Homophones

When two different words have the same pronunciation they are known as homophones. They can be spelt differently (for example air and heir) or have different functions ( for example bear as a verb and bear as a noun).

Congratulations Noam Chomsky

A few days ago it was announced that the respected linguist and political activist Professor Noam Chomsky is to receive an honorary degree from Scotland's oldest university, St Andrews.

Chomsky is one of the most respected linguists of modern times - and his ideas have shaped linguistic theory and fuelled the fire of linguistic discussion for over 50 years. For example, his exploration of language acquisition in children has led to heated debates about whether or not humans have innate language learning abilities (universal grammar) which facilitate acquisition.

You can love his ideas or hate his ideas, but you definitely have to admire him! Congratulation!

Scottish Government wants children to learn 2 foreign languages - better late than never!

“The world is changing rapidly and radically and the Government has a duty to ensure that Scottish schools prepare young people so they can flourish and succeed in the globalised, multi-lingual world we now live in. One indisputable aspect of modern life is that more people travel widely for jobs and leisure and we must respond accordingly; we will not be as successful as a country and economy if we remain essentially a mono-lingual society."

Congratulation to the Scottish Government for finally catching up! 

Today's announcement from Minister for Learning Alasdair Allan is a welcome one even though it is a bit late! The Scottish Government has finally adopted a plan to try and help school children learn two foreign languages, one of which should start when children are in Primary 1.

As his statement goes on to mention, the EU suggests that member states should encourage citizens to adopt a 2+1 approach to language learning- two foreign languages + native language - so that they can function in a multilingual Europe where labour markets are fluid and ever-changing.

The only problem is that this goal was set by the EU back in 2002! Now I don't want to be one of those people who try and turn every positive into a negative, but the proposal is hardly ground-breaking and comes at a time when language education in Scotland - and indeed in the whole UK - is in an appalling state.

As we grapple to rebuild the economy and guarantee prosperity for future generations, we have a largely monolingual population with poor communication skills and a general ignorance of European culture and affairs, never mind Chinese, Indian or Brazilian culture. If we can’t already communicate with Europe how can we begin to communicate with developing economic powers?

As usual, the policy is too little too late. Instead of investing a small fortune into Gaelic education (for a language which was never the language of Scotland as a whole) the Scottish Government should have spent it on modern foreign language education.  When we have a nation that can communicate with the outside world then we can afford the luxury of learning minority languages like Gaelic. Don’t get me wrong, we should protect minority languages, but we also need to establish our priorities.

So well done Scottish Government, a step in the right direction, albeit a few steps behind the rest of Europe!

EU Translation Memory - Available to Everyone

Did you know that you can download the European Union's translation memory? 

This is is biggest parallel corpus in existence covering the 22 official languages of the EU and the entire body of EU legislation, known as the Acquis Communautaire.  

This body of text is useful if you are translating texts related to European institutions or legislation; checking translation consistency across several languages; testing your own CAT tools or building up your own TM's. Given the huge range of subjects covered by EU legislation it can be a fantasic source of standard terminology helping you in your research to build glossaries


It can be found at: http://langtech.jrc.it/DGT-TM.html

 
 

Thanks for visiting!

Today I'm pleased to say that I have a blog post published in the online version of the Guardian newspaper. Despite a great demand for qualified linguists in the UK the job marker remains tough and getting the job (and indeed career) you dream of can take a lot of hard work, as well as tears and frustration. Then again you have to see it as a journey and not a one-way trip! (Sorry I hate that "journey" metaphor - it's very over-used!)

As you can see from the post I've recently started a new job so posts here on Happy Linguist have been a bit sparse this month - I can only apologise.

I've also had a blog post published on Heriot Watt University's lifeinlincs blog, written from a translator's perspective, please feel free to read and comment on that.

I hope to have some new and fresh blogs for you soon, so please bookmark the page and visit again soon!

