Thanks, Dave: On Mon, May 14, 2012 at 8:46 PM, Dave Washburn <[email protected]>wrote:
> On Mon, May 14, 2012 at 8:27 PM, K Randolph <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Dave: > > > > Thanks. > > > > On Mon, May 14, 2012 at 7:22 PM, Dave Washburn <[email protected] > >wrote: > > > > > Explanatory adequacy means looking not just at *what* happens in language, > but how and why. Descriptive linguistics says that 1) is declarative and 2) > is interrogative. > > 1) He goes to the market > 2) Does he go to the market? > > Explanatory linguistics says that 1) is the base form of an English clause, > while 2) is formed by moving the subject to second position and inserting > the auxiliary verb. Explanatory methods go on to try and sort out the > mechanisms that produce this change, and develop mechanisms that (more or > less) predict what the behavior will be in other clauses. It doesn't just > lay out a list of descriptions, it searches for the rules behind what we > observe. > I thought this was descriptive linguistics, in that one cannot adequately describe a language apart from recognizing such patterns of language use. > > Honestly, I wouldn't expect you to be up on most of this stuff, because > your focus is mainly lexicography. The approaches I mentioned all deal more > with syntax. Two very different animals! > Actually, both work together. I have spent the most effort on lexicography for two reasons: 1) it is what I first noticed as being inaccurate when using off-the-shelf lexicons and 2) without accurate lexicography, it is more difficult to impossible to recognize patterns of syntax. However, within a few years of starting to read Tanakh I also realized that the grammars I had been taught were also wrong as far as syntax. The most glaring inaccuracies dealt with the reasons for the verbal conjugations. > > -- > Dave Washburn > > Check out my Internet show: http://www.irvingsplace.us > > Now available: a novel about King > Josiah!<http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/89444> > > Karl W. Randolph. _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
