Re: Re: OT Faffy/Mike/Linguistics 101 WHEY OT

[Guest guest]

Hi, I've got a bit behind.... Mike, msg for you at the end of this!!

> > Can an American explain the difference between

> > (1) " did you do that yet? "

> > and

> > (2) " have you done that yet? "

> >

> > I have to completely agree with Jo at this point - the first to us

> Brits sounds pretty gross but seems to be used in the same environments

> as (2).

>

> It could

> be " lexical slipping " in American English, in the sense that " did "

> actually means " have " in these cases, in which there would actually

> be no difference in meaning! That's just a funky off-the-cuff

> speculation about a possibility. My stronger hunch is that it's just

> a speaker switching their frame of reference in the middle of a

> sentence, pretty normal in actual life. Gets into the classic

> ol' " competence vs performance " debate... Don't want to go there!

Ok, I have to say I agree with your intuition that they do mean the same,

although not being a native speaker of this dialect my intuition might not

be worth much (I cannot say " did you do that yet? " ).

If we're right, though, that would make it an example of 2 forms -->1

function - unusual, huh? I don't think it's a speaker switching a frame of

reference simply because it's so common, common enough for us UK-ers to

recognise a commonplace USian. But would have to do a study of the

environments they're found in if no-one has any strong intuitions of

dissimilarity.

now re:

(A)> > " There's the book that I didn't know where it was!! "

> @@@@@@@@@@@@

>

> Ah, more " competence vs performance " murky grey area! I'd be willing

> to bet that no US speakers would judge this to be grammatical, and it

> certainly makes me cringe to read,

It's more than a performance issue & your cringing response argues against

that I think. I've been noticing this for a while now, perhaps five

years, as it creeps into British English. Of course I found it repugnant at

first, as anyone does when language changes. I couldn't believe my ears

actually. But people were shocked when the present continuous started to be

used in the passive! Before that they said

" The corpse was carrying down the stairs " - this was the conservative old

structure. The new one was

" The corpse was being carried down the stairs " - highly cringeworthy at the

time!

But now I use the " There's the X that I didn't know what it was " kind of

thing quite often, and have noticed it on TV too. It seems to be

restricted to " I didn't know " RCs, eg

" That's the dog I didn't know whose it was " .

> but I think it's one of those things that's murky

> because probably just about every language has these as " processing

> errors " and there's always the data-collecting problem...

I agree with the data-collecting problem but it's not a processing error.

Although it may have started out from some kind of " resumptive pronoun

spellout " (if you believe in traces, which it looks like you might!!!) it's

a new structure! Watch out for it in the US!

By the

> way, I doubt the mechanisms involved are the same, but these types of

> relative clauses are very normal and common in Japanese, Korean, and

> (I think) other languages where pronouns are typically not

> overt. " There's the book I didn't know where was " is perfect and

> normal in Japanese.

Interesting.......

>

> ah, but what about Br Eng? I'd be shocked if your sentence was okay

> over there...

go on, eat your hat... mind you, in a gram. judgement task I'm sure it would

get prescriptive no-nos.

>

> @@@@@@@@@@

> > Also... Mike, I'd be interested to know what your research areas

> are as I am

> > also in the field. Loosely. I enjoyed your posts as you said

> very nicely

> > what I no longer can be bothered to point out!

> @@@@@@@@@

>

> thanks! i'm a grad-student and my current research interests are the

> theoretical foundations of phrase structure theories (TAG, x-bar

> theory, c-command, etc), information-structure/intonation mappings

> (focus, topicalization, etc), and, as a tiny side-interest, stress

> and intonation in Japanese. very keen to work on the semantics of

> quantification in the future sometime, but more like distant future,

> because i'll be switching more to computer science/computational

> linguistics areas soon ($$??). i come more from a math/comp sci

> background, esp computability/logic...

Sounds really interesting! I loved your FAFF post. I'm a grad student in

psycholing and am also interested in phrase structure although I have to

confess I would like to see the whole notion replaced. My background is

teaching but if you have read this far, well done, and you can click here

for my computational (neural net) effort!

http://www.rceal.cam.ac.uk/Working%20Papers/east.pdf .

As you or Jo or Suze noted (sorry now...) you can also say

" faffing around, faffing about "

and similarly you might be interested, you can say

" farting around, farting about " with more or less the same meanings. And

there are at least a couple of other

" bodily-functioning around, bodily-functioning about " type phrs. vbs though

the meaning changes from being faffy to simply wasting time in a very

annoying way, as in " stop bodily-functioning around now before I lose it. "

Helen