English Language Learners

Damkerng T.

00:00

I think it's arguable that it's not really a passive voice, but that's how Thai works.

> [Jack-punch-Jim] แจ็คต่อยจิม --> [Jim-got-punch] จิมโดนต่อย

Anonymous

Apparently, Pranee Kullavanijava's 1974 thesis lays out two kinds of "passives" in Thai: dooy ("by") and thuuk constructions. It sounds like you're talking about the former. And according to the thesis, the dooy construction comes from the translation of the English passive

Damkerng T.

Yes, โดน and ถูก!

> [Jim-got-punch] จิมโดนต่อย == [Jim-got-Jack-punch] จิมโดนแจ็คต่อย

Both โดน and ถูก work in that example.

Anonymous

9 mins ago, by Damkerng T.

So, it's sort of like this: [Mary-nice-to-me] --> [I-got-nice-with-by-Mary]

Anonymous

What sort of word is "nice" here?

Damkerng T.

However, we can also say จิมถูกต่อยโดยแจ็ค, and that's where I will say it sounds foreign.

Anonymous

00:04

@DamkerngT. Oh, I see

Damkerng T.

Nice (ดี) would be an adjective.

[Mary-nice-to-me] แมรี่ดีกับฉัน --> [I-got-nice-with-by-Mary] ฉันถูกดีด้วยโดยแมรี่

Anonymous

And in Thai, adjectives can function directly as predicators, just like verbs, right?

Anonymous

That's why there's no need for an auxiliary like be

Damkerng T.

Yes!

Anonymous

So adjectival predicates can be passivized the same way as verbal predicates

Damkerng T.

00:05

I suppose. (Now I'm not really sure because of the terminology.)

Anonymous

Oh, my apologies :-)

Anonymous

I'm just trying to make sense of it

Damkerng T.

@snailboat That's okay. It's just something I'm not familiar with.

Anonymous

I mixed up โดย and โดน!

Damkerng T.

(The phrase My ignorance amuses me just popped up in my head!)

Anonymous

00:07

Hehee

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I just mixed that up myself a moment ago. The two keys are next to each other!

@snailboat Come to think of it, [Mary-nice-to-me] แมรี่ดีกับฉัน in Thai is a little ambiguous.

Anonymous

Predicator isn't a term we use much when talking about English

Damkerng T.

Because ดี could be either a state or an action!

Anonymous

Reason being, in English they're pretty much all verbs. So we just talk about verbs.

Anonymous

Verbs function as predicators, but there's usually no need to make that distinction.

Damkerng T.

00:11

nods

Anonymous

It's more helpful sometimes when talking about other languages

Anonymous

Japanese is like Thai in that adjectives can function as predicators

Anonymous

But unlike Thai in that nouns cannot, if I recall correctly

Damkerng T.

I remember that Fantasier told me last month that some Thai linguists reanalyze our adjectives as verbs!

Anonymous

I should clarify that: I mean that nouns can't directly function as predicators in Japanese, but they can in Thai, if I recall correctly

Anonymous

00:13

@DamkerngT. People do that to Japanese adjectives, too.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat An example could help.

Anonymous

It doesn't seem especially helpful to me

Damkerng T.

Oh, maybe it's something like [this-chocolate] นี่(น่ะ)ช็อกโกแลต.

(Which means "This is chocolate".)

Anonymous

And you don't need the copular be because ช็อกโกแลต can function as a predicate all by itself, right?

Damkerng T.

Exactly!

Anonymous

00:17

Whereas in English "This, chocolate." is caveman-speak

Damkerng T.

Hehe!

Anonymous

Or Tarzan-speak.

Damkerng T.

In a way, Thai is closer to Tarzan-ish than English. :-)

Anonymous

Why did you write น่ะ in parentheses, by the way?

Damkerng T.

I don't know why, but saying just นี่ช็อกโกแลต will sound like something is missing!

Whereas นั่นช็อกโกแลต [that-chocolate] doesn't.

