Just because some rules are outmoded or make no sense (which is clearly the case) does not mean English doesn’t have hard and fast rules. As my linguistics professor corrected me when I said something to the effect of “no hard and fast rules in English,” it most certainly does follow rules. I was ignorant when I spoke, but with more exposure to theory, I learned. Any native speaker can identify a rule being broken, even if they can’t explain why.
As I later came to understand, the fact that you can state a rule and then almost immediately find an example that breaks it does not mean there are no rules. It means that there are a whole lot os “yes, but …” exceptions to particular rules, and those exceptions themselves are rules.
@Johanna, I would love it if you’d come to this thread and comment. You are my linguistic hero!
This is the definition of “no hard and fast rules.” So you were right.
You are also completely correct when you say that implicit rules are threaded throughout the English. The most famous is the “royal order of adjectives.”
In English, adjectives generally follow the order of opinion, size, age, shape, color, origin, material, and purpose.
Understanding English - I assume any language - is a learned art that is undergirded with some rules, some common understanding, some conventions, and some innovation. Manipulating English is instead a task, like manipulating Discourse. It’s harder because the toolset is not conveniently displayed on the screen, but ordinary vernacular written English is not either formal ruled English or oral English. Many people try to fit all of these (and other forms of English) into one straitjacket but English is too slippery to stay put.
Certainly there are rules. Books of English grammar make for impressive doorstops. About native speakers following them unconsciously, there is the apocryphal story of a (say) Chinese speaker explaining that Chinese is quite easy compared to languages such as English because “there is no grammar”. The idea that there are rules to figure out and formalize was itself an innovation.
As for fake “rules” being taught, perhaps they are more like guidelines for learners. Near the beginning of Schoenberg’s textbook on harmony, in preparation for an elementary exercise he states that
These conditions are not set up here in the form of laws or rules, but rather as directions (as I have already intimated and will repeat on many occasions). Laws or rules ought to hold always, unconditionally; and the saying that ‘exceptions prove the rule’ is true only of
those rules whose very exceptions constitute their sole proof. Directions, however, serve merely to impart means by which a certain goal can be reached. Therefore, they do not hold eternally, as laws, but are changed as soon as the goal changes.
Thank you, CairoCarol. Yes, English has rules of grammar, but they’re not what everybody thinks.
The rules are the syntax that makes a sentence intelligible, and every speaker knows them without being taught in school. These are rules on a level so deep you’re not aware of them. Nobody breaks these rules, unless some damage occurs to the speech centers in the brain.
There are more superficial points of style that can be argued about, but those rules are loose enough to play with for talented poets and writers. Like, “x will make you laugh and sick” is odd enough to catch the attention, but it’s still perfectly intelligible.
one very it another to Otherwise be. difficult with would communicate
Some institutions have tried, and pretty much, failed to codify what proper language is, e.g. the Académie Française. Basically, they stick to various historical/literary/prestigious usages and are quietly ignored by the majority of the population, apart from government spokespersons and pedants.
Informal Bahasa Indonesia is incredibly easy to learn, because there really is not a lot of grammar. I was negotiating in markets and having basic conversations within a week in my first visit.
Formal Bahasa, on the other hand, is really complex, and has a lot of grammar, tenses, etc.
There are no verb tenses in Malay and Indonesian. Verbs are conjugated for aspect rather than person or tense. The main difficulty for the beginner is learning the sandhi rules of how an initial consonant may change when a prefix is applied. There’s a lot of prefixing.
I bow to your expertise, all I did was learn the colloquial. My hosts when I was there were required to learn formal Bahasa, and were not very complimentary about it.
On the other hand, what, what, people tell me, what is not to love about the onamatapeic word for “duck”, which is “bebek”? And a the plural for a flock of ducks, “bebek bebek”
Or “man of the forest”, which describes “orangutan” quite nicely.
Yes, and why we spell so many words “wrong” -since somebody thought they had to conform to Latin rules. Those errors haunt English to this day.
Take Rhyme. We use to spell it “Rime” but that is 'archaic" now.,
Except in some cases, where people did choose to make it harder than it needed to be. Rhyme came to English from French where it is spelled “rime.” And that’s how it was spelled in English at first too. But in the 16th and 17th centuries, when English spelling conventions were getting standardized by printers, fancy-pants writers started to spell “rime” as “rhythm” or “rythme” to show off that they knew “rime” was ultimately derived from Greek rhythmos through Latin rythmus . Other show-off spellings started around this time, including receipt (instead of receyt), indict (instead of indite), and many others.
I still like to spell it Rime.
