A brief treatise on the English language

[LLapp]

Roxanne, I love the bratwurst example. Yes, to what you said -- "The problem is that English is not Latin." One thing I love about Fowler's approach is that he sees English for the beautiful amalgamation that it is and celebrates the strength it takes from its many roots.

What a great moment you experienced with your professor and his friend Noam Chomsky talking to your class about deep structure. In my related, post-paradigm-shift college memory, we had a chimpanzee in the psych lab who was learning English, and his name was Nim Chimpsky.

[Altoid701]

As a linguistics nerd, this thread makes me happy! Descriptivism, not prescriptivism!

[kimmie]

Reviving an old thread

Hello! I've recently rejoined this site after 5 years away. I was going through the Forum when I saw this thread. I thought that it is so interesting, it should be revived, if only because thinking about how our language works guides us in solving cryptos. We expect the normal "subject, verb, object" sequence, for example. If you think you have a complete sentence, you can reasonably expect a coordinating conjunction--and, but, for, nor, yet--after a comma. A phrase is not a sentence. To be a sentence, a clause needs, at the very least, a subject and a finite verb: a verbal form such as a participle, gerund, or infinitive can never be the main verb of a clause. I think it's fun to try to break these "rules." I come up with something like "Solving cryptograms fun."

I wholeheartedly agree with those who buck the linguistic norm of holding up Latin as the exemplar of language. English is not Latin! We can split infinitives and end sentences with prepositions. As a graduate student in Classics, I had to study Latin, though my favorite was Greek (every Classics student prefers one over the other). There is nothing special or holy about Latin. I laugh when movies and such want to represent religious sentiment by having someone read or speak Latin. I haven't looked at Greek or Latin since 2005.

Our language has evolved to be so much more nuanced than Latin:we have colons and semi-colons, for example. If 2 sentences are related, we can join them together with a semi-colon if we want to; even inexperienced writers will try to show 2 sentences "go together" by using a comma--"comma splice" is one of the most common mistakes beginning writers make. Yet even they have an innate sense of how our written language works, more knowledge than educators want to give them credit for. Again, we use our sense of language to play a very fun game.

Now I want to boldly go and solve cryptograms!

[wvwoman]

welcome back, kimmie!!

[Fudi]

Wow, Llapp. I saw a documentary about that chimp, I'm pretty sure, a few years ago. I definitely remember. It was this one: https://www.npr.org/2011/07/20/13846...-very-sad-life. So do you think your psych lab chimp was named after this one ... or did you go to the school where THE Nim Chimsky chimp was being taught English? If the latter, wow - that is so cool! Do you know Kevin Bacon personally? (He's got Philly roots too, so it's possible, it seems.)

[LLapp]

Fudi, yes, it was the real Nim Chimpsky. My friend Beth was a psychology major at Barnard, where we were students in the 1970s, and she got a work-study job in Dr. Terrace's lab at Columbia. She cleaned Nim's cage and got to interact with him a few times. I recall that she talked about Nim with love -- that she was amazed by his ability to communicate what he wanted, and also that she felt sorry for him. And that's my whole memory about that.

Flash forward about 40 years, just after I mentioned him in this thread: I wondered whatever became of Nim Chimpsky, so I found the Wiki page about him and read the whole thing . . . . and oh my god, what a sad story. I had no idea that the project went so awry, or that poor Nim was left, like the orphaned child he was, to be waffled around in the no-chimp's-land between natural chimp and lab animal. Heartbreaking example of what's wrong with animal experiments.

No, never met Kevin Bacon (even though he and his brother sure play enough gigs around the Philly suburbs). But if you want famous, Suzanne Vega was in my college writing class (she was a freshman and already way too cool for me), and of course I ate at the future famous Tom's Restaurant -- 99 cents for 2 eggs, home fries, toast, and coffee -- nobody could beat that (but, again, no bacon). Oh now I'm getting all nostalgic.

[Fudi]

brushes with greatness ...

That is really cool, Llapp, about you being only one degree from Nim, the famous (and yes, tragic) chimp (though perhaps only the typical 6 from Kevin Bacon. Funny about Suzanne Vega too. My only brush with greatness is that I worked in an office bldg in Paoli right after college that was also used to shoot some tv commercials and infomercials, and notably (?), Richard Simmons sometimes shot some of his there. And once, I came back from lunch and walked through the lobby and there was Richard Simmons, in all of his Richard Simmons-iness, theatrically singing Cruella Deville. He had a big adoring crowd surrounding him of other office workers from my building. I thought I was as cool as Suzanne Vega at the time (though I certainly wasn't) and so tried to pass him without reacting to his big odd performance, but he began to hassle me a bit, insisting on acknowledgment of his presence. He noted my lunch package and asked me what I had in there. I tried to answer coolly, "ummm ... lunch". He continued, "Yummy. What's for lunch?" I answered "Oh ... a sandwich." But he wouldn't give up and said "What KIND?" in a big way. I said, "ummm ... tuna ... yeah ... I heard you on Howard Stern this morning." And he said dramatically (again), "Oh, isn't he BAAAAAAD?" and I said ... "ummm ... okay. Bye."

I know no famous animals though. Or even people who ever took care of famous animals. My Aunt does have a parrot, though and he, like Nim, can talk a bit. He's not tragic AT ALL. My aunt feeds him fancy fruit salads and scrambled eggs. He, in turn, tells her he loves her all the time.

We should turn this into a Brushes With Greatness thread ... or maybe I should start one of those. I wonder what everybody else here has in terms of that.

Hmmmmm ...