonant /r/ would be pronounced with the lips relatively relaxed, while the /wr/ of "write" would be articulated with the lips tensed in a circle (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundedness">rounded</a>). This distinction however, does not seem to be the distinction today. (This ignores the other distinction in Old English that would have been made between "right" and "write" -- the presence of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_velar_fricative">velar fricative</a> in "right" [hence the H] and the absence of it in "write". But we're not talking about that, yo.)<br /><br />Before I became interested in linguistics, I always thought there was some sort of fine distinction between "night" and "nite" (I later learned the distinction was more than subtle during Old English), "sign" and "sine", etc. The presence of silent "g" in words always made me tense my lips more -- a half-conscious strategy used to distinguish homophones while reading as a child. This however is artificial, as the distinction is inspired by writing, and usually is not noticeable soundwise in speech, save to the speaker making the distinction. "Wrap" and "rap" perhaps is the exception, a distinction inspired first by spelling but perhaps has since entered speech. Because today's /r/ tends to be rounded or labialised anyway, regardless of whether a /w/ precedes it, a distinction between /wr/ and /r/ is subtle to make. But that doesn't mean it isn't there. /wr/ can be distinguished from /r/ by rounding the lips even further. Distinguishing three levels of rounding is rare, but not impossible -- it for example occurs in Swedish.<br /><br />One thing to note while viewing the IP chart of consonants is that the English native speakers can choose from two different realisations of R. Even now I realise that I may articulate the word "realise" itself a labialised consonant, but considerably less labialised than in the word "writing", for example. There's the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alveolar_approximant">alveolar approximant</a>, and there's the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retroflex_approximant">retroflex approximant</a>. The retroflex approximant supposedly occurs in some American English dialects only, but it is my suspicion that many English speakers, even non-American ones, may "push" their alveolar approximant R's back towards the retroflex position when they aRe tRying to stRess the R-ness of something. (The retroflex position is the area immediately somewhat behind the "alveolar ridge" itself behind the gums and teeth, but in front of the palate.) You know the Beijing Mandarin speakers with their R's (<span style="font-style: italic;">shir arh</span>) -- one of the distinctions, besides the centralisation of some of their front vowels, is the use of the retroflex R over the alveolar R that Singaporeans tend to use more often.<br /><br />So my argument after all these paragraphs is this, and perhaps an interesting tidbit of a question for linguistic fanatics like me to look into: do native English speakers -- or at least a significant lot of them -- make a phonetic, if not phonemic distinction, between /wr/ and /r/? How is this articulated? My own suspicion is that it is a mix of both even <span style="font-style: italic;">further</span> labialisation as well as the use of the retroflex approximant over the alveolar.'<br /><br />Don't try saying that I'm reading too much into a McDonald's commercial. This be linguistics we be talkin' bout here, 'yo.<br /><br />(edited and reposted from my personal blog)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4384107694673534718.post-91711531395969600712007-08-10T10:43:00.000-05:002007-08-11T12:15:48.316-05:00it woyz only oy hopeless foyncy, it poyssed loyke oyn oygust doyBy themselves, /ɑ / and /a/ (both open vowels, one in the back in the mouth and one in the front) don't sound that different. I mean, say "haha" but in the back of your mouth, as far back as possible. Doesn't sound much different does it? Sure people whose English dialects use the first vowel prominently sound like they have something in their mouth. <span style="font-style: italic;">Moy foyther oylways used to get up oyt foyr ay-emme. </span><br /><br />No offence intended to the diverse English speakers out there: the only dialects I speak naturally are Singlish and rhotic New Englandic. I mean, from a relative point of view, people who use the "back-A" to replace phonemes where I would use /a/ and sometimes /<span title="Pronunciation in IPA" class="IPA">ɔ/ (cot) do indeed sound</span> like they have something in their mouth, preventing them from opening their mouth fully. Whereas in contrast, they may (subconsciously) view me as speaking lazily. And for the Southerners, who love to diphthongise what I would normally leave as a monophthong, it seems to me (as a perception I can't control) like they can't close their mouth enough, what with all those vowel glides!<br /><br />These are the sorts of perceptions and prejudices people do not consciously exert, but it sort of cannot be ignored. As long as we don't really believe that Southern twangers speaking with their mouth hanging open (or for RP speakers who think that my tongue can't move properly to make the appropriate distinctions), etc. etc. no harm done. And plus, it makes a fascinating psycholinguistics area of study.<br /><br />So anyway, compared to /u/ (s<span style="font-weight: bold;">ue</span>) and /i/ (s<span style="font-weight: bold;">ee</span>), /e/ (s<span style="font-weight: bold;">ay</span>) and /o/ (t<span style="font-weight: bold;">o</span>te), etc. /ɑ / and /a/ don't seem that different. There is a noticeable difference, naturally. But compare (for English speakers) if someone said "I've got the flea" versus "I've got the flu", there would be an immediate change in perception of difference, compared to contrasting, say, <span style="font-style: italic;">papa</span> said in the front of the mouth and in the back of the mouth.<br /><br />Phonetics has some explanations for this. You might point out for example, that /i/ and /e/ are unrounded, while /u/ and /o/ are <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rounded_vowel">rounded</a>. (As an explanation to the others, this means the lips are tensed to produce a circular shape; one could guess that our lips are flexible for the purpose of rounding vowels, in the same way chimps do.)<br /><br />But roundedness only accounts for some of it (and why they this rounding distinction occurs in the first place is dealt with in a later point). For example, <span style="font-weight: bold;">veux</span> in French (rounded front mid-close vowel) contrasts with <span style="font-weight: bold;">vaut</span> (rounded BACK mid-close vowel, or just plain English /o/ [ohhhhh!]), and they sound very different, despite both being unrounded. And the /y/ - /u/ distinction, a distinction that both Mandarin Chinese and French make, distinguishes a rounded close-mid vowel in the front of the mouth versus one in the back. For example, French <span style="font-weight: bold;">tu</span> sounds very different from French <span style="font-weight: bold;">tout</span>. (Last "t" is silent.) Ask any Frenchman! And if you know Mandarin, you might know the distinction between 努 (/nu/, or pinyin nǔ) and 女 (/ny/, or pinyin nǚ). They sound very distinct from each other, though they both have the same tone and are both rounded close vowels. The thing they differ is in their <span style="font-style: italic;">backness</span>.<br /><br />So what else accounts for it? If you see the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-sized_IPA_vowel_chart">IPA vowel chart</a>, you can see there is a large distance between /u/ (l<span style="font-weight: bold;">oo</span>) and /i/ (l<span style="font-weight: bold;">ee</span>). You can fit central vowels of the same height in there, complete with a rounded/unrounded pair. But down below, the central vowel closest to the A's (both back and front) is one step higher in vowel height (the amount the tongue is raised by when pronouncing a vowel) compared to both of them. And there is no room for a rounded/unrounded distinction for that vowel. Making a distinction for features of vowel backness and roundedness gets more difficult and subtle the more open your vowels become.<br /><br />This is something you can confirm for yourself: when your tongue is high and close to the roof, it can go a lot of places, front, back, wiggle side-to-side. When it is close to the mouth floor (the height where you would pronounce a "low" or an "open" vowel), tongue movement becomes more and more pretty restricted.<br /><br />This probably why for example, it seems more common for languages to contrast /i/ and /y/ (though English does not do it, German, Mandarin and French does), while I know of few languages that contrast /ɑ / and /a/ as a minimal pair (in fact, I can't name any off the top of my head).<br /><br />But there is something interesting (and I did not plan on taking so many paragraphs to come to this!) When you nasalise /a/ versus /ɑ/, suddenly, the pronunciation seems very different. In Parisian "street" French for example (and not the "metropolitan French" they teach as an academic standard), v<span style="font-weight: bold;">in</span> is pronounced as a nasalised /a/. (The vowel sounds like the one in <span style="font-weight: bold;">han</span>, as hanyu pinyin, only don't let the tongue touch your teeth or the roof your mouth while pronouncing the /n/.)<br /><br />If you were to replace the nasalised /a/ with a nasalised /ɑ/ for example, you get <span style="font-weight: bold;">vent</span> (or "vant" as in<span style="font-style: italic;"> vante</span>, "boasts", if you discard the /t/ sound). Even if you do not know a scrap of French, it should sound drastically different. Nasalised /ɑ/ is the same vowel found in the imitation posh pronunciation of "lingerie" (which actually should use the nasalised /a/ if you are speaking street French or /ɛ / [b<span style="font-weight: bold;">e</span>d] if you want to speak "higher class" French).<br /><br />The history of French nasals is interesting, and they have a tendency to go all over the place. After all, <span style="font-weight: bold;">-en-</span> and <span style="font-weight: bold;">-an-</span> are merged pair in French, save for certain exceptions where I have heard native speakers pronounce <span style="font-style: italic;">Catal<span style="font-weight: bold;">an</span></span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Verl<span style="font-weight: bold;">an</span></span> with a nasal /a/ rather than a nasal /ɑ/, etc.<br />And after you factor in the general Romance sound changes from Vulgar Latin to French <span style="font-style: italic;">(abolere</span> to <span style="font-style: italic;">abolir</span>, etc.), you still have something interesting because why is "-in-" using a nasalised /a/ or /ɛ/, rather than something closer to a nasalised /i/?<br /><br />Something that has piqued me for some quite some time now, is the concept of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formant">formants</a>. Formants take the step forward from to a general theory of phonemes and methods of articulation into sound physics. When you play music on a music player, such as with WinAmp, Windows Media Player, XMMS (or whatever proprietary, open source, etc. software you use), those bars bouncing up and down are formants. When you examine an mp3 or a PCM .wav file, you can see formants to a degree, though not very clearly as you would see them on a formant chart, like the pulsing beat that pops up at regular intervals of say, a song like Black Eyed Peas' <a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=gDfKCzMuLMc">Pump It</a>. The car player displaying the "musical bars" at the beginning of the video displays the formants of the song as it plays, selected at the most common frequencies generally most pertinent to music. You can see for example that the first instrument (I am aware that the original musical idea came from from <span style="font-style: italic;">Misirlou</span>) raises at the right a few bars only, before it breaks into the special guitar playing that affects the rest of the bars. By viewing the "musical bars" of a song, you are seeing a sort of a spectrogram (for the end-user) of the song's harmonic frequencies.<br /><br />(The exact physics of a formant are covered in the Wikipedia article -- it pertains to resonant frequency -- and I will enjoy torturing Mr. Weirich with formants in AP Physics next year. Linguistics is such a brilliant marriage of the humanities and lab science.)