น่ะ is not a copula verb. It's sort of like Japanese ne.

Anonymous

00:24

Ahh

Anonymous

I looked it up, but the explanations I found didn't really give me a clear idea

Anonymous

But if it's a discourse particle like ね, that makes some sense :-)

Damkerng T.

Also, usually นี่น่ะ ("nee-na") will usually be shortened as เนี่ย ("nia") in real speech.

So when I wrote นี่(น่ะ)ช็อกโกแลต, I actually thought of เนี่ยช็อกโกแลต.

Oh, switching between the two languages has some side effects!

Anonymous

Differences like that, between writing and speaking, are interesting to me

Anonymous

Like in English, people might write is not but say isn't

Anonymous

00:28

And in Japanese, people might write では but say じゃ

Damkerng T.

Ah, yes!

That's pretty much like my case.

Anonymous

Written language tends to lag spoken language when it comes to reduced forms

Damkerng T.

I wonder if เนี่ย is in our official dictionary.

Like I guessed, เนี่ย doesn't exist in our official dictionary!

Anonymous

A-ha!

Anonymous

It's interesting that demonstrative modifiers in Thai like นี้ follow the head nouns they modify

Anonymous

00:41

@DamkerngT. Do you think of นี่ and นี้ as different words?

Damkerng T.

I do.

Anonymous

I suppose that might've been a silly question, though at this point probably silly questions are all I've got … :-)

Damkerng T.

At least, saying จริง ๆ นะนี่ (approx. "Really, really.") is a valid utterance. But if you say จริง ๆ นะนี้ you will get a strange look!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Oh, you were talking about how adjectives follow the nouns they modify earlier

Damkerng T.

But in most other utterances, the two are mostly interchangeable.

Anonymous

00:43

I guess Thai has a lot of postmodification!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Oh, really?

Anonymous

(Really, really!)

Damkerng T.

Really!

Anonymous

Hehe!

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I think originally, Thai had only postmodification.

(I don't have any evidence to support that, so take it with a grain of salt.)

Anonymous

00:46

Oh, it's okay.

Anonymous

You know, the few times I tried to look up the history of the Thai language, I didn't have much luck―I may have been looking in the wrong places …

Anonymous

I should probably stop using punctuation at random. But it's so fun typing things like ― and … !

Damkerng T.

Borrowing words and phrases from Pali-Sanskrit gave us premodification, I guess.

@snailboat Hehe!

It also came with some basic ideas about prefixes and suffixes.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Oh, which is a very different language! (Or rather: which are very different languages!)

Damkerng T.

(อมตะ "amata" = immortal, for example.)

Anonymous

00:50

Oh, in Japanese, あまた "amata" = many

Damkerng T.

I like that example because it's so similar in all the three languages!

Hah!

In the last two hundred years or so, English and Chinese have influenced the Thai language the most, I believe.

And our word order has become even more flexible!

Anonymous

I have a subjective question for you

Damkerng T.

What's the question? I'm curious!

Anonymous

When more than one word order is possible, how often do you feel there is some difference in nuance between the alternatives?

Anonymous

Like, say, a difference in emphasis, for example

Damkerng T.

00:57

Oh, yes. -- Hmm... I think it's more about how the speaker was raised. (Hah!)

Like when someone was raised in a rather formal environment, his speech pattern would usually be formal. And things like that.

Or someone went to an international school will have a different speech pattern.

Anonymous

Oh, I see

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I guess emphasis in Thai is usually done in a few ways, either by stressing (pretty much like in English) or by using more words, or maybe by using words from a different register.

Anonymous

In Japanese, one way to emphasize things is with pitch

Anonymous

English speakers learning Japanese tend to emphasize words by saying them slower instead, which is a really hard habit to break :-)

Damkerng T.

Hehe! I think it's not easy to break the habit.

Anonymous

01:04

Other methods of emphasizing in Japanese include using focus particles, changing the word order (moving something into a focal position), or phonetic cues like cutting off your speech with a glottal stop

Anonymous

I guess there are lots of ways to emphasize things in any language :-)

Damkerng T.

