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Good strike rate for German grammar | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5431 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 41 of 70 30 December 2013 at 4:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I want to congratulate the various posters on the interesting ideas brought up here. There's a lot to think about.
This morning I was listening to an interview in French of a young German-speaking woman talking about the poet Goethe and the city of Francfort. I noticed that she said "cette texte" twice instead of "ce texte." The interviewer did not correct her of course. The mistake was hardly noticeable because it was isolated. But what got me thinking was the fact that le texte in French is masculine just as der Text is in German. I suspect, along the lines of what Bakunin has alluded to, that speakers do not think in terms of gender (or case) at all. These may be a concepts used in the teaching of the language. For native speakers, they are just grammatical constraints. This does not explain why our speaker here said "cette texte." Maybe it had something to do with the sound or spelling of the word? @Papashaw1 I will say that my knowledge of German is so limited that I could hardly debate the status of plural nouns in German. That said, when I look at the whole system, I'm struck by how complex it seems when compared to English. In the area of gender and case, English has absolutely nothing and, as was pointed out, in terms of plurality, agreement is English is very simple and confined to subject and verb. It makes me wonder if these gender and case systems are needlessly complicated. What I mean is that the same information could be conveyed in a simpler manner. The problem is in the agreement system. In French for example there have been proposals to abolish two agreement rules that are notoriously complicated even for native speakers. One has to do with the past participle of pronominal verbs and and the other with the past participle when a direct object precedes the verb. Proponents of this reform point to Spanish that gets along perfectly without these useless complications and to the fact that most native speakers make mistakes, i.e. they spontaneously use the simplified form. Edited by s_allard on 30 December 2013 at 6:37pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 42 of 70 30 December 2013 at 6:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
It's a matter of degree when it comes to inflection. For example, Finnish and Hungarian inflect for number (singular and plural), but they don't mark for it in the same way as one would think on the model of English or German (or French) which also have singular and plural. Perhaps in Finnish or Hungarian, the presence of the numeral makes it redundant for the relevant noun or adjective to be marked for number as well. The car is in the village. Fi: Auto on kylässä Hu: A kocsi a faluban van. The cars are in the village. Fi: Autot ovat kylässä Hu: A kocsik a faluban vannak. Five cars are in the village. Fi: Viisi autoa on kylässä Hu: Öt kocsi a faluban van. For these languages, the presence of the number makes it clear enough that we have plurality. In turn the associated nominal is declined in singular, Finnish takes partitive singular (sort of like ~ "Five of car...") while Hungarian leaves the noun in nominative singular (kocsi rather than kocsik). The singularity of these nouns is matched by the verb being conjugated in singular too (i.e. on and van in Finnish and Hungarian respectively rather than respective plurals ovat and vannak). Basically the Finnish and Hungarian forms literally translate as "Five (of) car is in the village". In addition, these languages don't always inflect adjectives for number even when the noun is marked for it. E.g. "I see a tall man" German: Ich sehe einen grossen Mann Finnish: Näen pitkän miehen. Hungarian: Magas férfit látok. "I see tall men" German: Ich sehe grosse Männer Finnish: Näen pitkiä miehiä. Hungarian: Magas férfiakat látok. "I see two tall men." German: Ich sehe zwei grosse Männer Finnish: Näen kaksi pitkää miestä. Hungarian: Két magas férfit látok. "I don't see two tall men." German: Ich sehe zwei grosse Männer nicht. Finnish: En näe kahta pitkää miestä. Hungarian: Nem látok Két magas férfit. Notice how especially in Hungarian, the adjective magas "tall" stays the same regardless of whether the noun is in accusative or nominative, or whether it's modified by a numeral more than "one" (i.e. két "two") or not. In Finnish, the adjective pitkä "tall" is in some direct object form be it plural or singular (basically one of genitive or partitive here) BUT when modified by a numeral other than "one" (i.e. kaksi "two") the associated noun is in partitive singular. My German is a little rusty but I'm pretty sure that my German examples for illustrative purposes are grammatical. Please let me know if I've goofed on those. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Papashaw1 Newbie Australia Joined 4032 days ago 30 posts - 35 votes | Message 43 of 70 30 December 2013 at 6:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