<br /><br />Each human language sound is a combination of formants -- the brain analyses parts of speech (and I literally mean "<span style="font-weight: bold;">parts </span>of speech" -- the sound information contained in each articulation, not the stuff they teach you as "verbs", "nouns" and so forth) and breaks them down into their appropriate formants. All the special features of speech can often be found to be raising or lowering specific formants. For example, /i/ really does seem to share something with /u/ -- they sound like they have a higher "pitch" in some sense. That is because although the other formants are different, they have similar formants that correspond to vowel height. /a/ after all sounds less energetic or "high-pitched" than /i/. And /y/ (as in 女), which is basically the same vowel as /i/ except with the lips rounded does sound a bit less "high-pitched" than /i/ because roundedness lowers some formants. There is a basic guideline for some of the more fundamental characteristics of sound production, but I'll be lazy and quote from wiki:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><blockquote><span style="font-style: italic;">Most often the two first formants, </span><i style="font-style: italic;">f</i><sub style="font-style: italic;">1</sub><span style="font-style: italic;"> and </span><i style="font-style: italic;">f</i><sub style="font-style: italic;">2</sub><span style="font-style: italic;">, are enough to disambiguate the vowel. These two formants are primarily determined by the position of the tongue. </span><i style="font-style: italic;">f</i><sub style="font-style: italic;">1</sub><span style="font-style: italic;"> has a higher frequency when the tongue is lowered, and </span><i style="font-style: italic;">f</i><sub style="font-style: italic;">2</sub><span style="font-style: italic;"> has a higher frequency when the tongue is forward.</span></blockquote><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><br />As formants are part of wave physics, there is interference between formants and not each feature corresponds cleanly to one formant (or just one set of formants). For example, a higher vowel height tends to push the F2 formant up too (even though it would still have the same backness between the two), such that if you buy into a direct relationship it would seem that the vowel is more front than it really is. This seems a bit natural -- as your tongue gets higher, it distorts the feature of backness somewhat, since the volume of the space behind the tongue changes too. It is because of formants that vowels can seem like it is "higher" and "lower" than another vowel.<br /><br />Consider for example, "messed" versus "most". The English "short e" vowel (/ɛ/) seems 'lower' because of its openness, and /o/ seems more "well-defined in pitch" in the most fundamental aspect (the first formant). And yet on another level /ɛ/ seems higher because /o/ sounds "deeper". This is because of the nature of their two formants: /ɛ/ has a lower F1 value (height) but higher F2 and F3 values due to rounding and backness (or lack thereof: after compensating for the raising of F2 that a raised F1 brings) than the other vowel /o/. A formant with a lower value occurs represents a resonance at a lower frequency, and that is why it seems more "fundamental" (hence why /o/ sounds "cleanly" high while /ɛ/ seems "messily high"). Other things you may notice is that vowels next to /r/ sound "lower" on another scale -- this is because it lowers some formants, generally F3, while nasal vowels often raise formants to a very high extent. Which brings us back to French phonological history.<br /><br />/i/ is a good example of a vowel that is "high" because it seems to resonate so easily: it is one of the vowels with the highest of all formants, as it is both a close (high) and a front vowel. And if you nasalise it, those are some really really really high formants! Ever thought about the piercing ability of the word "<span style="font-weight: bold;">sheen</span>"? It is very high, almost annoying if you say it a certain way, the way it cuts into your brain like a high-pitched note. And this is normal speech -- you are not even singing yet. (This in part explains how jingles like <span style="font-style: italic;">Mr Clean Mr Clean</span> can be so catchy since they are actually sung). In English "sheen/clean", the /n/ nasalisation only occurs at the very end of the vowel ... but in French phonology, graphemes like <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">-in</span> (like in <span style="font-style: italic;">voisin</span>) signify the vowel is fully nasalised while the /n/ itself is omitted. I suspect this arrangement was quite unstable and it was so high that lowering the vowel a bit while nasalised didn't appear to compromise too much (there were little minimal pairs in regard to nasal vowels) while making the vowel more aesthetic. So over the years it got lowered to /e/, then /ɛ/, then in street French /a/. Nasalisation also has the effect of appearing to "raise" vowel height by one level due to the entire effect of formant-raising. For example, many people seem to perceive "<span style="font-weight: bold;">en avion</span>" as "on aviohn", even though "en" uses a nasalised /ɑ/ rather than nasalised /<span title="Pronunciation in IPA" class="IPA">ɔ/, and "avi<span style="font-weight: bold;">on</span>" itself uses nasalised /</span><span title="Pronunciation in IPA" class="IPA">ɔ/ rather than nasalised /o/.<br /><br />And ultimately, the original question. The slight difference in /a/ </span><span title="Pronunciation in IPA" class="IPA">and /</span>ɑ/ becomes extremely magnified with nasalisation. Although formants are most usually used for computer applications of linguistics (like making voice recognition programs -- now you have a rough idea on how they work, by analysing formants and identifying phonemes by formants' features) they allow people to scientifically quantify what would have otherwise been a subjective perception. After all, saying that /i/ sounds "higher" than /u/ is vague. High in what way? Formants allow us to quantify this perception.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4384107694673534718.post-55920052233275745692007-04-03T17:34:00.000-05:002007-08-02T21:19:04.490-05:00uane scowritan in dhe Niow Eeld EngliscNew Old English<br />Dhe Niow Eeld Englisc<br /><br />Hiit is sligtliic funniicer. Dhu scirerliik wendt uano tung bi uanem biit heerr, uanem biit dheerr, and ta-da'st! Ce, inst-uaner-strike, semth alst aniowo. Uano tung dhat dhu knowst, becomth saomthiing lik uano fremd tung. Ic trai to wendan wordes in todaysth Engliscanye and insteadst, ic thiink of wordes in dhe Frenc. Butt, moorr tungaskolo laterr.<br /><br />Hwaii, dhu askst me, makan uano sutc funnic tung? Ic eyam leyarnang dhe Frenc, uano Romansth tung. Tuo oftern hiit semth dhat gwe woorrciip dhe Latin. Histhes words eyarnth bettoorr, and longes wordes dhat nuon canth to understandan semeth to eyarnan bout downst to. So, ic madt dhiso tung foorr faitan foorr dhe englisc.<br /><br />Saomertimers, dhe Niow Eeld Englisc semth lik dhe Doytcmanc, dhe Cakespeare and dhe Dutce alsttogedherr, dhen dhe Englisc.<br /><br />Uaner kwik wid. Dhe Niow Eeld Englisc bith noot alst flaulesse foorr spellyan suonwaiz.<br /><br />s<span style="font-weight: bold;">ee</span>k => i<br />b<span style="font-weight: bold;">i</span>t => ii<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">sh</span> => c<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">ch</span> => tc<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">th</span>ere => dh<br />me<span style="font-weight: bold;">th</span> => th<br />m<span style="font-weight: bold;">a</span>k<span style="font-weight: bold;">e</span> => e<br />t<span style="font-weight: bold;">e</span>n => ee<br />d<span style="font-weight: bold;">uh</span> => er<br />dinn<span style="font-weight: bold;">er</span> => err<br />pl<span style="font-weight: bold;">u</span>s => ao<br />t<span style="font-weight: bold;">oo</span> => u<br />g<span style="font-weight: bold;">oo</span>d => uu<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">a</span>t => a<br />p<span style="font-weight: bold;">a</span>p<span style="font-weight: bold;">a</span> => aa<br />wr<span style="font-weight: bold;">o</span>te => o<br />f<span style="font-weight: bold;">a</span>ther (back A) => oa<br />wr<span style="font-weight: bold;">ough</span>t => oo<br />c<span style="font-weight: bold;">ow</span> => au<br />Acad<span style="font-weight: bold;">i(y)</span>a => y<br />a<span style="font-weight: bold;">ggh</span> => x<br /><br />weeldanyers foorr stoppers:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">p</span>op (aspirated) => pp<br />s<span style="font-weight: bold;">p</span>y (deaspirated) => p<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">b</span>uy => b<br /><br />Dher Niow Eeld Engliscst tung diclainth adjectivems.<br /><br />Uanee makth wordelinkanye (laiik Fr. <span style="font-style: italic;">liaison</span>). Uanee saith "Niow Eeld Englisc" as [Nio.wɛl.deŋlisʃ] in IPAm.<br /><br />Ce makth "strango and weko" declensionem. Naomes, adjectivems and adverbems diclaineth strangolic if nuon articlem is befoorr dhe naom. Dheyi diclaineth if therr is uon.<br /><br />uon to uon thusend in dhe Niow Eeld Englisc<br /><br />uon<br />tuo<br />thre<br />fuor<br />faiive<br />siics<br />sevn<br />ext<br />naiin<br />tteen<br />eleevn<br />tueelv<br />thiertteen<br />fuortteen<br />fiffetteen<br />siicstteen<br />seffenteen<br />extteen<br />nintteen<br />tueentte<br />thiiyertte<br />fuortte<br />fiffette<br />sicstte<br />sevnertte<br />extte<br />nintte<br />haondrerd<br />thusend<br /><br />morr wiileth comen.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4384107694673534718.post-68177764446602695642007-03-11T18:00:00.000-05:002007-03-16T08:21:12.897-05:00haute coutureIPA: /ʔot.'ku.tyʁ/<br /><br />Fr., from<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>feminine of<span style="font-style: italic;"> haut</span> (high) + <span style="font-style: italic;">couture</span> (nf.), "sowing, dressmaking", from Vulgar Latin <span style="font-style: italic;">consutura</span>, formed from the supine <span style="font-style: italic;">consutum</span> from <span>Latin</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> consuere</span>, from <span style="font-style: italic;">suere</span>, "to sew", from PIE root <a style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=sew">*siw-</a><span style="font-weight: bold;">. </span><a style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=sew">*sju-</a>, "to sew". English cognate "sew" descends from this PIE root, via Proto-Germanic <span style="font-style: italic;">siwjanan</span> into Old English <span style="font-style: italic;">siwian. </span>Latin <span style="font-style: italic;">-ere</span> verb ending alerts one to the fact that descendant verbs of this PIE root are ablaut verbs, hence, <span style="font-style: italic;">sewn</span>. Sewing may have been an important part of PIE culture, given a direct verb is present (in contrast, PIE had no direct verbs for writing).<br /><br />Frequently (ab)used as a false cognate of "high culture". Dude, it only means "high dressmaking", but people - I've observed this of Singaporeans especially - mistakenly transfer the association of elitism in the industry to that of society in general. An observed comment on a Singapore blog: "Paris is all about haute couture, the language of love, the monuments...." Paris is all about dressmaking? Really?<br /><br />"High culture" would be plain <span style="font-style: italic;">haute culture</span> in French. Coincidentally, "culture" is a feminine noun, but that's where the similarities end.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=culture"><span style="font-style: italic;">Culture</span></a> (nf.) [IPA: /'kʌl.tʃɚ/ (Eng.), /kyl.'tyʁ/ (Fr.)] from Latin <span style="font-style: italic;">cultura</span>, "tilling of land". The semantic drift in English is from "maintainence of arable land" (1440) to "personal cultivation and sophistication" (1510) to "lifestyles and customs of civilisations cultivated carefully" (1867). From past participle stem of "<a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/colere">colere</a>", "to cultivate, inhabit, guard, grow, practice", which led to senses of "worship, respect" -- compare <span style="font-style: italic;">colonus</span> (<a href="http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=colony"><span style="font-style: italic;">colony</span></a>) and <span style="font-style: italic;">cultus</span> (<span style="font-style: italic;">cult)</span>. <span style="font-style: italic;">Colere</span> is from PIE root <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">*qwel-</span>, "to turn around", with descendant words like Latin <span style="font-style: italic;">cyclus</span> (<span style="font-style: italic;">cycle</span>), Sanskrit <span style="font-style: italic;">cakram</span> (cf. Indonesian-Malay <a href="http://seasrc.th.net/indic/inbyskt.htm"><span style="font-style: italic;">cakra</span></a>, "discus") and Old English <span style="font-style: italic;">hweol</span>, which became modern English <span style="font-style: italic;">wheel</span>. Indeed, cultivation (agriculturally at least) can be thought of as a cycle.<br /><br />As you can see, <span style="font-style: italic;">culture</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">couture</span><span> have</span> very different roots. I can see plausible associations, because culturing something -- be it your crops, your personal character or a society -- is comparable to the fine work of sewing a dress; that of creation, of tending and whatnot. But no, they are not actually connected etymologically or semantically.