Oh, I love glottal stops!

I think so!

Anonymous

In Japanese, if you see the small tsu っ at the end of an utterance, it usually means a glottal stop

Anonymous

So あっ！ means the vowel is cut off glottally

Damkerng T.

Ahっ

:D

It could be interesting if we typed glottal stops in writing.

Your question makes me think of a Thai proverb: สำเนียงส่อภาษา กิริยาส่อสกุล. (Usually translated as "A tree is known by its fruit.", but it's literal translation would be "How we sound and how we act tell all (about who we are).")

I used to dislike that proverb, though. (Because it's usually used by someone who think they're the better or come from a higher class.)

Ahh

They translate 三顧茅廬 as "Three visits to the thatched cottage" in English.

In Thai, it's just reduced to [three-visit-thatched-cottage].

[three-visit-cottage-thatched] to me sounds like [cottage-thatched] post-modifies [three-visit]. So it sounds like a strange phrase which has both pre-and-post-modifications.

Hmm... That's not quite correct.

It should be glossed as [three-visit-cottage-thatched] (สามเยือนกระท่อมหญ้า), not [three-visit-thatched-cottage].

Anonymous

01:18

@DamkerngT. They're almost never indicated by English spelling.

Anonymous

Of course many of us have [ʔ] as an allophone of /t/!

Anonymous

And [ʔ] appears in some words like uh-oh

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Yes! Which was a big surprise for me!

Anonymous

But in words like uh-oh, dictionaries tend to leave out ʔ, apparently treating it as a phonetic detail with no phonemic significance

Follow My Proposals

Hi!

Damkerng T.

01:21

Hello!

Follow My Proposals

I'm back!

Anonymous

For example, Macmillan gives it as /ˈʌ ˌoʊ/ rather than, say, /ˈʔʌʔoʊ/

Damkerng T.

Welcome back!

@snailboat I guess ʔ at the beginning is implied.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Apparently so is the one in the middle! :-)

Damkerng T.

Indeed!

Anonymous

01:23

Poor ʔ, doomed to marginal phonemicity at best

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. ʔUhʔoh!

Damkerng T.

Nice! :D

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. It's true, though, that people are judged by how they speak, and that's an important fact for people to know

Anonymous

Regardless of how just it may or may not be

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

01:29

@DamkerngT. Oh, I was going to ask if it was really [thatched-cottage] in Thai :-)

Damkerng T.

Hehe! [three-visit-thatched-cottage] would be a literal translation of Chinese!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Yep! :-)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. There are so many of those four-character idioms in Chinese

Anonymous

I have a dictionary of them

Anonymous

I feel like I can't ever hope to learn enough of them!

Damkerng T.

01:33

@snailboat Hah! Neat!

I didn't know that 三顧茅廬 is an idiom!

(I just know where it's from.)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. cn.hujiang.com/new/p469364

Anonymous

三顾茅庐 is the simplified form of 三顧茅廬, by the way

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Yes! It's from Romance of the Three Kingdoms!

The simplified form (三顾茅庐) looks quite different!

Anonymous

Uh-huh! Well, I think 盧 was simplified to 卢, and then to 户

Anonymous

And 頁 was simplified to 页

Anonymous

01:43

And 雇 to 厄

Damkerng T.

It looks like they simplified several horizontal strokes with one vertical stroke.

Anonymous

Chinese has a long history of using alternative and simplified forms in writing

Anonymous

Many of the official simplifications are based on what used to be unofficial simplified forms

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

Others were made by replacing elements with others that indicated the same sound, but were visually simpler

Anonymous

01:47

So for example 變 became 变, replacing 䜌 with the simpler 亦

Damkerng T.

Wow, those two characters look amazing on my screen!

They look more like pictures than characters!

Anonymous

In Japanese, 变 is 変!

Anonymous

They simplified the top half but not the bottom!

Damkerng T.

Oh! I wonder how you can remember them!