Dentals

A dental sound occurs when there is contact (or near contact) between the teeth and another articulator. For example in Spanish and most Romance languages the /t/ and /d/ sounds are produced by pressing the tip of the tongue against the top teeth. If the articulation is between the lip and the teeth, we call that a labiodental sound.

Time and Tense - English, what a wonderful language!

The common idea of tense is often used to cover all forms of the verb in relation to both form and function and springs from different basic premises. Firstly most language learners think of verb formation and usage with the obvious relationship between tense and time. In fact in many languages, such as Spanish or French, time and tense are synonymous. Secondly, like many concepts in English grammar – such as avoiding split infinitives for example – the idea of tense develops from the historical approach of trying to harmonise English grammar with Latin grammar. This motivated grammarians to look for corresponding forms between “tenses” and many language learners do the same in an attempt to understand how English works.

In most cases, we would normally represent time by means of a timeline concept marking the past, the present and the future. While time is a universal concept, not all languages express time in the same manner. Linguists now make a distinction between tense and aspect. Tense is defined as the “absolute location of an event or action in time” and is generally marked by inflection in the form, in other words it can be considered as a grammatical form, while aspect “refers to how an event or action is to be viewed with respect to time.” [i]

While we might be accustomed to think of expressing time according to the past, the present and the future, it can be said that English only has two tenses – present tense and past (or non-present) tense since these are the only forms that show inflection:

John walks to work – Mary is ill (Present tense)

John walked to work – Mary was ill (Past tense)

As a general rule the third person singular of the present tense is inflected –s (I sing but she sings) and the past tense is usually formed by the stem + -ed (talk – talk +ed = talked.)  English does not have a future tense in the sense of having an inflected form, equivalent to the French parlerai or Spanish hablaré but expresses the future in a variety of ways, such as by using constructions like will + infinitive or be going to + infinitive.

In the case of aspect, it is generally held that an action can be viewed as progressive (sometimes known as continuous), perfective or perfect progressive. Since this refers to the manner in which the verb is viewed or regarded, the question is how to teach this to an English language student since the differences are often slight, ambiguous or context dependant.

The formation of aspects is as follows:

The progressive aspect is formed by using the construction to be + verb + -ing :                                     He is + sleep + -ing = he is sleeping

The perfective aspect is formed by using the construction to have + past participle :

                                    He has + eaten = he has eaten

The perfect progressive aspect is formed by the construction to have been + verb + -ing :

                                    He has been + sleep + -ing = he has been sleeping

Both tense and aspect can be combined in various ways to form the following paradigm:

	Simple	Progressive	Perfective	Perfect Progressive
Present	walk	am walking is walking are walking	have walked has walked	have been walking has been walking
Past	walked	was walking were walking	had walked	had been walking

From the above we can see the variation in verb forms and contrast their various uses. In general terms, the progressive aspect refers to something which is still in progress during a temporary period, such as a planned action. The perfective aspect links two events at different times, one of which is generally in the past, but the other may still be ongoing. 

Thus:

John sleeps soundly (Present simple – states a general fact, John is not sleeping at this moment in time)

John is sleeping soundly (Present progressive – the action is ongoing, John is sleeping at this moment in time)

They have lived in Spain for five years (Present perfective – action started in the past and they are still living there at the present)

Peter had been walking the dog when he slipped (Past perfect progressive – he was in the process of walking the dog when another event took place, his phone rang)

Some textbooks will make the distinction between the two concepts, tense and aspect, while others will use the general term “tense” to cover all forms of the verb. This former option is chosen by Quirk et al in A Grammar of Contemporary English which differentiates between time, tense and aspect and deals with the simple present and the simple past together as tenses, before moving on to aspect, while Parrott’s Grammar for English Language Teachers follows the latter option.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Parrott, Martin (2000) Grammar for English Language Teachers Cambridge University Press

Quirk et al (1989) A Grammar of Contemporary English Longman, Essex 18^th edition

The Internet Grammar of English

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[i] Both the definition of tense and aspect are taken from the Internet Grammar of English.