<br /><br />I suspect that people choose this phrase because rendering it in French, even though one might not actually know the language, sounds more posh or something, while ironically ignoring the direct French cognate <span style="font-style: italic;">la culture</span>. I have a slight trouble with such folks.<br /><br />Lately I have been reading arguments that attack Singlish because of the very fact that it's not posh or "high culture". They consist of fallacious accusations that generally argue several of these things: Singlish is broken English (despite it being a creole with its own grammar). It is a "problem". It is a "sub-standard" language. It is a "crutch" in some way. It needs to be discouraged from use, suppressed, wiped out.<br /><br />It is of a basilectal and informal register, I will grant that. Singlish is an intimate language and can be overly familiar at times: it is just like the French would <span style="font-style: italic;">tutoyer</span> their friends and other intimate contacts but <span style="font-style: italic;">vouvoyer</span> strangers and superiors. It does not mean the language used while <span style="font-style: italic;">tutoying</span> is any more inferior -- in fact it can be the other way round due to the intimacy and familiarity.<br /><br />People who make the accusation that Singlish is inferior have neither real knowledge of linguistics nor the true meaning of culture, especially when they are as bigoted to imply that speaking dialects is "<a href="http://four.fsphost.com/singlish/Files/20060810-ST-GetToughonSinglish.pdf">as bad</a>" as speaking Singlish. (Ng Ya Ken, are you telling me the Chinese dialects are "broken Chinese" too? Dude, I hope you know that Cantonese is centuries older than Mandarin itself.) Singaporeans are a resilient lot, and Singlish is so pervasive in the national culture that is unlikely to go soon. The elitist upper class <span style="font-style: italic;">Putains Au Pouvoir</span> ("bitches in power", or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Action_Party">PAP</a>) hate this fact. But they will use whatever campaign necessary to try to have Singlish eliminated in twenty, thirty or fifty years time.<br /><br />As this elitist and superficial "high culture" mentality occurs at the expense of what should be otherwise thriving legitimate national culture, I bear a strong antipathy to such attitudes.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4384107694673534718.post-5601987270004987352007-03-10T22:31:00.000-05:002007-03-19T17:16:00.710-05:00lugivariants:<span style="font-style: italic;"> lugi, rugi</span><br />IPA: /'lu.<span title="Pronunciation in IPA" class="IPA">ɡ̊</span>i/, /'ru.gi/<br /><br />Singlish, meaning "lose out". It bears associations with <span style="font-style: italic;">kiasu</span>ism, because the word assumes a comparison with others (the world) although it is intransitive. One <span style="font-style: italic;">lugies</span> if he allows other people to cut in front of him in a queue, for instance.<br /><br />A Hokkien corruption of Malay <span style="font-style: italic;">rugi, </span>"loss", from Sanskrit <a href="http://seasrc.th.net/indic/inbyskt.htm"><span style="font-style: italic;">roga</span></a>, "disease, broken", from reconstructed PIE <span style="font-style: italic;">*<a href="http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=lugubrious">leug</a>-</span>, "to break, to cause pain", from <span style="font-style: italic;">*</span><a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=lose">leu</a><span style="font-style: italic;">-</span>, "loosen, separate, cut apart".<br /><br />/l/ <=> /r/ appears to be a frequent sound change between languages, probably because they are both approximants involving curling the tongue. Sanskrit changed *leug- => rog-, but uncannily the Hokkien corruption from <span style="font-style: italic;">rugi</span> to <span style="font-style: italic;">lugi</span> restores the Sanskrit root closer to the original PIE. Note that the sound also affects the quality of the /g/ - the Hokkien variant voices it considerably less than the Malay.<br /><br />Coxford <a href="http://www.talkingcock.com/html/lexec.php?op=LexLink&lexicon=lexicon&keyword=RUGI">asserts</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">rugi</span> as the default, probably for etymological reasons, calling "lugi" the "hardcore beng" pronunciation. However, it seems that <span style="font-style: italic;">lugi</span> is more common on the street, probably because of its similarity to English "lose".<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Lose</span> is an actual cognate of this Singlish word. Because of the Hokkien reversal of the Sanskrit sound change, on top of Malay changes to the Sanskrit, <span style="font-style: italic;">lugi</span> is not very different from its 7000-year English cousin. English "lose" is from Old English losian, from los, from reconstructed Proto-Germanic<span style="font-style: italic;"> *lausa</span>, from the same PIE root <span style="font-style: italic;">*leu-</span> (see the link at <span style="font-style: italic;">*leu-</span>). "Loss" is from the same root.<br /><br />Interesting classical cousins of Singlish <span style="font-style: italic;">lugi</span> include Greek <span style="font-style: italic;">-lysis</span>, "to break apart", (e.g. <span style="font-style: italic;">hydrolysis</span>) and Latin <span style="font-style: italic;">lugubris</span>, "sad, mournful", from descendant root <span style="font-style: italic;">*leug- </span>(see link above for <span style="font-style: italic;">*leug-), </span>found in English as <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.yourdictionary.com/wotd/wotd.pl?word=lugubrious">lugubrious</a>. </span><span>Other Sanskrit descendants from <span style="font-style: italic;">*leug-</span> include <span style="font-style: italic;">rujati</span>, "breaks, torments".</span><br /><br />Notes: etymology reconstructed from personal research. Time periods for entry into Malay and Singlish respectively would be appreciated, as well as dialect data for widespreadness and demographics of variants.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4384107694673534718.post-2249143571707099822007-03-10T22:30:00.000-05:002007-03-10T23:34:54.412-05:00rugisee <a href="http://langueperdue.blogspot.com/2007/03/lugi.html">lugi</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4384107694673534718.post-86087573927169207772007-03-10T22:24:00.000-05:002007-03-10T22:34:29.906-05:00Singapore Heritage DictionaryWhat a grand title eh. I've decided to launch this little project, within here at least. It may later require moving onto another blog entirely. What is this anyway? Well, it's a dictionary project, or currently more like a selected word list, with etymology, for language from a Singaporean perspective.<br /><br />Well, isn't this all redundant anyway? Got etymonline leh, wiktionary, Coxford, if not the regular dictionaries already. I use them regularly quite often, actually. But they all have deficiencies. Etymonline only goes for standard English etymology, which is not enough to cover the multilingual breadth of what the average Singaporean citizen will encounter: wiktionary is an admirable project but it doesn't have the Singapore-centrism that is needed. Coxford - at least the online version - is a laugh really, since it doesn't go too much into etymology.<br /><br />It's called the Singapore Heritage Dictionary since I couldn't think of a real name. Plus, it's purposes are similar to the American Heritage Dictionary - with a greater emphasis on origins and history, since our government doesn't seem to see it fit to preserve our Singlish heritage in any way.<br /><br />This will probably need lots of suggestions. So uh, send them in.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4384107694673534718.post-29912030291123900292007-03-07T23:10:00.000-05:002007-09-05T14:21:52.065-05:00the would omission<span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >Part of the </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><a style="font-family: georgia;" href="http://langueperdue.blogspot.com/2007/03/grammar-error-series.html">grammar error series</a></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >If Singaporeans properly used the conditional more often, I wouldn't be so annoyed.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >Sometimes it seems that "would" is not part of some Singaporeans' English vocabulary. By that, I don't mean that they're rude, or that they are the types who would say "</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >Uncle, I wan this</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >" rather than "</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >I would like some of that tofu, s'il vous plaît</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >" when ordering from the hawker stall.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >Rather, I mean it's </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >really</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > not part of their vocabulary. It's like got no sense of conditional mood </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >one</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >. Let me illustrate. Take for example, </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><a style="font-family: georgia;" href="http://media.ndp.org.sg/mp3/1988%20-%20Various%20-%20We%20Are%20Singapore.zip">the recording</a></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > for the NDP 1988 song "We are Singapore":</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><blockquote style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">"There was a time, when people said that Singapore won't make it ... but we did."</span></blockquote><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >Wah, official government-sanctioned song one and got gross grammar error! I in fact cringe every time I hear that part of the song, though the rest is fine as far as aesthetic propaganda goes.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >On further analysis, if some people really wish to protest, it appears there is a /d/ somewhere in the middle of "won't". But if the singer had been really saying "wouldn't" at the time, it would seem his pronunciation is a bit off. </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >Wodn't make it? </span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >How did the /u/ become an /o/? You go through </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><a style="font-family: georgia;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulgar_Latin#Phonology">Romance sound changes</a></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > or what?</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >Technically, there are two main types of "would", not including further derivations like "would have been". One is in a hypothetical sentence:</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >If Singaporeans used the conditional properly more often, I wouldn't be so annoyed.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >Which takes the form of [past subjunctive clause], [conditional clause]. Note that although the first clause ("if Singaporeans used ...") is in the past subjunctive, it's a "present hypothesis". The hypothesis supposes that if you could change something about the present situation, something would happen. It just happens that in English, using the past tense is the way to render the hypothetical subjunctive. It occurs in many other Indo-European languages too, apparently. We'll come to that later. Basically, keep in mind that the past tense of subjunctive "used" is in the "modal present" for this context. A past hypothesis would use the </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >pluperfect</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > tense. We'll come to that later.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >Anyhow, the other is in a "past future" sentence. What in the world is a past future sentence, you say? How is that not a self-contradiction? Well, let me demonstrate:</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >The government promised they wouldn't raise the GST.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >Okay, not fair lah. Guv'men never made such promise liddat one. Got another one:</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >George Bush Sr. promised there wouldn't be any new taxes.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >At the time, George Bush the Elder said, "there will be no new taxes". (Well actually he said, "</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><a style="font-style: italic; font-family: georgia;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Read_my_lips:_no_new_taxes#">read my lips: No new taxes</a></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >", but you get the idea.) It was a past promise of what would happen in the future - at that point in the past. Now, with our perspective of the present, we render that "future clause" in the "past of the future", with </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >would</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >, which is the past tense of the auxiliary verb </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >will (</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >as in</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > I will do it)</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >. Hence, "there </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >wouldn't</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > be any new taxes".