[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]
2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/lit/ - Literature

View post   
File: 13 KB, 302x278, 1275349390560.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
1376027 No.1376027 [Reply] [Original]

I want to increase my knowledge of grammar mechanics.

I often know what is correct and what isn't when it comes to grammar, but I don't usually know why.

Like, the difference between "this is wrong because the pronoun doesn't agree with the subject" and "this is wrong because it sounds awkward". Most of my knowledge is situated firmly in the latter.

Any recommendations as to texts, audio, video, or any other medium designed to teach this sort of thing?

>> No.1376029

You will well off looking for an introduction to linguistics. Something by David Crystal maybe.

>> No.1376031

Chomsky's Universal Grammar.

AND DAVID CRYSTAL YESS!!!!

>> No.1376064

bump for interest...

>> No.1376067

>>1376064
You need to learn some grammar... ASAP!

>> No.1376074

You don't want a linguistics book if all you want is to know what you're talking about when you edit an essay or pretentiously correct someone's grammar at McDonald's.

I recommend a good Grammar Manual. I use Diana Hacker's The Bedford Handbook as it was what my teachers forced upon me. However, I hear that Strunk and White's The Elements of Style is good.

>> No.1376080

I hear you, OP. I've always wanted to know why it's i before e except after c or when sounding like A as in neighbour or weigh. I also wanted to know why there were so many exceptions. It's very important and it's why I think a lot of people hate English--- because grammar is "Shut up and learn it", where you can't satisfy natural curiosities to know "why".

I've got a book from my grammar class. It's a class where almost sixty percent of people fail their first go-around.
this book goes through things like restrictive relative clauses v.s. unrestrictive relative clauses, article use, subject/verb agreement, word trees, some grammar history, and much much more.
I'd also recommend a class in morphology, syntax and phonology. Universities today don't have many grammar courses, but I found two in my university (one the one I was talking about back there and an obscure and oft-not-mentioned "Advanced Editing" course in the fourth year).
I'd send the book out to you if I could do it postage-pending so it's free for me.

>> No.1376083

>>1376074

>You don't want a linguistics book if all you want is to know what you're talking about when you edit an essay or pretentiously correct someone's grammar at McDonald's.

You say this like it's a bad thing, but I plan on studying English Education, so yeah. Editing essays will be kind of important.

And I've heard, awful, horrible things about The Elements of Style.

>> No.1376085

>>1376083

Also, I'm not sure why I capitalized education in that sentence.

>> No.1376096

>>1376080
It's difficult to write "properly" when so many people don't learn to do it as they grow up. The college I attended actually required everyone, no matter his planned degree, to take two writing courses and then to pass a writing exam as a condition of graduating.

>>1376083
Didn't mean to make it sound like a bad thing. Grammar is great. Being a Nazi, even a Grammar Nazi, though, is bad.

>> No.1376115

>>1376096

I mean, say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, but at least it's an ethos.

>> No.1376129

>>1376080
shut up and learn it is the best answer a language teacher can give.

learners want to hear a language rule, but the rule is not the reason just a description of the natives language habits.

Grammar rules follow the habits of the native speaker not the other way around.

>> No.1376157

>>1376129
So true. You can follow some theories of why these "rules" came about, but years and years of learning goes into that, and they're not fulfilling answers.

>> No.1376161

>>1376157
>>1376129
it is fulfilling to me to know, actually.
some people find it more interesting and easier to remember things if they get the context for it, if you're doing it to teach.
bunch a pricks.

>> No.1376170

>>1376161
Did you read what he said? The reasons why you need to have an s at the end of that word in that case are not actually explanatory at all, and they certainly don't help you when it comes to actually remembering what to do. The context reduces to "people did it in 1800 because they did something similar in 1700" and so on.

>> No.1376176

>>1376161
It is spelt like that because some monk thought it'd be cool to stuff in some Latin spelling and ram his folk etymology down our throats.

This one is spelt like that because it's derived from the old French.

Because it was pronounced like that ages ago and because Vikings liked Ks

Because certain classes of objects don't get new terms coined for them

Because some do

Because

BECAUSE

You won't get any context in the way you think of it, aside to see how massive and incomprehensible language and its development is.

>> No.1376180

>>1376170
But you can trace grammatical structures back to Proto-Germanic or latin or Old Norman, or Proto-Indo-European, sure things change but there exists a continuity going back as far as we can go.

>> No.1376184

>>1376180
That's not true.

>> No.1376188

>>1376176
well spelling is just a grab-bag based on the current pronunciations during the explosion of literacy from the printing press. Its also not really grammar. Things like how the evolution of a strict word order leads to a decrease in cases and case identifiers. The possessive " 's" as a genitive case marker that faded away. Increased use of auxiliary verbs, all these changes can give context to what we do today.

>> No.1376194

>>1376184
Oh isn't it? then give a single counterexample.

>> No.1376196

>>1376188
The "spelling is because of the printing press and/or Johnson's dictionary" is the tiredest, oldest myth around, and you should feel bad for bringing it up.

Where does the interrogative form based on "Do[es] [pronoun]" come from?

>> No.1376197

>>1376194
See >>1376196

>> No.1376211

>>1376196

>The "spelling is because of the printing press and/or Johnson's dictionary" is the tiredest, oldest myth around, and you should feel bad for bringing it up.
I have no clue what you're talking about, and I don't feel bad at all.

>Where does the interrogative form based on "Do[es] [pronoun]" come from?
The use of an auxiliary verb in the traditional inverted verb subject interrogative word order.

>> No.1376224

>>1376196
Since I have to go suddenly; that form doesn't exist in French or German, old or otherwise. It came into being after Shakespeare's time (which is early Modern English). So, yeah, it came seemingly out of nowhere. Because language is alive; it is a being in and of itself and humans don't control or develop it as such.

Another good example for English are the little "monitoring" phrases like "don't you" "you see" "isn't it". English has to have agreement between these and the phrase being monitored. So positive phrase:
You like mowing the lawn
Negative monitor:
Don't you?

AFAIK that doesn't exist in any other European language, let alone French and German.

>> No.1376228
File: 37 KB, 479x591, 1290958202193.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
1376228

>cough, grammatical mechanics

>> No.1376230

>>1376224
no one is saying language isn't alive, simply that the there are limits on the scope of how much it can change at any one time. Its change is a slow evolutionary process, Shakespeare is a case of punctuated equilibrium.

>> No.1376239

>>1376230
You need to get out of the early 20th century and get some post Chomskian language formation up in yo head.

>> No.1376262

>>1376239
No I don't. I really don't.

>> No.1376281

If grammar describes the way people speak, would you accept a paper written in Ebonics?

>> No.1376315

Grammar describes how people manipulate a language to communicate between one another.

People use grammar to teach others how to use a language so that those people can efficiently communicate their ideas to others who use the same language.

If you want to know why people manipulate a language the way that they do, then read about the history of that language.

>> No.1376354

They only to learn anything language-related is practice.
Grammar, vocabulary and such things.
I always aced at school even through i still dont know any rules at all (not english btw, but i think it implies everywhere)

>> No.1376505

>>1376281
You mean Black English, and of course.

The question is, is Black English a suitable dialect to use? So would they get a good mark for appropriate use of language etc. etc.