The Atkins and Levins paper presented some
fascinating insights. The paper examines the relationship between syntax and
semantics, and discusses how words that are have similar meanings can vary
drastically in how they’re used. Atkins and Levin give the example of “shake,”
and compare “shake” to its near synonyms (i.e. quake, quiver, shiver, shudder).
Similarly, the Slobin paper teased out the ways
languages differ in rhetorical style. After the readings, I was intrigued by
how “descriptive” (aka complicated) of a language English is. For example, in
Chinese, there is only one word that is used to refer to people (“ta”), whereas
English has a whole slew of pronouns (he,
she, it, etc.) For this reason, most Chinese people have a hard time with
their pronouns, often accidentally referring to a girl with “he” and
vice-versa. The Chinese language also doesn’t have tenses, and hence, there is
no need for “-ed,” “-ing,” or verb conjugations. Instead, past events are
expressed simply by adding the words “yesterday” before the present tense
sentence.
The Atkins and Levin paper also reminded me of
a book I had read in high school, The
Lexicographer’s Dilemma by James Lynch. In the book, Lynch talks about how
words in English can have completely opposite meanings depending on how their
used in a sentence; he gives the example of the word “oversight,” which can
mean both “careful scrutiny” (i.e. “they agreed to submit to the oversight of the
committee”) and “neglect” (i.e. “they lost everything because of an oversight”).
Likewise, Lynch questions how the words “flammable” and “inflammable” came to
mean the same thing, despite the “in” prefix having a negative force.
Lynch also talks about how synonyms for “eat”
are used in many different ways. For example, we have eat up, chow down, pig out, all of which mean the same thing. However,
why is it that the particle “up” should be used with “eat,” “down” with “chow,”
and “out” with “pig”?
The readings from this week help me reflect on many technicalities of English that we often overlook. It’s fascinating to me how words can even be defined in dictionaries when their usage is so variable. This raises some interesting fundamental questions; primarily, how do we define proper English? Who gets to determine what is correct?
The readings from this week help me reflect on many technicalities of English that we often overlook. It’s fascinating to me how words can even be defined in dictionaries when their usage is so variable. This raises some interesting fundamental questions; primarily, how do we define proper English? Who gets to determine what is correct?
Your perspective on the differences between Chinese and English was very interesting! I always enjoy these readings most when I can view them in a cross-cultural context. Your questions at the end are intriguing as well. It's interesting to think about how and why our language's rules have developed in the way that they have, even though they don't always make a lot of sense.
ReplyDeleteYour point on difficulties with pronouns for native Chinese speakers reminded me of my mother. My mother is Filipino, and the Filipino language, Tagalog, also possesses only one word to refer to people so she usually makes mistakes when using English pronouns. I would imagine this is a common phenomenon among languages which utilize gender-less pronouns and I am curious to see the language family relationships that exist between languages which use gendered pronouns and those that do not.
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