</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >If I were to write "George Bush promised there won't be any new taxes", I must be living in a time before George Bush passed the 1990 US Budget but after he got elected, because well, that clause can only remain in the future if it hasn't happened yet (or has not been prevented from happening). Even after this condition is fulfilled, there is a potential for tense conflict due to inconsistency in tense. This is the issue of whether one would say "I didn't know that today </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >was</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > a half-day" or whether "I didn't know that today </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >is</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > a half-day". But that's for another post.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >What's the difference between the "past of the future" and the conditional anyway? They both correspond to one auxiliary verb mood with "would", do they not? Does this question really matter? Well, I suppose it does since they could be two different grammatical concepts and we want to find out why Singaporeans omit them at times, do we not? We will examine this later.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >There are some further "extra" uses for "would", that are fairly related or can be thought of special cases of one of the two situations above.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >"</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >I would like some of that tofu, s'il vous plaît."<br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >No one would say this to a hawker, I hope, since it was just an exaggeration of the kind of euphemistic language used in polite company. With formal French </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >s'il vous plaît </span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >tossed in for comic effect. But suppose there be an </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >ang-moh</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > tourist who doesn't get that the hawker centre is the place where you </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >tutoyer</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > and you dispense with formality.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >"Could I have some of that, er, what do you call it? Horr fun?? Whore fun?! Well, okay, I would like to have of that please?"</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >*cough*</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >This is the use of the conditional in order to make a polite request. Well, where's the subjunctive clause? It's actually implied. "If you it would please you / if you would grant my request / if it's acceptable to you / if it doesn't bother you too much .... I would like this." The idea is, well, you would want something only if the owner were happy to give it. Well, duh. But it's a bit deeper: due to the rules of society and all, it's not nice to leave someone wanting. So the idea is not to vex the person you're requesting a service from.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >If he's happy to serve, then you want it. If he's not, then you don't want it (or you say you don't want it even though you really do). That way, by saying "I would like", you ritualistically give room for the person being asked to refuse (although this doesn't really happen in practice). This occurs even in business transactions, especially in the French language, in the form of "</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >je voudrais</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >" or "</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >pourrais-je...</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >" It's partly also due to a euphemistic nature. The more verbs you put between yourself (i.e. the pronoun "I", specifying yourself) and your actual request, the more distance you put between yourself and the speaker, in order not to potentially offend. Which is why formality is almost mutually incompatible with familiarity.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >The sheer flexibility of what </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >if-clauses</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > a person can imply for politeness with "would" can be confounding. Am I implying "if it doesn't bother you" or "if it pleases you" whenever I use "would" for politeness? It seems to evolve into a new mood all on its own: it can almost take this use out of the conditional and put this in one of them fancy optative moods that doesn't exist in English but perhaps might as well. It consigns verbs and exchanges between speaker an audience to a whole world of wanting. For example, let us examine another use of "would", modifying my first hypothetical statement slightly:</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >If Singaporeans <span style="font-weight: bold;">would use</span> the conditional properly more often, I wouldn't be so annoyed.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >It sounds like a valid sentence, but what happened to the past subjunctive? How can I have two conditional clauses in a hypothesis? Well, actually the first is not really the conditional really. For proof, if I were to say:</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >I wish I would be rich</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > (as opposed to </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >if I were rich</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >)</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >or</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >If it wouldn't have snowed</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > (as opposed to </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >if it hadn't snowed</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >)</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >or</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >if I would be you </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >I would sound slightly funny, because it's just grammatically incorrect: these are conditional uses attempting to replace the subjunctive. Yet, "<span style="font-style: italic;">if Singaporeans would use</span>" sounds okay it must mean that clause is rather equivalent to the subjunctive. Or rather, it's that optative (a close relative of the subjunctive) we were talking about. This because I am making a subjunctive wish (optative) that they use the conditional properly more often. I want them to use the conditional properly.<br /><br />One should further note that "if it would please you ... I would like this" and "if it doesn't bother you" both show that the "polite would" request doesn't conform to the normal "if" hypothesis structure, something which will be covered somewhere below. When I say, "if you would only stop being so annoying", I am using a special kind of "request mood". This becomes special mood becomes evident in a phrase like "I wish you <span style="font-style: italic;">would</span> stop being so annoying", where the "would" replaces the subjunctive, and the structure as a whole replaces the infinitive of "I want you <span style="font-style: italic;">to stop</span>". The second clause "... that you would stop being so annoying" has no accompanying hypothetical-if structure. Hence, this kind of "would" not just a simple conditional.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >There's also the "rhetorical would", which is sort of like the combination of the polite would, and the hypothesis would, depending on the exact context. It rather assumes the implication of, "assuming our premises is true" coupled with "if you please". It wasn't my intention, but discussing grammar often invokes lots of rhetorical uses of would. Let me list some of the rhetorical </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >woulds</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > used in this post:</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >it would seem </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >one would say </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >they are the types who would say </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >no one would say this </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >[if I were to say] .... I would sound </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >A past hypothesis would use the pluperfect tense</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > [if we were making a past hypothesis]</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >You can try to figure out the implicit hypotheses yourselves, with the last two given. And yes, rhetorical </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >woulds</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > deal a lot with saying something. This is not a coincidence. ;-0</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >Yet another type of "would" is the "past habitual action" would. "When I used to walk to primary school, every morning I </span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >would</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > get up and leave at 6:20 am in the morning, and I </span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >would</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > walk through the awakening market under the blanket of stars ... " In this case "would" is synonymous to "used to", except it's cleaner and is used to replace it perhaps because it's only needed for consistency. It's close to the French </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >imparfait</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > as well as Greek and PIE </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><a style="font-family: georgia;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aorist">aorist</a></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >: English has in fact lost quite a few simple tenses over the millenia compared to its ancestors, to the extent that both the sense of "future" and "past habitual action" now need to be conveyed with periphrastic constructions like "going to", "will", "used to" and "would".</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >If you are starting to get confused, don't worry. The conditional, optative and subjunctive *and* the future tense are all related. There is a theory that Proto-Indo-European didn't have a real future tense at all (just like English<span style="font-style: italic;"></span>). Rather, some of its descendants formed it by combining the desiderative (a want-related verb form) with the subjunctive. When Latin speakers wanted to make a subjunctive hypothesis, they used a format of </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >si [subjunctive], [subjunctive]</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >, rather than </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >si [subjunctive], [conditional]</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >. The Romance languages like French and Spanish - the descendants of Latin - invented the conditional tense separately from the Germanic languages themselves. To know this, it helps to know the reason behind the formation of the Romance future, which is much different from the Latin future.