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Speaking English- a poorer retirement | ||
Tags: Press Article | English | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5674 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes  Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 9 of 33 23 February 2013 at 4:57pm | IP Logged | ||
"I hope the weather is better tomorrow"? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7161 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 10 of 33 23 February 2013 at 5:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm very skeptical. It reeks of all of the above (e.g. economist trying his hand at anthropology, correlation doesn't imply causality, embici's cheeky anecdote). To the preceding I'd add that it seems like some otherwise bored economist in an ivory tower unwiittingly invoking linguistic relativism ("Sapir-Whorf hypothesis").
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 newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6384 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 11 of 33 23 February 2013 at 5:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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They would not have gotten published in that journal if they were only able to claim their results were correlations alone. The concept of causation is well understand in economic research, and the authors seem to spend quite a bit of the paper discussing it and how their methods estimate it. You can disagree with the conclusions but first you should try to understand how they reached them. Edited by newyorkeric on 24 February 2013 at 2:32am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| caam_imt Triglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 4867 days ago 232 posts - 357 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2, Finnish Studies: German, Swedish | Message 12 of 33 23 February 2013 at 6:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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I remember having read something like that about Finnish (since Finnish doesn't have
future tense, they are happier or smth like that :)) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7161 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 13 of 33 23 February 2013 at 7:33pm | IP Logged | ||
What's interesting is that Chen doesn't seem to get that future activity need not be marked by modifying the verb. Then again it's not surprising since he's not a linguist and many of his linguistics arguments are taken secondarily. In any case he then holds explicit marking of future tense as the ultimate criterium to state whether future-time reference is strong or not. I'd say that he needs to be schooled in TAM (tense-aspect-mood) before acting on his hypothesis instead of adding a few studies on tense and aspect in the footnotes and after presumably having skimmed them. How convenient for me that he uses Finnish in one of his examples. In isolation it is true that Finnish lacks future tense as understood from a Standard-Average-European view of TAM. To our eyes, on indeed can refer to present or future with the adverbs providing the cues. Tänään on kylmää. "It's cold today" / Huomenna on kylmää. "It'll be cold tomorrow" (colloquially: "It's cold tomorrow" as in: "What's the weather like tomorrow?" - *checking Accuweather* "Eh, it's cold tomorrow") However, when it comes to transitive verbs, the future activity can be effectively signalled by the inflection of the direct object. Luen kirjettä - "I am reading the letter." Luen kirjeen - "I will read the letter (thoroughly/to completion)." This is a clear distinction to Finns and learners of Finnish but in Chen's world this is quietly but neatly discounted. Moreover I question Chen's treatment of Finnish as showing "weak" future-time reference and then Hungarian showing a "strong" one. Recalling his Finnish sentences: Tänään on kylmää. "It's cold today" / Huomenna on kylmää. "It'll be cold tomorrow" The Hungarian would say: Ma hideg van. "It's cold today." / Holnap hideg lesz. "It'll be cold tomorrow." However a properly distinct future tense for Hungarian exists only with lenni "to be". The other verbs signal future activity with verbal prefixes, adverbs of time or in a sometimes emphatic sense using an analytic form made by combining a conjugated form of fogni "to catch" with an infinitive (vaguely similar to English "shall/will" + infinitive). In these instances the relevant verb is still conjugated in "present tense". - Olvasom a levelet "I'm reading the letter" - Elolvasom a levelet "I'm reading the letter (thoroughly/to completion) ~ I'll read the letter (thoroughly/to completion)." - A jövő héten elolvasom a levelet "I'll read the letter (thoroughly/to completion) next week" - Olvasni fogom a levelet "I'm going to read the letter" - El fogom olvasni a levelet "I will read the letter" (emphatic) - Holnap egész nap olvasok. "I will be reading all day tomorrow." / "I'm reading all day tomorrow" In that BBC article, the linguist John McWhorter has stated that some of the languages have been classified incorrectly which weakens the integrity of Chen's conclusion (notwithstanding Chen's insistence). I suspect that even a slightly deeper analysis of other languages (not just for Finnish and Hungarian as I've done) would reveal in greater detail what McWhorter has in mind. Here Hungarian is a lot closer to Finnish in future-time-reference than implied by a binary division of "strong" and "weak" future-time reference in Appendix 5 of Chen's paper. One of the gems from Chen is that his regressions make him conclude that speaking (presumably natively) a language with strong future-time reference is associated with a 20% greater chance of smoking among other things. In the USA where native speakers of English dominate, why is it that some states have a higher prevalence of smoking than others? 
Do the dialects (never mind "languages") in the states shaded in dark green have more demonstrably pronounced markings of future-time reference than the dialects (never mind "languages") in California? How about in this map where we see that China has a higher prevalence of male smoking than in the USA? 
On the other hand, Mandarin is "weak" in future-time reference while English and Spanish are "strong" and so the average Chinese male is less likely to light up than his average counterpart in the USA. Have another donut, Professor Chen. I just find it intellectually dubious when a specialist in one field steps outside his/her field. Chen's no polymath it seems. What would have been more rigorous would have been if Chen had collaborated with a linguist (or a group of linguists) who specializes in TAM and published a study of joint authorship. Edited by Chung on 23 February 2013 at 8:04pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5771 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 14 of 33 23 February 2013 at 8:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well said, Chung. I'd like to add that for German, which is supposedly weak in future time-reference, it strongly depends on the lexical aspect of a verb whether it is possible to do a present tense sentence with time adverb to refer to a future event or not, and whether such a sentence has the same meaning as one using the future tense, as the future tense with werden adds some kind of predetermination and weakens the influence the volition of the subject has on the action. For example, it's impossible to say 'ich sterbe' unless you're either terminally ill and will die soon, or using some kind of rhetoric device like narrative present. Edited by Bao on 23 February 2013 at 10:35pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| wber Groupie United States Joined 4306 days ago 45 posts - 77 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Vietnamese, French | Message 15 of 33 23 February 2013 at 10:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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If English makes you so poor, then why are so many people from all over the world trying to learn it? Not to be mean, but it's not a common sight to see someone from Latvia per say learn Spanish as compared to English. Also, I know that Mandarin and Hindu/Urdu have a lot of speakers but many are native speakers concentrated in one particular region.
Maybe I'm stereotyping, but Mr. Chen isn't Chinese now is he? I mean, always espousing how "Mandarin is better" ? I sense a little ethnocentricity going on. Since Mandarin has no alphabet, does it mean that people knowing it have a harder time to grasp solid, concrete ideas? Following a set of logical rules? I admit that I'm sounding a bit defensive that's because I am. It annoys me that even though English has a huge impact ( some not so good) people always continue to bash it from "it's so easy" to "it has no culture, unrefined" and everything in between. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6384 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 16 of 33 24 February 2013 at 2:43am | IP Logged | ||
Because there are many factors that influence smoking that your description doesn't include. Does correlation now mean causation? I would like to know whether the linguistics classification he uses is credible: "In all of the regressions to follow the independent variable of main interest is Strong FTR (strong future-time reference), a criterion I did not develop but adopt from the European Science Foundation’s Typology of Languages in Europe (EUROTYP) project." Edited by newyorkeric on 24 February 2013 at 2:45am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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