Most grammatical features are named by linguists so as to convey their function, e.g. conditional, inceptive, conative, concomitive, etc. The coinages are mostly based on (Continue Reading)
Pat’s Polemics
On-going brilliance
Language hypocrisy
08/31/2022 Pat Barrett Add CommentWhen we speak of contractions in English like ‘we would have’ reduced to ‘we’d’ve’ the language guardians and scolds label that ‘improper’, ‘slang’, ‘sloppy’, and (Continue Reading)
Idiomaticity
12/08/2021 Pat Barrett Add Comment“I understand what you mean but we don’t say it that way.” How many times have you heard someone tell you that as you foundered (Continue Reading)
Order of Operations
07/30/2021 Pat Barrett Add CommentHow do linguists proceed to reasoning about what goes on in the black box known as the LAD – language acquisition device?Here’s a simples example:Spanish-speakers (Continue Reading)
The role of morphology
04/29/2021 Pat Barrett Add CommentReading Matthew’s Morphology inspires observations such as the following: The -s of 3rd p. sg. present is deleted or not present in the subjunctive. However, (Continue Reading)
Question for linguists
12/20/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentI just read in Medieval and Modern Greek by Robert Browning that Medieval Greek, while borrowing lots of words from Romance languages, could not borrow (Continue Reading)
What is lost with the loss of a language?
06/11/2020 Pat Barrett 3 CommentsLanguages throughout the word are dying off. Language death is when no one is raised from infancy speaking that language. So, despite cries of Foul! (Continue Reading)
Just how complex can sentences be?
05/29/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentI’m going to put those things on the table……. in a box. Reading so much linguistics now, I immediately put this utterance into my file (Continue Reading)
The contentious issue of aspect
03/27/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentI have finished reading Aspect and have observations to make. Aspect has been called one of the most disputed notions in linguistics. Elsewhere on this (Continue Reading)
If you cannot show it, is it real?
06/26/2019 Pat Barrett 2 Comments“Show” is not the best word. Thinking about African Diasporic music and the issue of the pulse, I was reminded of the issue of acquisition (Continue Reading)
Further notes on how words’ meanings affect thinking
03/20/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentA while back I wrote: “Again I heard a speaker use the term “urban” as a synonym for Black in the ethnic sense. Earlier, the (Continue Reading)
Word of the day
02/16/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentThe word is “raise” used intransitively. As I was fantasizing about having quad 60 machine guns mounted under the hood of my car to deploy (Continue Reading)
Serious issues in French
01/20/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentSome where at some time a article on pedagogical issues in French was illicitly copied by me. It had appeared in The Modern Language Journal (Continue Reading)
‘Splain this
01/13/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentQuoting a NYT article: And when a newly inaugurated Mr. Trump sought a loyalty pledge from Mr. Comey and later asked that he end an (Continue Reading)
Which aspect? It all depends…..
01/04/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentSo often here and elsewhere I’ve recounted the hilarious presentation at ACTFL, not meant to be hilarious, on the preterit and imperfect in Spanish. The (Continue Reading)
taking root
01/01/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentThat phrase occurred to me as I was thinking of how my granddaughter is dealing with her vocabulary in French. Today she stumbled on ‘parce (Continue Reading)
more grammar baloney
11/28/2018 Pat Barrett 1 CommentThis site, Stack Exchange: English Language & Usage, gripes me no end. You have to have a ‘reputation’ on the site to post anything and (Continue Reading)
Up in here
08/18/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentYou hear so many people who do not speak Black dialect use the expression ‘up in here’. The question I have is how much of (Continue Reading)
Does “classical” necessarily denote high quality?
08/16/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentThe term ‘classical’ and ‘classic’ is thrown around so much as to lose meaning, everything from Classical Studies, which refer only to Latin and Ancient (Continue Reading)
How is this feature instantiated?
08/13/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentIn French there are two ways of indicating possession, one with the preposition ‘de’ and another with the preposition ‘a’. So one can say the (Continue Reading)
Even the educated make mistakes/errors
08/11/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentI’ve been trying to illicit story ideas from students do not spend hardly any time have to reign in These are just a few mistakes (Continue Reading)
Great example of how a quotative works
07/06/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentMy grandson was speaking of a little kid in his karate class and he said, “Christian does not like not pay attention.” The first thing (Continue Reading)
Knives redux
05/25/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentI love this example I came up with based on Steven Pinker’s Language Instinct examples of irregular plurals demonstrating the way we get a window (Continue Reading)