Re: Fw: Intro to natural language processing
On Monday 20 December 2004 16:41, John F. Sowa wrote:
>
> I was talking with a colleague from Australia
> about aspect and happened to mention the Chinese
> particle "le", which indicates perfective aspect.
>
> His eyes immediately lit up with a sudden flash
> of understanding because a Chinese friend of his
> was constantly inserting "le" into English
> sentences, such as
>
> I come le tomorrow.
Are you sure your colleague's informant is not Singaporean Chinese? "Singlish"
is famous for its "lah". I always thought the Singaporean "lah" might come
from the Chinese particle "le" myself, but according to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singlish it is a Malay influence.
Whatever the origin, cross-linguistic influences like that are fascinating and
informative. I gained new insight into dual forms when I read PNG Tok Pisin
developed a dual pronoun form "yutupela"!
Looking at it from the other side. An amusing description of the conceptual
trails experienced by a rationalizing adult trying to learn a foreign
language, came up in that same comp.ai.nat-lang thread. It's by Mark Twain,
talking about his struggles to learn German.
Here's a sampler on gender:
"Well, after the student has learned the sex of a great number of nouns, he is
still in a difficulty, because he finds it impossible to persuade his tongue
to refer to things as "he" and "she," and "him" and "her," which it has been
always accustomed to refer to it as "it." When he even frames a German
sentence in his mind, with the hims and hers in the right places, and then
works up his courage to the utterance-point, it is no use -- the moment he
begins to speak his tongue files the track and all those labored males and
females come out as "its..."
If you're in need of diversion check out the rest at
http://www.boondocksnet.com/twaintexts/tramp_ap_d.html. It's funny, and
informative in its own way.
-Rob Freeman