Thursday, November 8, 2007
Grammar for Grammarians Chap 3
Latin is an Italic Language, Where English is Germanic. they haven't been intelligible for over 5,000 years. Latin language is synthetic, meaning it has many inflections, when English is analytic with few inflections. Latin is basically a language where the direct object normally precedes the verb, where in English is basically a language where the object normally follows the verb. The language verbs, prevent the structural transfer from one language to another. Different forms imply differnt meanings. Ex: lie/lay shall/will Another assumption if two forms appear synonomous, I must be superior, but this is not tottaly accepted. Ex: Kathy is the girl who cheated on the test. Kathy is the girl that cheated.
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5 comments:
This is a very interesting post. Almost like a mini grammar lesson about the differences between Latin and English languages and grammar. It seems curious that the two languages wouldn't share more in common with one another with so many English words having Latin roots. I'd also like to know if English grammar rules were originally formed or constructed to resemble Latin grammar or if the English rules were developed independently based on some irregular system.
It is surprising to me also that Latin and English don't share more in common because of our words have Latin roots. One thing I learned from the reading also is that English has changed dramatically throughout time but Latin has stayed virtually the same as it was 1000 years ago. But I do not agree that language change represents decay. I think it needs to be able to change as needed.
I have to disagree and say that language change does represent decay. It seems to be the trend that in our lingual evolution we are taking shortcuts and omitting entire words from our language. For instance, look at contractions.
We studied African American English and learned about rules that actually allow letter combinations and sounds to be omitted from our language. If trends such as this continue, the art of language will be chizzled away until we are left with nothing but clicks and whistles.
The majority of words in modern English came from foreign countries, not old English roots...interesting. It is amazing to see the different periods of our language and ow it changed so drastically from period to period. The changes were so drastic, for example, that an English speaker of 1300 would not have understood the English of 500 nor the English of today. Changes of every sort have taken place together by phonetics,phonemics, and in the grammar (morphology and syntax).
This is a great post because it shows the differences in language and what rules apply to each. So which one would you say is wrong, and which one is right. Could both forms be correct in their own way? Yes. Just like we are all different our language is different as well. This post is an example of this idea. The english language has many sides to it, which in my opinion makes it one of the most interesting languages in the world.
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