Yes, but the rules are more like guidelines, as they said in Pirates of the Caribbean. There are several guidebooks, but they do not all agree
For example- the so called “rule” about Double negatives- no, two negatives do not cancel each other out- always anyway. Sometimes they add emphasis. Sometimes they add nothing but confusion. Shakespeare used them, and sometimes they work. Often not. So, use them sparingly. But the so called “rule” is that they- like in Math- cancel each other out is totally false.
Because language is constantly evolving. Despite Weird Al’s wonderful song, “Literally” can now be used when you mean figuratively, but with emphasis.
Can you explain what that means? As I understand it, while the form of the verb can change depending on circumstance, it’s not what I as an English speaker understand as “conjugation,” in other words changes to the form due to the subject and/or tense.
For example - “tanam.” In its unadorned form, it means “to plant.” But it could take affixes to become bertanam, menanami, bertanam-tanam, menanam, menanamkan, or tertanam.* (And maybe more - I am VERY rusty.)
Are those conjugations that change “aspect”?
(*) I don’t want to write out a full grammar lesson, not the least because I might screw it up. (Make that, I definitely would.) But I know people will be wondering, so some of the differences in meaning in the above list include:
I plant (informal language)
I plant (more formal)
I plant into (for example, plant seeds in a field, or thrust a flagpole into the ground)
I plant things for a living
I implant (as in, to plant an idea)
…and “ter” has several meanings; as a non-native speaker I don’t know which of those meanings could be applied to “tanam.” But “ter” can make something stative (ie for “closed” adding “ter” means not closed at 5, reopening tomorrow; but permanently closed), doable, accidentally done, or “the most” (though I don’t think that last meaning could go with tanam).
As you know, the most important distinction is between active indicative with the prefix me- and the passive with the prefix di-. Then you have the causative circumfix with me- … -kan. The prefix ber- making a verb intransitive and its counterpart me- … -i making a verb transitive. Then there are various ways of combining affixes for various shades of meaning. Sounds like you have a good grasp of the system. The prefix ter-, for example, that’s a good one.
accidental aspect of the passive intransitive verb
ter- + tidur ‘sleep’ → tertidur ‘(accidentally) slept’
momentane aspect of the passive intransitive verb
ter- + jatuh ‘fall’ → terjatuh ‘(suddenly) fall’
perfective aspect of the passive transitive verb
ter- + letak ‘to place’ → terletak ‘have been placed’
ter- + sangka ‘to suspec’ → tersangka ‘to be suspected’
(law) noun derivative from perfective aspect of the passive transitive verb
ter- + sangka ‘to suspect’ → tersangka ‘suspect’
to be able [base]
ter- + beli 'to buy → terbeli ‘to be able to buy’
That’s for verbs. Applied to adjectives and adverbs, it makes the superlative. Anyway, you get the idea.
I’m currently learning Indonesian on Duolingo and I agree that so far, the grammar is extremely easy to learn. No conjugation, no tenses (it seems), no gender, relatively flexible and yet predictable word order. I pretty quickly started coming up with my own sentences based on the examples I’d learnt and a google search confirmed they were correctly formed. And, since Indonesians say “book red” and “book that”, I guessed that they would say “book red that”, which turned out to be right.
What throws me off at the moment are the prefixes that @CairoCarol and @Johanna have discussed. So far, the difference between bayar and membayar is that there is… none. Or perhaps just one of formality. That, and the vagueness about the tenses (“I order” and “I ordered” seem to be the same thing).
Which reminds me of one of my favourite linguistics jokes.
An MIT linguistics professor was lecturing his class the other day.
“In English,” he said, “a double negative forms a positive. However, in some languages, such as Russian, a double negative remains a negative. But there isn’t a single language, not one, in which a double positive can express a negative.”
A voice from the back of the room piped up, “Yeah, right.”
The semicolon is supposed to join two sentences. “And sick” is not one. A copyeditor would accept “This will make you laugh, and sick.” because of the implied “also”. This will make you laugh, and [also] sick. That separates “laugh” - a verb - and “sick” - a noun. @Mangetout’s “laugh and cry” pairs two verbs, so innately feels right.
The question here is whether “sick” is being used as a verb. It could be in some local dialects.
“Laugh and sick” is not idiomatic, which is why it catches our eye and ear. Without context it feels wrong. But contexts do exist in which it would feel right.
That’s often a trap for unusual sentences. Taking them out of context removes all meaning, and that’s not how anyone judges language.
Yeah, I could imagine ways to deliver a sentence like that, that would not seem strange - like in a standup comedy context “…made me laugh <beat> and sick!”
Sure, although I think you’re cheating by having the beat (oral) replace the comma (written). That would apply to the “sick” humor subgenre of the 1950s, encompassing Lenny Bruce, Shelley Berman, Jules Feiffer, Terry Southern, and others. Time magazine called them “The Sickniks.”