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >Latin renders the future tense (in the indicative, singular and for the first three persons) for </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >amare</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > as: </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >amabo, amabis, amabit, </span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >whereas French goes: </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >aimerai, aimeras, aimera</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >. The ama- => aim- is a regular and expected sound change. The<span style="font-style: italic;"> -bo </span>=> <span style="font-style: italic;">ai</span> is not. (One should also know that <span style="font-style: italic;">amare</span>/<span style="font-style: italic;">aimer</span> are regular verbs and are frequently cited as they are models for conjugating many other verbs in Latin and French respectively.) This sudden change occurs because they use different constructions. In Proto-Romance and Vulgar Latin, the "street forms" of classical Latin (just like Singlish to English), the future tense was actually periphrastic. This was just like in English, except with the verb habere ("to have") (</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >habere</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > => </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >haveir</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > => </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >avoir</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > for French / </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >avere</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > for Italian / </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >haber</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > for Spanish ) rather than "will". The link was from obligation to future action. Thus, it doesn't take a great leap from "I have to do something" => "I will do something". In those days, due to syntax of Latn, the auxiliary verbs tended to go in front. Hence, the infinitive first, followed by the conjugated forms of "habere". "I will love" would thus be, "<span style="font-style: italic;">amare habeo</span>."</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >But in time, as Vulgar Latin broke up, the syntax for word order was reversed and the idea behind the Romance future as an <span style="font-style: italic;">infinitive + auxiliary</span> construction was lost. The custom became thought of as a "simple tense". Yet, it is still possible to detect this Vulgar Latin custom in the Romane languages, even today.<br /><br />In French </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >aimera</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > for instance, it is really composed of </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >aimer + a</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > ([he] will love: [he] <span style="font-weight: bold;">has</span> to love), as well with </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >aimerai <= aimer + ai</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > (I will love) and <span style="font-style: italic;">aimeras <= aimer + as</span> (you will love). And the conditional forms? Put avoir in the subjunctive, which is </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >ais, ait, ayons, ayez, aient</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >. Thus, </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >aimer + ait</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > => <span style="font-style: italic;">aimerait</span> (were he to have to love => he would love); </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >aimer + aient => aimeraient</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > (were they to have to love => they would love); <span style="font-style: italic;"></span><span style="font-style: italic;">aimer + ayons</span> => <span style="font-style: italic;">aimerions</span> (were we to have to love => we would love).</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >This happened in Old English too: make a conditional tense by subjunctivising the future tense. How do you put something in the subjunctive? You could make it past tense. Ta-da! You get would, the past tense of </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >will</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >, to express the conditional. You also get </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >would</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >, to express past wishes of the future, </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >would</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >, to express past habitual actions, and would, to subjunctivise requests like "will you get the door?" into "would you get the door?" Or probably more like, "would you get our weapons so we can overrun Londonium?", but you get the idea.<br /><br />As a result, "would" is one of them<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:100%;" ><a style="font-family: georgia;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preterite-present_verb">preterite-present</a></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>verbs<span style="font-style: italic;">. </span>It's a verb that is historically the past tense of another verb, and well, it's kind of tough to literally take the past tense of what is an already conjugated past tense form. Hence, one cannot say, "I musted do it!", but has to say "I had to do it!" to convey an obligation in the past tense. This is because "must" is already the past tense of Old English <span style="font-style: italic;">motan, "</span>to have to<span style="font-style: italic;">"</span>. It was historically<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>put in the past subjunctive for politeness reasons too. However, we may not realise this because the verb <span style="font-style: italic;">motan</span>, present tense and everything, has all but disappeared, save for its past tense.<br /><br />One can easily find other preterite-presents: you can't say <span style="font-style: italic;">I</span> </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >woulded</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >, </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >coulded, shoulded</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > or what have you, for the same reasons that you can't say <span style="font-style: italic;">musted</span>. </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >Canned</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > is well, different for reasons that are obvious.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >So why do I bring all this history up? The uses of "would" are grammatically myriad and sometimes complex to classify. There are grammatical functions that are hard to replace through circumvention or by omitting the "would" in favour of the simple future. Besides, some of the inflection - unlike some others as I will talk about in my next post - is useful.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >I do note that the Singlish dialect generally can get away with not using it:</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >"Haha, that Ah Pek, he go (and) say I'll win one, but look at how much I won already liao."</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >[Ah Pek said that I wouldn't win, but look at how much I have won already.]</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >Note that while the inflection is dropped with "go (and) say", the event of Ah Pek telling our speaker his advice is clearly in the past. Also, strong verbs (verbs that change vowel grade based on tense, e.g. "sing/sang/sung", "fly/flew/flown", and in this case "win/won") often tend to remain conjugated in Singlish, though not always - sometimes it depends on context, emphasis and position within the sentence whether it's conjugated or not. Anyhow, "go [verb]" often acts as a past tense marker in Singlish, in the logic of "he went and did this", whereas "to go" would mark the future in other contexts ("I'm going to fly off tomorrow"). So, anyway, before you think that "won't" isn't changed to "wouldn't" simply perhaps because of the same non-conjugation principle (which is arguably conjugated in the past anyhow), I can also envision this:</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >"Ayah, he already told me he won't go liao." </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >Which can have two interpretations:</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >"</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >He has told already told me he isn't going."</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >OR</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >"</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >He told me he wouldn't be going</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > [but he went!]"</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >But note that I defend Singlish, but hate Singaporean grammar errors in the standard English register </span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >(as I have clarified before)</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >. The first has a grammar, the second is just annoying. If I say in Singlish "how come you never do homework one!", I can either mean "why didn't you do your homework?" or "why do you keep refusing to do your homework?" If I could toss in "<span style="font-style: italic;">aw hor! </span></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >[you're screwed / shame on you]</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-style: italic;"></span>" </span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" ></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > in there along with the right tone inflection, I would unambiguously specify the former. If I toss in "always" in there instead, I would specify the latter. Singlish can get away with this because it often relies on tone and various other cues: standard English isn't quite so rich in particles and tone inflection as Singlish is. Therefore, one should switch to "would" when the wish for the future is in the past, if one is speaking in the standard English register.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >Now, I really feel guilty to bring up a friend's blog, but here is an </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><a style="font-family: georgia;" href="http://www.pieisforfatkids.blogspot.com/2007_02_01_archive.html">excerpt</a></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > from Carissa, a friend from primary school, to show how it creeps up in even quite acrolectic (i.e. fairly standard and professional) registers. </span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;color:black;" ><span style="color:gray;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >"If there was a subject called 'Movies, Celebs, Eyecandies & You', I'll totally ace it" </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >There are two things that could be highlighted here. One is the subjunctive "if there was" clause. Some grammarians regard this as ungrammatical and incorrect. I regard it as colloquial, something you wouldn't write in your A-level essays but perfectly acceptable for speech and blogging. Also note, there can be indicative "if there was" clauses. More on this later. Anyhow, I don't think this is such a gross error because it doesn't sacrifice the main feature of the past subjunctive: putting things in the "unreal past", which is the main concept - change something in the past to modify a concrete thing in the present; change something something in the pluperfect (more than past) in order to change something about the past. The subjunctive "were" has this feature of being the same whether it is singular or plural. Besides, "was" is mainly understood easily without any flinching, because the past tense is the main concept.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >The omission of "would" however (in this case, "I'd" in contracted form, which has a tendency to merge with "I'd" of "I had" sometimes) to me is considerably more serious, since it blots out a whole grammatical concept with it. And Carissa is a rather strong and rhetorical writer as she is - which alerts me to something about the state of disuse "would" might be facing even in the acrolectical dialects of Singaporean society.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >Sometimes even Members of Parliament mar the structure. Let's try the p65 blog:</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >... I personally do not believe even if Crazy Horse were allowed to place advertisements wherever they like, the show would have done much better than it did. </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><div style="text-align: right;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">-- "<a href="http://www.p65.sg/2007/03/05/regulation-of-advertisement-standards/">Regulation of Advertisement Standards</a>", Baey Yam Keng<br /></span></div><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >Now, Baey Yam Keng is one of the more progressive and responsive members of the p65 blog, (compared to the arrogant Josephine Teo, whose writing style I cannot stand, and Lateef who doesn't approve comments that make critique over any part of her posts). So this is not a personal dig at them or whatever (even if I do favour the opposition). But there's an "if-clause" structure error here.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >As a reminder, this is how hypotheses are structured:</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >If I receive a million dollars ..... I will be very happy.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >If I received a million dollars ..... I would be very happy.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >If I had received a million dollars ..... I would have been very happy.