John, On Wednesday 24 August 2005 22:27, John Perry wrote:
Randall R Schulz wrote:
Anders,
On Wednesday 24 August 2005 09:48, Anders Johansson wrote:
... If children learn it, they'll have to unlearn it. ...
It sounds like you're playing the role of language dictator, to me.
The most hopeless cause in the world is to try to control the evolution of language. There's a great deal of everyday English usage that offends me, too, but it's whistling in the wind to inveigh against it.
Randall, while I disagree strongly with Anders's statement, I disagree even more strongly with yours. What's happening is not evolution, but corruption.
A classic response. You're entitled to your opinion, but this is just what happens. Every generation says the same thing, yet human languages survive and grow more rich. All is well. As I said, much of it is distasteful to me, but that's of no consequence.
...
By the way, my disagreement with Anders is that children must learn that English is a slurred language with a powerful, expressive underlying grammar that needs to be learned. The slurring (schwa) is in our speech, and has nothing to do with what we're thinking. If we lose the underlying grammar, we lose our communication, our thought processes, and ultimately our society. As did the Romans and the Anglo-Saxons.
It's an instance of a recurring pattern. It's inherent to the nature of human language and no amount of scolding or other negative feedback will change it. It does no matter how the educational system is structured or to whom what kind of education is available. Young people will speak two languages if you come down hard to force the formal variant of the language in school. Later, their vernacular will infiltrate the formal language, anyway. We literally cannot "lose the underlying grammar" because that is what we inherit genetically in the construction of our brain. The surface grammars are all over the map and are highly dynamic over historical time.
John Perry
I sure hope you're not the John Perry of Stanford University. Randall schulz