[geeks] Vocabulary and grammar (was: New Tech Schools: Digital Harbor in Baltimore)

[Micah R Ledbetter]

Warning: long linguistics post ahead!

On Apr 11, 2007, at 21:01, Brian Dunbar wrote:

> I don't know linguistics.  But find a turn of the 20th century grammar
> level textbook.  The ones I've read are far more complex than what we
> hand high school graduates these days.  Or heck - high school kids in
> the college prep courses in MY day (80s).
>
> Big words - complex sentence structure.  It certainly feels like they
> had a larger vocabulary in the old days.

I don't want to get sidetracked from the original topic of public  
education, the thus-far-expressed sentiment thereof with which I  
generally agree, but well... this *is* geeks@ :). The only thing I  
wanted to say was that complexity and vocabulary really aren't good  
metrics for intelligence, or education (though in American/western  
schools, it's often used as one), or the usefulness or advanced-ness  
of someone's grammar. Here's why:

It's pretty easy to talk about large syllable words, because average  
word size varies from language to language. (Example: in at least one  
of the Hawaiian languages, there are only 3 vowels, so *all* their  
words are very long.) That's not to say that perception of large  
words vs small words isn't interesting - actually, it interests me a  
lot!

In English, I have heard a theory on our perception of this which  
sounds reasonable to me - words of Latin origin have a tendency to be  
longer than other words in English (Latin, after all, had fewer  
vowels sounds than English does). The Latin language was associated  
with learning and the clergy, and hence, to use words of Latin decent  
was seen as intelligent. Today, with less of an emphasis on Latin  
proper, the association is simply with those "big words".

About complex sentence structure, I have two things to say. The first  
is that, regardless of how English has been in the past, modern  
English has a very complex sentence structure. (Example: possessive  
apostrophe-s. "England's reputation" vs "The queen of England's  
reputation" is something that X-bar theory is struggling/failing to  
account for.) However, certain complexities will disappear and others  
will appear for the first time as language evolves.

The other thing I have to say about sentence structure is that if a  
structure is perceived as complex, it is likely *not* in the common  
register, and therefore *not* a measure of the native tongue of the  
speaker anyway. That is, if it's complex, it's not a measure of the  
native intelligence of the speaker, nor of the superiority of the  
language/dialect, but rather a measure of how unfamiliar the speaker  
is with the language or dialect. Or, to put it a third way, all  
language is complex, but if it is our natural language, we perceive  
it as the easiest thing in the world, while all foreign speech,  
complex or otherwise, is perceived as most unnatural.

If you read this far... thanks :).

  - Micah