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >Baey's error is in saying "if Crazy Horse were allowed .... ". This is the past subjunctive, and affects the present condition (crazily enough, crazily ...). One has to say "even if Crazy Horse </span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >had been</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > allowed" in order to follow up with "would have been".</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >Note that for indicative hypotheses like the first example, there is more flexibility depending on context. I can say, "if your rice tastes so hard, it means you didn't cook it enough"; "if it's not very wet outside, that means it hasn't been raining for very long", etc. I can use future perfect or present continuous tenses or whatever. However, if I am talking about personal decisions, my sentences will generally follow the structure outlined above; most exceptions to this will be in places where future plans are idiomatically stated in the present (simple and continuous). Hence, "if it's not raining out, I'm going for a walk" only works because "I'm going for a walk" means "I will take a walk".</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >However, subjunctive hypotheses definitely do not have any such flexibility and must follow fixed structure. You cannot say, "if water were to boil at zero degrees Celsius, there must be no oceans now", for example. But I </span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >can</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > say, "if SPECTRE [supervillain of your choice] has caused all water on this planet to boil at zero degrees Celsius, all the oceans in the world must be disappearing!" The first statement is subjunctive; the second is likely to occur in the context of a fiction film where reality gets defied (should I say, totally, totally, raped) from time to time anyway so it is its plausible to put it in the indicative.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >This entire phenomenon regarding Singaporeans' treatment of "would" is interesting as well as annoying. I do note that for example, that I pronounce "would" with an /l/ in it at times. Although the consonant doesn't generally appear audibly (as a lateral approximant in a cluster it tends to get elided most of the time in quick speech), it appears when words are stressed and also when I am talking in a low voice (like in a library). This is mainly because most of my normal vocabulary comes from reading in second, third, fourth and fifth grade, from age 7 to 10: and I tended to apply stress distinctions for words that were homophones for Americans. For example "night" is a fairly stressed vowel, and I attributed this to the "-ight", and "nite" didn't quite seem to carry the same stress. I perceived "would" to have an /l/ in this regard, but I was never corrected, probably because it wasn't noticeable enough in my speech. So you see, even though I have an American accent I do not think like the average American English speaker!</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >My conclusion? Words that are picked up from reading rather than acquired in speech I consider to be "literary" or "non-native" vocabulary - I encountered "would" in the classroom naturally, but apparently the reading perception with the /l/ superseded the /l/-less classroom pronunciation of "would". (This was also aided by the fact that I first read <span style="font-style: italic;">Green Eggs and Ham</span> by myself silently, as I suspect that's when I first encountered "would" -- <span style="font-style: italic;">would you like them with a goat? would you eat them in a boat?</span> -- rather than having it read to me.) The fact that "would" is thus a "non-native" word for me means that I didn't encounter "would" too much in Singapore, or at least not enough by the age of five, for it to have entered my native vocabulary. My Singlish heritage is interesting: because of it, I can both say that I am both a native speaker and not a native speaker of English.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >If it wasn't part of my early childhood linguistic environment in Singapore, I expect it wasn't part of many other Singaporeans' early childhood linguistic environments too. Apparently, "would", with all of its optatives, conditionals and aorists, didn't become part of many Singaporeans' English grammar structures until much later in life: a late acquisition of the concept would undermine fluency and natural grasping of the concept. It is thus not surprising that many Singaporeans end up omitting it in speech.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >Grammarians lament that the English subjunctive is facing demise. Despite this, I think the subjunctive survives quite well in the modal auxiliaries </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >would</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > and </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >should </span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >as well as in periphrastic constructions. English, is after all, an analytic language: sentences are most oftenly composed of free morphemes - words that are not bound to other words as suffixes or verb endings. It's only natural to move from an inflected form of the subjunctive to one conveyed with modal auxiliary verbs, just like we have done with the future tense.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >But to drop "would" entirely, well, it would result in the loss of too many convenient constructions of delicate moods, wants, hypotheses and declarations. So let's not lose it.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4384107694673534718.post-28409235588822719972007-03-06T20:03:00.000-05:002007-03-20T04:34:04.443-05:00the grammar error series<span style="font-style: italic;"></span>Now, I am generally a champion of Singlish. I see it as a legitimate dialect and a creole, with its own grammar system that is to be appreciated. I do not like the government's attempts at dismissing it nor the Speak Good English Movement's attitude towards it. It has often at times <a href="http://www.goodenglish.org.sg/SGEM/pressroom/st_times3.htm">said</a> that Singlish has "limited vocabulary" and makes up for it by borrowing from other languages. "<span style="font-style: italic;">Hence also the habit of code-mixing</span>," Koh Tai Ann writes, "<span style="font-style: italic;">using words and phrases from Chinese or Malay because they do not know the English equivalent</span>."<br /><br />Which is just a plain stupid statement really, and quite a poor method for putting down the dialect. I should say, using Koh Tai Ann's amazing logic, that English has a limited vocabulary and makes up for it by heavily borrowing from Latin, French and Greek. English writers from the 11th to the 18th centuries used words and phrases from those languages because they didn't know the Old English equivalent. So we should throw out words like <span style="font-style: italic;">air</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">colour</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">idiom</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">assimilate</span>. These words weren't originally part of English. I don't know, since I can't seem to find Anglo-Saxon equivalents easily, I guess my English must really be poor, huh, since I must borrow from the Romance languages and all.<br /><br />The logic is rather curious since borrowing from other languages - a multicultural phenomenon that should be cheered on - tends to make a language richer rather than being evidence of its poverty. Not to mention the example of Malay, which has replaced many of its original Austronesian words with Sanskrit equivalents. Because of this Sanskrit connection, the Singlish word "lugi", borrowed from Malay, is in fact, distantly related (separated by about 7000 years) to the English word "lose" (as well as Latin <span style="font-style: italic;">lugubrious</span>).<br /><br /><a href="http://www.goodenglish.org.sg/SGEM/pressroom/st_times4.htm">Another gem</a> is "<span style="font-style: italic;">People who can speak only Singlish will not write blogs. Bloggers must be fairly literate and must have ready access to computers, have a liking for language and have a strong desire to express themselves.</span>" She assumes it's as though Singaporeans who do not speak standard English that well but are more fluent in Singlish or their mother tongue will not have a strong liking for language or a desire to express themselves, or cannot be literate. <a href="http://incorruptibility-egalitarianism-2007.blogspot.com/">Lao Xin Zhou</a> struggles with his English and is more fluent in Chinese but I admire the tenacity of his views. I should tell you - I too, could once only speak Singlish. But now I keep several blogs and yearn to be a linguist. I can perfectly envision many bloggers who write in Singlish not for creative effect, but as genuine automatic expression, and not intentional creativity on our part. I too, sometimes do this.<br /><br />There are tons of linguistic fallacies that the SGEM purports. I will eventully try rebut them in other posts.<br /><br />However, there are features of some Singaporean speech that are decidedly not Singlish, and are grammatically incorrect. How do I make this distinction?<br /><br />When speakers speak Singlish, they employ grammatical concepts. They do it unconsciously - but they do it nevertheless. "<span style="font-style: italic;">Lah</span>" is the classic example cited most of the time: you can't simply place it anywhere and it serves the role of intensifier. For "how <span style="font-style: italic;">come </span>never do homework <span style="font-style: italic;">one</span>?" (why haven't you done your homework?) - a phrase that can find itself within ACSI - the words "you", "did", and "your"/"the" are all used in Singlish, but they are dropped because those words are implied. When you drop tense conjugation in Singlish, it's not a grammatical error, but it's dropped because it's seen as irrelevant to the context. It's a given based on context what the time, person and homework is. Grammatical inflection (modifying verbs, adjectives and nouns to agree with person, number, gender, tense, case, etc.) places an unnecessary emphasis at times and sometimes becomes more of a burden than an aid (the irrelevance of inflection). I will write about this later.<br /><br />Anyhow, Singlish practices like these are all grammatical, though not necessarily acceptable in formal situations. A custom is grammatical when it is made intentionally, rather than out of ignorance, even if it's unconscious. For example in standard English, we stress-time our sentences, generally unintentionally (unless you're trying to <span style="font-style: italic;">wayang off</span> your language) but grammatically nonetheless. We have subconcious processes associated with it.<br /><br />However, whereas I champion Singlish because of its multicultural diversity and because I just love linguistics, I really cringe at grammar errors. What is a grammar error? It's an error that speakers make because they are unaware and ignorant of the cultural and grammatical rules of the language. Or, it could be an error in writing made by a fluent speaker, and happens because he edited part of his post and forgot to correct the other parts to be grammatically consistent with the change. *cough, cough* (This happens to me, all the time.)<br /><br />You can really tell when something is a grammar error (as opposed to a Singlish construction) because the speaker is speaking within (or is trying to speak within) the register of standard English. Also, Singlish will often use a totally different construction or rephrase it differently anyway. As such, the error can really throw the audience off and mar comprehension , because whenever we are listening to a certain language, we assume a "mindset of concepts and rules" about that language.<br /><br />Take conjugation, e.g. "he has", "they have". When I speak Singlish for example, I assume a different mindset that allows me not to be disturbed by people dropping conjugation, such as in "No need (to) give him <span style="font-style: italic;">lah</span>. He already have <span style="font-style: italic;">liao</span>." I consider this grammatical. The tonal nature of Singlish immediately alerts my mind about which mindset to use and what to concentrate on. Singlish borrows many tonal aspects from Chinese, with some words, the particles especially, having fixed tones. I use this to keep track of the conversation rather than being attentive to inflection. But if I hear "I don't think he have it" in a standard English context, with no Singlish toning (but perhaps in a Singaporean accent), I will be thrown off. It is not because it is unexpected -- sometimes I switch from standard English to Singlish mid-sentence -- but because it is simply erroneous and not Singlish at all, since Singlish would specify a strong tone for the unconjugated "have" and alert me to switch to a Singlish mindset.