My only explanation in my head to justify this is that Standard German is an artificial literary version designed to communicate, and unlike something like Beijing Mandarin which is designed to be a watered down as possible or even modern English, they chose to make something very very heavy. Many people had to learn it as a second language when first used. It is full of prescriptivist distinctions such as dann vs denn which used to not exist until the 18th century. The word order is also difficult precisely for this I bet. Different dialects have their own preference for how they say the word order and that is fine, but in German..... for a synthetic language, its word order is seemingly complicated! Analytical languages are the one who are supposed to have complex syntax. These are the prescribed taught orders: for clauses based on conjunction verb last (....dass ich das getan habe) verb second (.....denn ich habe das getan) verb first (.....somit hat er das getan) For ersatz infinitives the finite verb is before the others: (...dass ich ihr habe kocken helfen) (...das ich das habe tun konnen) Inversion V2 short answers (Ja, bin ich) Any inversion (heute habe ich das getan) V2 with SOV not just SOV. (Ich habe das getan) Default SVO with no second verb (Wir gehen gerade.) I would also like to add the fact the word reversal at the end of German was heavily influenced by Latin and variations existed, but it was prescribed. (I werde das getan haben) not (I werde das haben getan) which existed in dialects and may still do) The English have always been relatively egalitarian (still opressive like any Nation) and France had their Republic and revolution (Emperor of the people vs the Land, meh) and did these possibly affect how people spoke. Thou disappeared due to egalitarianism (not for the subjects). But German has practically been small heavily run monarchies to an Empire up until WW1. This may have had an effect on the way the language was created. I could also bank all those irregular plurals in German are archaic and designed to be as close to their ancestral form as possible when gender and plurality could be known based on noun inflection (like Russian). But German is no longer like that so it is just difficult. So basically they never get rid of anything, and accept anything to overflow the whole darned pot. (am continuous, double perfects, modal particles.) It isn't something like Czech or Icelandic that is isolated and tends to be less smoother over, nor does it become like any other widely spoken language. The adjective inflections are also frustrating and unlike the systems of Russian or French where you just inflect them all right, but for German we have to alternate between weak, mixed, and strong inflection. English is not unusual for an analytical language, I would never equate inflection with complexity, but forced irregularity is just annoying. No cases are fine, preposition phrases and word order. and no conjugation? Verbal aspect is good just like Chinese or Thai which have no tenses, but trying to have EVERYTHING? Ach. Mr Allard, can you show an example of what these two rules in French are? I have now a hard time believing it could be that bad if it is either -s, -e, or -es or not. Or how the inflections in Russian match the third person pronouns, but agreement in German is annoying. Gender in french is a matter of using an article and adding an -e or not to an adjective. For many cased language it is the same as the case ending itself, but for German it is annoying. I had rather they make Swiss German, Low German, or some sane Upper German dialect the common language or derive one that is simple enough like Mandarin was for China. Edited by Papashaw1 on 30 December 2013 at 6:59pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5431 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 44 of 70 30 December 2013 at 6:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The post by Chung reminds me of the fact that both English and French possess a certain number of examples where morphological inflection of the noun for number does not match the number of the verb form. Some classic examples in English are:
Ten dollars is a lot of money The police are coming The news is bad In French we have: La plupart des gens sont d'accord La majorité ont voté en faveur Le monde sont fous The last example is often criticized as bad French because of the agreement. Edited by s_allard on 30 December 2013 at 6:48pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5227 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 45 of 70 30 December 2013 at 6:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
But question 1 is improper, because that isn't true (for all languages at the very least): I don't know about German or French, but Spanish has a comparatively simplified gender system and I know for a fact that *total* mastery of it is rarely achieved. I like thinking I hover about most speakers in my command of my native language, and yet I confess I occasionally make mistakes with genders. I even have such mistakes in books in print. You seem to agree with me on this further on in another post, though. And the reason why almost all natives do considerably better than nearly all adult foreign speakers regarding genders (but I think we could refer to any language sub-system for that matter) is because the process is considerably different for adults and children, and the exact implications or details of this difference are the key to many if not most of the debates we have here, so I'd leave this aside now, but you rise a very interesting point regarding it in this other post:
So, you agree even natives may make mistakes with gender stuff. Now, what's grammar? A prescriptive construct aimed to perpetuate an arbitrarily defined 'good' subset of the language used by real speakers, usually based on systematic criteria (which then I consider a generally good idea). So, since it helps enormously when learning from scratch, grammar is something that's readily taught in one way or another to most foreign learners. But 'grammar', as a 'system to language', is introduced to native speakers way later than they acquire a considerable grasp of the language (up to which point any 'grammar' they may have been presented with is individual sets of rules for concrete situations), and by that time they are likely to have categorized stuff like genders on their own. Whether this clashes with the 'grammar' being studied or not, depends on the speaker. I, for one, consider stupid having gender systems at all, except for nouns representing beings with sexes, but we all know what I weirdo I am. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5431 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 46 of 70 30 December 2013 at 7:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
Grammatical gender agreement in French is a bit more complicated than just adding an -e or not to an adjective. And keep in mind that it is the sound that changes and not only the spelling, e.g. bon and bonne. For adjectives, there are also endings like -euse, -rice and -esse. Plus there are the other words like relative pronouns, interrogative adjectives and interrogative pronouns. The two rules in question in French are as follows: A. The past participle of pronominal verbs must agree with the subjects if the verb requires a direct object. Here are two sentences with female subjects 1. Marie et Jessica se sont parlé hier. (Marie and Jessica spoke to each other yesterday.) 2.Marie et Jessica se sont vues hier. (Marie and Jessica saw each other yesterday.) In example 1, the participle parlé is not modified because the verb parler here is used with indirect objects, i.e. to each other. In example 2, the participle vues is marked for feminine plural (of the subjects) because the verb voir is used with direct objects, i.e. each other. The proposed rule change is to make the participle invariable. Part of the reasoning for this proposal is that in spoken French, most of the time there is no difference in pronunciation between the marked and unmarked form -- as would be the case here with vu and vues. B. The past participle must agree in number and gender with a direct object located before the part participle. Here is an example. 1. Le gateau que j'ai fait est bon. (The cake that I made is good.) 2. Les tartes que j'ai faites sont bonnes. (The pies that I made are good.) In both examples, the participles fait and faites of faire agree in number and gender with the direct object gateau and tarte respectively. The proposed rule change is to make the participle invariable. In reality, the two proposed rule changes boil down to the same thing: eliminate the morphological changes of the past participle because these changes create needless problems and because in the spoken language there is often no distinction. As I mentioned, this is how Spanish works and no one objects. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5299 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 47 of 70 30 December 2013 at 7:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
This is such a wrong and non-linguistic definition that one can only be surprised that it is at the same time so commonly used at HTLAL. Grammar is not to be separated from the language, it is the language itself. A language has and is grammar, no matter if there is someone "prescribing" it or not. This kind of seeing the grammar as something external, while in fact it is more or less the very essence of any language is both wrong and not useful. It should be avoided with much more justification than all the more harmless and only annoying wrong/not exact usages of "fluent, speaks, ...". (And yes, I have heard about the RAE and similar institutions. If you are not happy with their work, attack them calling them by their name, but do not blame languages for their grammar, else the next post where some beginner wants the Duden to get rid of gender - because an English learner does not need and want it - is to be expected.) (Edit: I had written fluid instead of the notorious fluent; once we have reached the state of fluidity there is not any longer much to worry about, I guess ...) Edited by lingoleng on 31 December 2013 at 4:58am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Papashaw1 Newbie Australia Joined 4032 days ago 30 posts - 35 votes | Message 48 of 70 30 December 2013 at 7:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
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To S_allard
I don't see how it is really difficult other than a redundant rule. The relative pronoun must agree in case and gender in German, and I don't know what you think but to make the word "vues" or "faites" is a smaller hassle than German choosing weak or strong inflection. Yes there are irregularities, but the standard is -e, -es, or -s or n/a and remembering to change the ending of an adjective or participle can't be so big. Maybe knowing when to or not do it is hard but the regular adjective and article agreement endings in French can be memorized in one minute. Not German's. I don't speak a lick of Spanish but looking at the wikipedia article a year ago for a minute, I could remember the articles and inflection. El, la, los, las, un, una, unos, unas. amigo, amiga, amigos, amigas. No strong or weak inflection changes and irregular plurals throwing off the rhythm (Los altos amigos) vs (Die grossen Kinder) It took me a week to get any feel for the inflection pattern in German. The annoyances are much fewer in dialectal German. English has a rule on whether a verb is followed by a gerund or infinitive, this doesn't cause problems. Should we abolish that? Edited by Papashaw1 on 30 December 2013 at 7:55pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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