Cliff’s (Old) Info Dump

Word order can be a little tricky in English questions. You have to remember that for all questions, the first little verbal element of the sentence moves to the front. This could be a modal like ' can ', some form of ' be ', or just a verbal affix like ' -ed '. For WH questions, the WH expression then moves to the very front. Let's look at some examples. The moving elements are underlined and marked with numbers. Statement: Joe can 1 play basketball 2 really well. Yes/No Question: Can 1 Joe (1) play basketball 2 really well? WH Question: What 2 can 1 Joe (1) play (2) really well? Statement: Joe 's 1 a big fan of soccer 2 . Statement: Joe is 1 a big fan of soccer 2 . Yes/No Question: Is 1 Joe (1) a big fan of soccer 2 ? WH Question: What 2 is 1 Joe (1) a big fan of (2) ? WH Question: What 2 's 1 Joe (1) a big fan of (2) ? Statement: Joe watch es 1 sports 2 on TV every night. Statement: Joe does 1 watch sp...

The core of Krashen's Monitor Model is that subconscious "acquisition" is the primary means by which proficiency in a second language develops and that the key to this acquisition is "comprehensible input". The problem of determining exactly what constitutes comprehensible input for a given learner, then, is central to the task of second language teaching. Informally, input may be considered comprehensible if the learner seems to "get the gist" of what is being said in the target language. This description is inherently subjective, however, and how exactly this might be quantified in more precise terms is up in the air. It seems to me that, over the course of a semester, several short diagnostic exams should be administered to students in second language classrooms. These exams should focus solely on comprehension and be timed such that very little deliberate analysis of the input can be performed. They should not affect student's grades, exce...

What follows is 150 or so of the most common verbs in English. I've listed the entire conjugation paradigm for each verb and organized them into groups based on the pattern they follow. Regular '-ed' Verbs: Bare Present Progressive Past Perfective act acts acting acted add adds adding added agree agrees agreeing agreed allow allows allowing allowed answer answers answering answers ask asks asking asked believe believes believing believed borrow borrows borrowing borrowed brush brushes brushing brushed burn burns burning burned* call calls calling called care cares caring cared carry carries carrying carried change changes changing changed check checks checking checked cheer cheers cheering cheered chew chews chewing chewed chop chops chopping chopped clean cleans cleaning cleaned clear clears clearing cleared close closes closing closed count counts counting counted cross crosses crossing crossed decide decides deciding decided die dies dying di...

In language, as with any other complex skill, performance does not always relect internal knowledge, or competence . Just as a professional basketball player who knows very well how to shoot the ball from the free-throw line will occasionally miss the shot, perfectly competent speakers of English routinely fumble with their words or suddenly find themselves unable to retrieve a word they've used thousands of times. This sort of flub is purely a performance error and says nothing about the speaker's competence. The difficulty inherent in linguistic research is that all we can directly measure is performance . A given speaker's competence is always buried in the "black box" of the human mind and can only be estimated through the combined efforts of countless researchers and theoreticians. For an example of how sharply linguistic performance can differ from competence, try to imagine your first date. Or better yet, try to imagine mustering up the courage to ask you...

While it's true that no dialect is inherently superior to another, the level of prestige attached to a particular dialect by society can vary wildly for no obvious reason. Whether we realize it or not, this external value is the only reason to prefer one dialect over another. It is a glaring and malignant mistake to assume that a speaker of a given dialect is necessarily less intelligent or less friendly than a speaker of another. If a person speaks in roughly the same manner as their parents, their siblings, and their friends, this is perfectly natural and says much more about the individual's geographic location than their mental capacity or personality. Linguistically, it makes little difference whether you pronounce the 'z' in the Spanish word paz like the 'ss' in the English pass or the 'th' in the English path . The only objective measures for a difference in pronunciation is the markedness of the relevant speech sounds and their potential for...

Based on several sources I've listed in previous posts on English word frequency , here is my short list of the words that every student of English for speakers of other languages should learn first. Numbers: (n)one two three four five six seven eight nine ten Pronouns: me / myself / I my / mine us / ourselves / we our(s) you(rself) / yourselves your(s) him(self) / he his her(self) / she her(s) it(self) its them(selves) / they their(s) Nouns: air answer apple arm back ball bank bear bed bird body / bodies book box(es) boy bread brother building case cause child(ren) church(es) city / cities cold color company / companies corn country / countries course cover cut day door dress(es) drink ear earth east egg end eye face fact fall family / families father field fire floor flower fly / flies food foot / feet form friend front garden girl god gold ground group guy hair half / halves hand h...

Many different strategies may be employed when designing programs for the public good, but the most obvious involves simple charity. However, perhaps even more effective and certainly more efficient is education. Language education in particular can have very far-reaching benefits as it facilitates other forms of learning. For example, imagine taking a college-level biology course without a good technical vocabulary or the ability to read fluently. When the English language is an educational target, the most obvious difficulty that must be overcome by young children and non-native speakers alike is its complicated and unreliable spelling system. Certainly, proper spelling is difficult for adult native speakers, but the problem is most glaring when one examines the time required for a learner to attain competency in written English. In fact, an appalling number of Americans never acquire this basic competency. According to a 1993 study conducted by the U.S. Department of Education, 21...

Here's another pair of paragraphs that can be used to illustrate a particular structure of English grammar: the passive voice. The level is a little advanced, but textbooks do tend to put off passives for a while, so that might be fine. As with my post on Bigfoot , I've marked the subject and verb of each sentence, but this time I've also enclosed embedded clauses in curly braces so that they can be marked as well. The first paragraph below uses no passive constructions, and the second keeps approximately the same content but introduces several passives. Just by perusing the sentential subjects of these paragraphs (appearing in bold), it's easy to see that the passive voice can be used to shift attention from one part of the sentence to another. Q-W-E-R-T-Y... Why does nearly every keyboard use this particular arrangement of keys? People could certainly memorize an alphabetical layout more easily. You might imagine {that skilled engineers designed the QWER...

Here's an assignment I recently completed for a course in English pedagogy. These two paragraphs are basically the same, but the second includes several embedded sentences which make use of the complementizer " that ". Both of the paragraphs have their subjects and verbs (well, verb strings really) marked, and the embedded clauses are marked in the list that follows. Humans have quite a lot in common with chimpanzees, but we may have an even closer relative living in our forests. Many thousands of people have seen this creature personally. Are they all mistaken? Could a giant, hairy ape-like being really go undetected for so long? Maybe our government is keeping these creatures hidden. The Bigfoot situation could become a national embarrassment since the native population of this country was treated similarly. Still, most Americans refuse to believe in such a creature. Everyone knows that humans have quite a lot in common with chimpanzees, but we...