<br /><br />I love Singlish, but I cannot stand errors. Often I have seen errors in advertisements, notices and even in the speech of government ministers. I would love an ad in Singlish (take the TalkingCock in Parliament ad) - because that would use Singlish grammar, and hence, would be grammatical. But all of a sudden, I can be reading things that are obviously written in the standard English register when a gross error occurs. New <span style="font-style: italic;">oxymetabolic-regeneration whatever</span>: we guarantee that it will helps you lose weight, gains energy and feels great.<br /><br />And so with this long explanation I have created the grammar error series, to discuss such errors because I find them increasingly hard to take in Singaporean speech. Basically I want to introduce the series and define a scope of this blog, and also have something to head my categories with. Yet at the same time I want to say that my harping on Singaporeans' errors is not the same as harping on Singlish. I want to make a distinction between errors in English and customs in Singlish.<br /><br />P.S. No one should even dare suggest to me that the use of "grammar error" is grammatically incorrect. Bet you grammar nazis (only trying to be show-offs) are saying that it should be "grammatical error", right? This blog is for real linguistics and not pointless grammar nazism, man. They are both interchangeable.<br /><br />"-al" is an adjectival suffix from Latin; an equivalent native (Anglo-Saxon) English suffix would be "-en", e.g. as in "wooden" and "golden" (and also seen in its role in strong verb participles like <span style="font-style: italic;">taken, forsaken</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">beholden</span>, as well as the sense of "endow with the properties of", e.g. as in "harden", kind of like -ify and -ise). However, modern English is an analytic language, and has something called the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_morpheme">null morpheme</a> which allows nouns to be used as adjectives without the need for derivation markers (such as "-al").<br /><br />Just so happens that English, due to the Norman invasion, has multiple ways to accomplish the same grammatical function. For example, there are two main ways to show the possessive in English. One can either use the apostrophe-s clitic ('s) or use the word "of"; the first one <a href="http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=-%27s">was inherited</a> from Old English, the second technique was done <a href="http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=of">in imitation</a> of French <span style="font-style: italic;">de</span>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4384107694673534718.post-33219467406106935042007-02-21T19:33:00.000-05:002007-02-25T12:06:31.870-05:00whispers of the night<span style="font-style: italic;">Speaking is forbidden!</span><br /><br />I remember this phrase, one that was Not in the English language, But in one of my most hated — yet dearest — tongues of my heart.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">haikraskh maugk aik</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">[skau]</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">!</span><br /><br />(there be no talking [amongst yourselves] !)<br /><br />The philosophy was simple. Restrict the use of langauge, Restrict collaboration, Restrict thought, Exert greater control. That old Safir-Whorf hypothesis. Orwell writes in <span style="font-style: italic;">1984</span> —<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Until they become conscious They will never rebel, And until after they have rebelled They cannot become conscious. </span><br /><br />Perhaps Such a linguistic view is true somewhat. Culture feeds into language and shapes it, But language passes on culture and shapes it in the other direction too. It is somewhat like a cycle.<br />But if a language regime were to enforce their own elements onto the cycle, and prevent the previous generation from Passing on their culture, They could engineer their own culture as They wished. It only requires breaking the ties between parent and child ....<br /><br />But we were children, and We would not yield So easily.<br /><br />It was a hated tongue, a constructed tongue. It was a tongue between slave and master. I am still uncertain about its origins. Perhaps They borrowed elements from somewhere, or hired linguists. It obviously has strong Romance links, You say. But Those come in only later.<br /><br />It was a language Taught for the purposes of giving orders, work and indoctrination. They seemed to make some words Sound hateful by pronunciation alone, or At least sound as cacophonic as It could be for them.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">haikraskh maugk aik skau! </span><br /><br />How unpleasant was the word <span style="font-style: italic;">haikraskh</span>! We found it as horrible as They hoped We would have found it. It was a word as cacophonic to the ear as Hearing the feedback that Comes from an ill-set microphone. They wished to discourage us from Speaking amongst ourselves. We had to speak and report to our superiors of course — it was seen as a necessary evil — but it was absolutely Forbidden in the sleeping quarters, the <span style="font-style: italic;">hraml</span>. The language was constructed for the relationship between superior and inferior, not between peers. The power of the collective was organised under overseers who Directed our labours without Us ever needing communicating with each other.<br /><br />Why did they feel the need Prohibiting speaking if They had already taken the appropriate steps to prevent us from collaborating with each other? It only requires Disabling the dangerous words, and Sowing the seeds of isolation. Frederick Douglass was forbidden from Reading and Writing, and the slaves of history have always been forbidden from Assembling in large groups, Even just for Speaking casually amongst themselves, but here We were being refused the right to language!<br /><br />But perhaps It was something they recognised. If you leave children alone, They will spontaneously form their own language and create their own words. I believe They realised this danger. This prohibition was not to merely prevent Us from Collaborating, but a precaution to prevent Us from ever even Forming such a language, so that We would never have been able to form a framework to even understand each other.<br /><br />But we were children, and We would not yield So easily.<br /><br />It was a dear tongue. I remember the whispers of the night, the passed on tidbits of information, and the accompanying giggles that Struggled to be suppressed for fear of discovery. The hand signals, the burst of sounds, the realisations, the resonance of silent laughs. Invented words that caught on like wildfire in the night. These are children's talents, and For good reason. I realise now, that This is what ensures the resiliency of culture.<br /><br />That hated word,<span style="font-style: italic;"> haikraskh, </span>eventually<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>became shortened, caricatured and made fun of, in a manner somewhat of the dimunitives — <span style="font-style: italic;">diapies</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">bobo</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">zizou</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">ti-di</span> — That are formed by children for their own reasons. At first It was a joke word — <span style="font-style: italic;">haikrasi</span> — But it caught on as the normal word amongst ourselves Because I guess It was more pleasant to pronounce. The word went through several more cycles — <span style="font-style: italic;">haikasi</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">aikasi,</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">ikasi</span>. To talk about talking itself came up often in our conversations of the night, Precisely because talking itself was forbidden. But the original cacophonic intent of the original word had been all but neutralised.<br /><br />The new affectionate ending <span style="font-style: italic;">-i</span> even eventually became a part of our new noun-declension system, Where none had been designated before by our superiors. <span style="font-style: italic;">Haikraskh</span> took another direction and This version became <span style="font-style: italic;">haikraskhi, </span>a word That eventually acquired a meaning of "slanderous gossip" and "meaningless talk", Aided by its harsh sound and our superiors' unwitting stigma. Negative particle <span style="font-style: italic;">maulk</span> "corrected" itself to <span style="font-style: italic;">myok.</span> The original forbidding command would now say in our new dialect:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">ikasi myok aik skau! </span><br /><br />Not that You would need to say this new version, of course. I learned that it was only much later that They wisened up to our argot, And by that time It was already too rampant to suppress. For the time being You had to use the constructed speech They had assigned to you whenever You spoke to them, and as We found more and more oppurtunities to use our new speech, The original speech only became used in limited contexts, Acquiring a stuffy air and associations with work. Our superiors had their own even stuffier language — the English language — That became elite to us, and that We envied, hated, coveted, held in contempt, admired, and detested, all at once. But you see, I write in it now.<br /><br />Yet, there were times where We had to tell each other Not to speak now — The time was not right, or It was too dangerous. They punished whisperers violently, though They might not have deciphered a dialect yet. Then it would have been prudent to say:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">mi ikasai yok ska!</span><br /><br />Where <span style="font-style: italic;">ikasi</span> had been turned into a sort of a verb form, and it was friendlier to break up <span style="font-style: italic;">myok</span> into two parts before and after the word. Why? We were speaking as equals, not from superior to inferior. They had only assigned <span>the word</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> skau</span> to speak to us, whether we were one or many, (And we had to use <span style="font-style: italic;">ovi</span> to address them from inferior to superior), But <span style="font-style: italic;">ska</span> eventually developed — Perhaps due to the whims of someone — as a singular pronoun. But even that too, would be replaced completely.<br /><br />I will say that I was not the part of the first pioneering generation. Many of these developments were related to me second-hand. They theorised that Once they had suppressed the language ability of the original children, They could kidnap additional children with existing language skills and assimilate them. They would too lose their ability, or at least unable to use them, Because no one else would understand them. If they spoke a language, It would be different from all the others.<br /><br />But we were children, and We would not yield So easily.<br /><br />I was part of this successive generation. I too, had my original native language, a creole of Esperanto That has become another prestige language in this day and age, And it was ironically (Compared to the original goals of the parent language) not understood by many others outside my original community, an immigrant community in itself. But you see, Once we had a base language, It was easy to get things going, And it became a matter of acquisition of langauge by immersion.<br /><br />Our superiors would brief us on our new language in the day. <span style="font-style: italic;">Ma</span> — work — was the simplest word to acquire (perhaps intentionally) And we learned that very quickly under the threat of discipline that made many meanings seem self-evident.<br /><br />But in the whispers of the night, our peers would vigourously interrogate each other. Somehow it caught on that The new arrivals had their own different words for things. Even the first generation, Who might have not remembered their original country, seemed to have an instinct about the outside world. First, it was necessary to pick up the interrogatives and the demonstratives, and their meanings soon became clear.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Hwa aik a, ska? </span><br /><br />"What is this?" would we ask each other with wide eyes, signifying interrogation. We soon stepped it up regularly to mean, <span style="font-style: italic;">What call you this</span>? What call you your <span style="font-style: italic;">ikasi</span>? <span style="font-style: italic;">Kqhosa</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">huayu</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">al-arabiyyah</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">español</span> ...<br /><br />The phrases themselves started to use borrowed words. The <span style="font-style: italic;">huayu</span> demonstrative <span style="font-style: italic;">na </span>was more convenient to use than finger-pointing and the make-do grunt of an<span style="font-style: italic;"> a</span>. The <span style="font-style: italic;">!qc</span> clicks of <span style="font-style: italic;">khoekhoe</span> became popular, especially as oft-used interrogative pronouns, Because it was easier to mistake the clicks as capricious childish toyings of the tongue rather than forbidden speech.