RE: Corpora: overuse and underuse of learner English; International English

From: yorick wilks (ywilks@excite.co.uk)
Date: Thu Dec 13 2001 - 19:09:50 MET

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    This line of argument only makes sense if native X can be opposed to
    non-native X (the latterbeing a majority of speakers etc.) as if they were
    two dialects of a single language, each with its own sense of correctness
    and error (as if this were Castillian vs. Catalan or something like that).
    But it is nothing at all like that: for non-native English (or any other
    language as a value of X) is not a dialect and THERE CANNOT BE ANY SET OF
    ERRORS ITS SPEAKERS AGREE ARE ERRORS. That being the case, there is no sense
    to Mr. Piotrowski's speculations about comparing the error sets of natives
    and non-natives, because non-natives dont form a set in any interesting
    sense. Not-being-Romanian is not a real property and more than
    not-being-newspaper, into both of which sets I supose I fall.
    Yorick Wilks

    On Thu, 13 Dec 2001 11:18:50 +0100, Tadeusz Piotrowski wrote:

    > By accident, I am a Polish user of English (now I am writing
    > self-consciously, thinking about my own cluster of errors...), and by
    > accident I know an interesting PhD dissertation that compares selected
    > aspects of natives-speaker English to those of a non-native variety,
    > comparing like with like: Przemyslaw Kaszubski Selected aspects of
    > lexicon, phraseology and style in the writing of Polish advanced
    > learners of English, a contrastive, corpus-based approach. Poznan 2000
    > (przemka@elex.amu.edu.pl). He hoped to publish it. But, returning to
    > errors, if we indeed treat English as an international language, like
    > Latin, then, first of all, are really native speakers a good yardstick
    > to measure non-native varieties with? Were there any native speakers of
    > Latin in the Middle Ages or the Renaissance? Measured against the
    > numbers of non-native speakers of English, the native ones are a
    > minority. And one venerated tradition in linguistics is -- what
    > everybody, the majority, says is correct.
    > It might be interesting to know what the overlap between different
    > non-native varieties is, what the common core is. There must be,
    > otherwise all those speakers could not communicate. That common core is
    > perhaps the international variety. The international variety was very
    > broadly described by Quirk and Gimson in their respective publications.
    > I don't know whether somebody followed up.
    > Another problem is, what is an error? As far as I know, an error is what
    > departs from the norm, and the crucial point is to describe the norm. If
    > we treat the international variety as the norm, then the native-speaker
    > variety may be said to be a particular cluster of errors. Tadeusz
    > Piotrowski
    >
    > > -----Original Message-----
    > > From: owner-corpora@lists.uib.no
    > > [mailto:owner-corpora@lists.uib.no] On Behalf Of yorick wilks
    > > Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2001 3:33 PM
    > > To: Eric Atwell; xiaotian guo
    > > Cc: corpora@hd.uib.no; E S Atwell
    > > Subject: Re: Corpora: overuse and underuse of learner English
    > >
    > >
    > > There are many statistical studies around of the spelling and
    > > grammatical errors in English associated with specific first
    > > language competences---e.g. the the English errors Poles
    > > typically make as contrasted with those of the French (lack
    > > of articles etc.) These were done so as to produce
    > > grammar/speeling correctors for particular markets and may
    > > well be what Eric Attwell was referring to---a search of the
    > > CL/NLP literature would soon find them.
    > >
    > > Whether these studies support the claim of Erics's Polish
    > > chum, that his cluster of errors now have equal status with
    > > native English competence is a different and wholly
    > > non-linguisic question. That there is an international
    > > English is beyond question as a social fact, and native
    > > Engish speakers are often poor speakers of it,
    > > unsurprisingly. The problem of its status will have to be
    > > settle by its own Academy who will also have to decide which
    > > particular cluster of distinctive errors will have to have
    > > primacy over the others in its definition. Yorick Wilks
    > >
    > >
    > > On Wed, 12 Dec 2001 10:19:18 +0000 (GMT), Eric Atwell wrote:
    > >
    > > >
    > > > >I am making a contrastive study of learner English and NS
    > > learner
    > > > >English.
    > > >
    > > > I dont understand what you mean by "NS learner English" -
    > > do you mean
    > > > English of young children? If you want access to a corpus
    > > of young
    > > > children's spoken English, try Polytechnic of Wales Corpus,
    > > see ICAME
    > > > website: http://www.hd.uib.no/icame/newcd.htm for what's
    > > on ICAME CD,
    > > > http://khnt.hit.uib.no/icame/manuals/pow.htm for POW corpus manual
    > > >
    > > > Another thought - I recently attended a "European Year of
    > > Languages"
    > > > symposium in Krakow, Poland, organised by British Council
    > > and others;
    > > > a consensus emerged that English has become the
    > > international lingua
    > > > franca of Europe, and is no longer "owned" by native
    > > speakers, it is
    > > > common property of the European (and international) community. So,
    > > > the International English of a Polish speaker at this conference
    > > > should have equal "status" to the English used by native speakers.
    > > > Maybe there is scope for a European Corpus of English
    > > parallel to the
    > > > British National Corpus, where an object of study might be
    > > not "what
    > > > are the deficiencies of learner Engish" but "what are the
    > > > regional/national variations in English as written/spoken across
    > > > Europe".
    > > >
    > > > Is your study in this vein?
    > > >
    > > > Eric Atwell
    > > >
    > > > --
    > > > Eric Atwell, Distributed Multimedia Systems MSc Tutor &
    > > SOCRATES Tutor
    > > > School of Computing, University of Leeds, LEEDS LS2 9JT
    > > > TEL: 0113-2335430 MOBILE: 0775-1039104 FAX: 0113-2335468
    > > > WWW: http://www.comp.leeds.ac.uk/eric EMAIL: eric@comp.leeds.ac.uk



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