Anonymous

It's always interesting to me how the systems don't quite match up :-)

Anonymous

01:50

@DamkerngT. I dunno. 变 looks funny in Japanese

Anonymous

And 変 looks funny in Chinese

Damkerng T.

Me? 變 = pagodas on a mountain, 䜌 = pagodas on the ground. :D

Anonymous

Hehe!

Anonymous

Is a pagoda called something like stûpa in Thai?

Damkerng T.

Yes!

Anonymous

01:51

I guessed that because of Sanskrit!

Damkerng T.

"sa-toop" สถูป

Damkerng T.

02:02

Not so few of aliases in wuxia will sound almost like a complete sentence (in Thai) rather than a name, e.g. 東方不敗 ตงฟางปุ๊ป้าย [East-person-never-lose], 獨孤求敗 ต๊กโกวคิ้วป้าย [alone-seek-defeat].

Jim Reynolds

08:07

Hi @Ben

@tchrist

Anybody alive?

hi @Man_From_India

CoolHandLouis

10:56

FYI, In case anyone's interested...

0

A: Is there a way to easily diagram sentences for answers here? And is that typically used as a EFL tool?

I use: Miles Shang's Syntax Tree Generator (Can link to trees. This makes it nice to work with since you can recover the LBN.) Yoichiro's RSyntax Tree (Best graphics result, but cannot link-to-tree 01/2014.) They both use labeled bracket notation. There are some very simple trees, and one...

Damkerng T.

11:16

@CoolHandLouis Has LBN become standard?

0

Q: How to find an attribute?

How to find attributes in these sentences,and not to confuse them with other members of the sentence? It was such a cruel thing (what kind of?) to have happened to that gentle, helpless creature. To have happened to that gentle, helpless creature - an attribute? Dumb with amaz...

Hmm... Yet another English grammar?

Anonymous

11:32

@DamkerngT. Dunno

Anonymous

If we could recognize their set of terminology somehow, we could perhaps find the relevant theory and write an answer

Anonymous

But it doesn't seem like anyone on ELL is familiar with it

Anonymous

So so far, no one's been able to answer their questions

Anonymous

So ideally, someone would ask them what framework they're working in

Anonymous

Unless someone here is familiar with it and recognizes it, there's probably not much point in speculating

Anonymous

11:39

But still, one possibility that occurred to me is that they're using a set of terminology they're used to in their native language and translating it into English here

Anonymous

Another possibility (well, a certainty) is that they're introducing errors in the terminology they use

Anonymous

I'm not about to ask them myself, though

Anonymous

(I'm not answering questions on ELL at the moment)

CoolHandLouis

11:56

@DamkerngT. Of course it has... everywhere it's used, that is.

But then, that's by definition...

Like the Zero Conditional? I had never heard of that one...

Damkerng T.

12:11

@CoolHandLouis Ahh... I didn't know about the LBN, not until today. (Where have I been?!)

I believe the terminology this user is using is based on something similar to this: usefulenglish.ru/grammar/word-order-in-statements and this robotlibrary.com/book/… Also probably more info in this google search — CoolHandLouis 32 secs ago

Robotlibrary!

CoolHandLouis

The "google search" I had the wrong link in it. I updated it to bit.ly/1KKEbOW

Damkerng T.

I'd be more happy to see a set of terminology invented for learners with fewer technical terms, not more. Really.

CoolHandLouis

subject object attribute "adverbial modifier"

and predicate

It's the TEFL teachers

trust them

they know what they are doing

Damkerng T.

:D

That makes me doubt them!

CoolHandLouis

give them your money and the keys to your house too

Damkerng T.

12:17

Haha!

> Ask your students what grammar (the word is repeated by them quite often) is and they will be surprised to hear this kind of question from you and most unexpected answers will be given you.

Is it safe to assume that that TEFL teacher is a non-native speaker?

(will be given you)

CoolHandLouis

Trust them, they know what they are doing. Yes, they are under budgetary constraints, but they put together a Task Force to investigate Why English Students Are Not Doing Better and they figured it out:

English grammar is too difficult.