<br /><br />We fell in love with the concept of liaison. I do not know where exactly we got it from. We loved the feeling of our consonants rolling off from one word to the next, while We began to abhor two connecting vowels, filling the space with liaison consonants that corresponded with the last consonant uttered, even If they were clicks.<br /><br />A large bulk of of us spoke some form of Romance, And they became popular as a unified set of loanwords despite the highly significant differences. We were children deprived of language, and to rectify this We borrowed everything we could, We made our speech one of the richest languages possible.<br /><br />Many of the Romance pronouns even replaced the originals, Though still used by our superiors, because of the unpleasant stigma associated with the old ones. Hateful <span style="font-style: italic;">skau</span> became replaced by <span style="font-style: italic;">vo,</span> And <span style="font-style: italic;">ska</span> became replaced by <span style="font-style: italic;">tiw. Ovi </span>only remained because of its prestige aspect. <span style="font-style: italic;">Ove</span>, Which had been purely exclusive as a plural first person used by superiors to refer to themselves, Was replaced by <span style="font-style: italic;">noee</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">noa</span> for inclusive and exclusive we respectively. <span style="font-style: italic;">Hak</span> by <span style="font-style: italic;">mwi</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">yit</span> by <span style="font-style: italic;">el</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">zit</span> by <span style="font-style: italic;">loe. </span>The inferior pronoun class system had been effectively replaced by words of Romance origin, while The superior pronoun class system remained as names to call other people That were either insulting and exalting based on the context and type of pronoun. Effectively, Our interrogative phrases became based on:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">!qca !k'aik na, twi? </span><br /><br />I remember the whispers of the night. I remember the tongue I hated, the tongue I loved. I remember How our superiors became amused at us children, Who would accidentally (more and more often) use liaison and the dialectical <span style="font-style: italic;">-i</span> declension while speaking to them (<span style="font-style: italic;">wowa <span style="font-weight: bold;">y</span>'ovi egaw</span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">i</span><span style="font-style: italic;">?, want milord water?</span>) , Thinking it was a linguistic fault on our part due to inability of pronunciation, rather than a slip That revealed our existing dialect. I remember How we were children Who would not yield So easily to those Who would rob us of language. I remember how we ignored <span style="font-style: italic;">Haikraskh maugk aik</span>! And found out that<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Ikasi z'iyet liw, aik. </span><br /><br />For speaking will make you Free.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4384107694673534718.post-85949410818496687432007-02-05T20:19:00.000-05:002007-02-05T21:22:18.019-05:00about this blog<span style="font-style: italic;">o syuijai de zse blok-na ...</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">au sujet de ce blog ... </span><br /><br />I suppose I should give an explanation for this blog. I set this up so I could experiment with language and linguistics separate from my personal blogging, and will accomodate a large variety of posts as they deal with culture and language.<br /><br />I should also clarify that Isrekas is a character separate from myself. My native language is English - his isn't. ;-) Rather, he is in fact part of a story set indefinitely into the future, where several changes have occurred in regard to what and how people speak.<br /><br />As one may have already suspected, the strange language occasionally written in has been constructed for the story. As a hint - which too may also have been suspected - it is a creole fictionally based off a Romance language, several in fact, with changes to the sound and writing systems, with strong influences from non-European languages.<br /><br />That's enough background. I plan to publish non-English essays here, in order not to clutter things in my other blogs where people would rather not do linguistic detective work. I am passionately interested in linguistics, and one of the other purposes of this blog is to discuss linguistics and languages and get people, especially Singaporeans, interested in these fields. Awareness of language is closely linked with awareness of culture. Please, leave comments!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4384107694673534718.post-66372851875972220022007-01-21T22:51:00.000-05:002007-02-05T20:24:43.370-05:00scratching the surface<span style="font-style: italic;">aikriti t'aikwi , mai m'aikriti </span><span style="font-style: italic;">t'aisripsi </span><span style="font-style: italic;">!</span><span style="font-style: italic;">qklo ...</span><span style="font-style: italic;"><br />Écrire c'est être; mais écrire c'est également griffoner ...</span><br /><br />It seems that Every great inspection must be initiated by an inquiry. I do not like being bounded by ritual, But on the other hand there be some peoples who do them and fail realising their true value. Let us proceed to asking, What is writing?<br /><br />What is the intention of asking such a question? How is this not a meaningless, clichaied, pedantic question? But such a question becomes inevitable, For the nature of writing has changed radically over the two or three centuries or so, breaking away from ancient tradition, If not the last few decades. We in this day and age often neglect remembering the humble origins of writing: Scratching in stone; in wet clay; on wood; It is only after that that We come to the prestigious papersheet.<br /><br />It is necessary to inquire Because some people are saying that The current writing of the modern world is not writing at all. The people of the current generation these days are not used to true writing, Allege the pedants and the old conpreservatists. It is a simple matter of convenience Of eyescrolling the iwer, assertively boasting into the voiskrip, and handtyping into the keybot for solidarity. The schoolchildren complain of the tediousness and the pointlessness Of actually manually handwriting anything more than a 200 word functional composition. A handwritten poem, never mind a draft of a novel, short story or even an argument, is a rarefind these days.<br /><br />There is some partial concern from my perspective, Because handwriting lends a great deal of rote, association and feel to one's sense of language. Handwriting is tedious and ritualistic, repeating curves, strokes and characters over and over again. It is precisely Because handwriting brings one pain, tedium, dolour and calloused palms that One has a strong grasp of the concepts of a language's graphemes, phonemes and lexemes; A strong command in general. Each of these emics holds a special (painful) place in our hearts. Every time we recall a word or a sense, we remember our pain and passion associated with each one, or at least its constituent emics. Our internal yearnings then transfer to words very easily.<br /><br />But perhaps i think It is possible that We have identified the wrong process. Dolour may be necessary, But perhaps it is handwriting is not the only thing that is responsible for such dolour.<br />The origins of this very prestigious Latin alphabet That this very writing is being written in are derived from heiroglyphs, where The graphemes were the morphemes and also the phonemes, where one symbol represented an entire concept. The philosophy of the writing system would be very much different, and Yet their command of language should not seem to suffer. Can one attach the semantic feel of "-ism", "-ed" or "yearn" to a single consonant, or While drawing a bird? Other scripts have similar histories. And Of the Chinese scripts? Or Of its fluid prehistoric form where Each character had not yet been tied down in tradition to a particular specific meaning?<br /><br />The most obvious rebuttal of course, is How did our ancestors tie down their command of their language without writing if writing is so crucial to mastery of a language? It has been noted as a general trend that The less modern the language, The more complex and highly inflected it is, If not polysynthetic. Surely a highly inflected language requires skillful command.<br /><br />I should offer the caveat that I do not mean "less modern" being derogatory, But rather that Truely new languages, Such as one spontaneously formed by children with mute parents for example, tend to be highly inflected, and that They tend to lose their inflection as They age. Much of this process has been lost to the ages so I concede that This cannot be verified concretely via any comperative method, But this is a suspicion that I hold. New creoles are indeed new languages in the general sense, But they draw their grammars from older languages and hence do not begin the process all over again.<br /><br />Many of the world's supposedly oldest written languages may be in fact relatively new to the highly inflected languages That never had a writing system Until linguists decided to romanise their speech for study. After all, The written record of history is very limited, and The origins of each language do not simply disappear Because the comparative method proves insufficient to discover their secrets. Furthermore, many influences, new devices and advances do not necessarily pass along genetically, But get transmitted areally. The rapid breakup of dialect continuums in history followed by a long period of stablisation may be explained by the languages that were spoken in the area Before the dialect's superparent extended influence over the area. In the process of assimilation and colonisation, The native population's original native language may become extinct, But it does not simply disappear, and often it bears influence on the new language that arrives in the area; But often this aspect is overlooked.<br /><br />Now that This is dealt with, let us return to the question, What indeed, is writing? If we restrict it to the sole definition of handwriting, and naively assume the premises of this era's self-appointed language guardians and concerned conservatives, then Writing actually seems like a very trivial art. It cannot possibly be the sole fashion in which One acquires command and mastery of language. How one acquires command and passion, or the fashion in which One expresses oneself often changes with technology. Yet, there must be something That is far more transcendent. Perhaps it is that We cannot acquire our sense of a language again, once we have mastered it. We therefore cannot experience What it is That replaces the dolour yet passion that handwriting gives in the technology of iwers and voiskrips. But i have this suspicion that an analoguous process occurs.<br /><br />Though we cannot master a language once We have mastered it, Can we not remaster it? Though we cannot learn to speak as a native speaker once We have already spoken as one, Can we not explore what lies behind our reflex sense of command.<br /><br />Why do i ask, What is writing? For, English is not my native tongue, and I only write this writing in it, not for the prestige as some do, but Because i wish to express in a convenient medium As writing in others would make it hard to distribute. I did not even acquire my sense of language in the normal manner. But in fact i think, Neither does anyone. Arguably i have no native language, But arguably i do. But in fact i think, is that not the case for everyone?<br /><br />I write to express, and That i think, is what writing is. There is a distinction from mere speaking. Is there not a difference between voicing one's thesis via the voiskip and merely chatting on the phone? But as I see now, There is one characteristic that now becomes apparent to me That defines writing. That is the yearn of building; to construct.<br /><br />I am isrekas.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4384107694673534718.post-38192823291209461622006-12-20T21:10:00.000-05:002007-02-05T21:44:05.133-05:00aik mwi y'isrekasMe.<br />i.<br />am.<br />my.<br />myself.<br />mine.<br /><br />We we we we we we.<br /><br />O! How laden can be the words! All concerning self-identity, These are declarations capable of duty and strength. Such it is that They retain this force of theirs despite changing case! And Yet one thinks, For other human languages, the identity words vary little, And they fare no worse or better Because of it.<br /><br />i Am isrekas.<br /><br />That is What is important, isrekas or aik mwi? No, What is more important is that I write. But now that preliminary matters are established, Herein proceeds the completion of this first writing.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2