User talk:John Stephenson/Archive 6

John Stephenson

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Acquisition of German by English speakers

Hi John--I see that you are expert in matters and as a result of all I know, I added a couple of sections to the end of the German_language article regarding relative ease of learning German for English speakers. This is based on (I don't know what all in) my past training and experience, but I wonder if you could take a look at it and screen for opinionated quackery, or add references, or whatever kind of feedback it needs. Thanks in advance if you can get to it. Incidentally I did become fluent in German after adulthood and got a good accent too, and I always thought a lot of those theories about early childhood "windows of opportunity" being lost for adults was, well, a lot of hooey. That's why I'm asking for a second pair of eyes in this matter; I'm definitely not neutral; rather, I'm a teacher who tries to motivate students and give them hope.Pat Palmer 14:16, 4 April 2007 (CDT)

Hi - I'm not so sure about the idea that German is easier than a lot of other languages, though it depends on what aspect of the language is to be learned. I'm not sure there's even anecdotal evidence to back this up; for example there's a poll here of learners claiming that French is easier. Originally, specialists argued that 'difference=difficulty', and this idea persists in some circles to this day. And there can be 'positive transfer' where the first language similarity makes it easier to learn the second. However, more recently the prevalent view is that languages that are similar can be harder to learn because they fool learners - they don't recognise what is to be learned. There are some famous examples of German sentences which many learners accept when in fact they're unacceptable, e.g. *dieses Hotel verbietet Hunde ('this hotel forbids dogs') and *meine Gitarre riss eine Saite ('my guitar broke a string'). Maybe in the earliest stages, German is easier, but the differences in semantics in particular makes it difficult. An example of this is Caroll et al. (discussed here) where there was some limited evidence that English speakers did better than Spanish speakers on picture description tasks using German, because there were more cognates the English speakers could draw on. However, this was only a slight advantage and neither group performed like native speakers. That study also argues that translating German is difficult because although the languages are superficially similar, preserving the writer's attitude is difficult due to different stylistic devices. So overall I would say it's easier in some contexts, particularly early on, but the language doesn't help you to get good quickly. I'm not sure it's worth empahsising this in the article. John Stephenson 00:24, 5 April 2007 (CDT)

English grammar

Hi John, and thanks for your excellent earlier emendations to English grammar. It is great to see another linguist here. What is happening, I fear, is that someone with a background in ESL, but without other linguistic training, has started off the article and the "parts of speech" entries rather on the wrong foot, basically giving the "commonsense" notions of language but only making a slight nod to the state of affairs in modern linguistics. Gently, but firmly, I hope that linguists on CZ can steer these entries into a better direction; I have made some edits but would be delighted if you could look over what I've said and see what you think can be further clarified or improved. Thanks!! Russell Potter 10:57, 18 April 2007 (CDT)

Thanks for the reply on my talk page. I agree with you wholeheartedly, but at the same time, I don't want to represent linguistics as necessarily abstract, theoretical, or arcane. What I'd like to see is a man article, and other entries, which gently and elegantly introduce their readers to the models of language used by linguists, and demonstrate (in the case of grammar) some of the limits of the traditional, public school (US) model. I've taught linguistics and grammar for seventeen years at the college level, and what I see in my students is what I like to call grammatical "bad conscience" -- the fear that you have done something wrong, but don't know what it is. I work to take the fear out of grammar, parlty by disabusing them of needless rules (such as the old prejudice against "split" infinitives), while explaining the meaningful ones (when to use "whom" instead of "who"). I'm hoping to do something similar in these entries.

I very much like your emendations to the fist paragraph(s), but did change one phrase, both to make it scan better and to take out what seemed a rather guarded stance toward linguistics. I certainly do not want gobbledygook and jargon! -- but I think that most of the concepts of modern linguistics can be explained and demonstrated without jargon, and that it's worth doing. Cheers, Russell Potter 07:58, 19 April 2007 (CDT)

The article on Code-switching and Turkish Linguistics

Hi John. First of all, thank you very much for your warm welcome and encouraging words. I will edit the article on code-switching day by day, also with reference to pioneering studies published up till now. As you know, the phenomenon has attracted many schlars in different areas of study like sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, SLA, and language teaching. What I believe is that the article-when completed- should present insights from many perspectives, which means it requires contributions from many authors and editors in Citizendium. So we may share different aspects of code-switching with other authors, which will require time. After this, as a native speaker of Turkish, I will try to contribute the project with an article on Turkish language. Hopefully, I will attact other professionals in Turkish linguistics both in my university as well as many others in Turkey. Infact, I believe that we do not need to build everything upon Wiki articles, though they may inspire our contributions. What do you think about this? Should we first check the wiki content before starting? All the best, Olcay Sert 08:18, 23 April 2007 (CDT)

Noam Chomsky

Hello! Sorry for previously over-rude comment. Last night I was editing after I just finished stress-laden homework and studying. I was pointing out about some mistakes on Noam Chomsky article. Please accept my apology. Thanks! Yi Zhe Wu 16:00, 7 May 2007 (CDT)