Therefore...

(Actually, it was a 2655 page report, but I just gave the bottom line.)

Therefore....

They created another Task Force to determine What Would Be an Easier Grammar for English so Learners Could Learn It Easier?

They decided by comittee

"It all boils down to one thing."

"Attributes"

As long as you can find the attributes to something, you can figure it out.

Damkerng T.

LOLOTFR!

CoolHandLouis

The cat, who was on the porch, saw the house.

Grammar?

Attribute attribute, attribute attribute attribute attribute attribute, attribute attribute attribute.

See how simple that is!

Now all you have to do is...

Link up the attributes.

"How do you do that?" a thoughtful linguist asked. "Don't worry about that! We've already spent all the budget on the books... We're confident that the contractor gave us a good product, and we're sure the TEFL teachers can work out the details."

Damkerng T.

It possibly works. Basically, those attributes are words. So, we can learn grammar by drawing how words "attribute" other words.

CoolHandLouis

Exactly!

Except we no longer call them words... that's the Old Fashioned Way

Damkerng T.

12:31

lol

CoolHandLouis

And this should cover us for the next 6 months until the report comes back on our options regarding How to Link Attributes

This is Progressive Enhanced English.

It's based on Y theory

So we call it

Easy Attributed System Y

That's gives us an acronym: EASY

Damkerng T.

:D

CoolHandLouis

Due to a technicality, we have to call it Easy English Progressive Enhanced English

Y stands for

Attribute

The cat, who was on the porch, saw the house.

y y, y y y y y, y y y.

WOW

Now that's a lot of progress right there.

Damkerng T.

Yeah, lots of y's!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Wow! I wonder what sort of person says things like "This isn't she."

CoolHandLouis

12:39

It isn't? I thought it was.

Anonymous

Also from usefulenglish.ru: "Nominative case – who; objective case – whom."

CoolHandLouis

She I mean.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I bet we can find that in some movies!

Anonymous

@CoolHandLouis Well, it's not something people generally say. Some people remember to use the hypercorrect versions in stereotyped expressions like "This is she" when answering the phone, but I can't recall ever having heard "This isn't she"

Damkerng T.

Maybe a mock-up person on a TV show. :P

CoolHandLouis

12:42

I lost my cat. Someone found a cat and called me. I went to the house and showed me. I said, "This isn't she."

Anonymous

I wonder how someone might end up mixing terminology from the nominative-accusative system and the subjective-objective system

CoolHandLouis

My cat's name was "she".

Anonymous

@CoolHandLouis Non-example.

Anonymous

Hmm, this website isn't all that good.

CoolHandLouis

Funny you say that. It actually is an example. An example of humor. Perhaps not the example you wanted. But you classified it deictic-theoretic as "non-example". And I tink you may have even completely believed in that categorization, even though it was a self fulfilling creation. Hmmm...

You could get a group of people to agree with you. Even make a law against it. And throw me in jail for breaking the law.

Jim Reynolds

12:48

self-fulfilltion createment

Damkerng T.

@JimReynolds Hi, there!

@snailboat Is it that bad?

Admittedly, I'm not sure what they mean by "two-word adverbial modifiers".

CoolHandLouis

@snailboat That's another deictic-theoretic statement.

Damkerng T.

I also guess that for the titles "Specific Use of THE" and "Specific Use of a/an", they actually wanted to mean "special uses".

CoolHandLouis

Instead of looking for what's wrong with the site... try looking for what's right with the site...

Damkerng T.

Looks like it's aimed at native speakers of Russian.

CoolHandLouis

12:57

All minor issues here and there... you have someone putting forth a lot of effort to help Russians learn English. And that's pretty good, now isn't it?

MARamezani

Knock knock. Who's there? Hi everyone!

CoolHandLouis

And think of the Russian people who are making this site... they're trying their darndest to learn English, and their all making all those translations on the other side of the English and trying so hard to get it right.

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