<Not so! The subject is compound, i.eVERBS and NOUNS (the conjuction AND
<makes it compound) the verb is WERE, and MORE is a predicate nominative,
<i.e. a substantive (any word functioning as a NOUN) with a role of modifyin
Major snippage...
We still talking about that twisted pair of gramatical convolution?
>> Up to that point verbs and nouns were
>> more of an abstraction needed to pass tests than working tools.
>
>This sentence no verb! :-)
I only wrote the first one.
Allison
You're right in that the dictionary has the task of letting everyone know
how the language IS spoken. It's also the schools' job to teach the kids in
school how people DO speak, so they can do so well enough to hold their own,
rather than having to be supported by the government.
I believe this last part has been largely forgotten.
Studies have shown that average graduates from high schools throughout the
U.S. are quite incapable of reading a descriptive article and concluding
even the basics about what was written. Unfortunately, it is not fair to
expect these same graduates to write better than they can read and
comprehend.
There's why our system is failing. I can't hand a young college graduate a
data book and expect him to figure out what a given device does and how it
does it. Consequently, I can't use current graduates at all.
Dick
-----Original Message-----
From: Hans Franke <Hans.Franke(a)mch20.sbs.de>
To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Date: Thursday, March 09, 2000 1:22 PM
Subject: Re: languages
>> > Well, throw-in-the-towel is known (at least the acording
>> > phrase is in wide use in Germany - just most don't know
>> > the orgin), but what is Ebonyx ?
>
>> Ebonyx was the attempt by some boards of education in California to
establish
>> the slang associated with Black culture as a language so they could get
funding
>> to teach english as a second language. It was always a brazen attempt to
get
>> funding, nothing more.
>
>:))
>
>> > Serious, ain't we are going exactly the same way with
>> > programming languages as with real ones ? Just instead
>> > of centuries, it took only some dozend years to go from
>> > Machine code (grunting sounds) to ADA (Goethes Poems)
>> *laugh* I'm not sure I'd compare any computer language to Goethe, but
it's
>> a good analogy...
>:)
>
>> > and only less than 10 years to fall back to C ?
>
>> I think Hans is making a bit of a joke here, but he's not far from the
mark.
>> A living language is not a static thing. It grows. It evolves. Parts
are
>> added and other parts dropped as the society that speaks it changes.
Until
>> recently (ie the last 20 years or so) English was taught in a very
prescriptive
>> way - x is the correct way to speak, where x is whatever dictionary
and/or
>> grammar system you embrace.
>
>No, I'm bloody serious (beside some humorous thing). In my opinion
>C (and C++) is way down the ladder and as more as I think about I
>find it more and more similar to the 'real' language thing discussed
>in here.
>
>I wouldn't consider C as anything 'grown'. maybe evolved in the
>sense of degeneration.
>
>I often think about what happened - why are all other languages
>out classed ? Some beauty(and use)full are almost forgotten.
>What happened to Pascal, Modula or Smalltalk (not to talk about
>ADA which I still consider the best design ever) ?
>
>There's only C (no, I don't recognize C++ or Java on their own).
>And interestingly a still existing COBOL population.
>
>> However in the late 60s (things take time to
>> filter into the education system) some language experts - notably
Webster's
>> Dictionary among them - began to realise that language *changes* over
time.
>> Websters dictionary embraced a descriptive philosophy - we're not in the
>> business of telling you how you SHOULD speak, only how you DO speak.
>
>> One of the results of this was the formation of the American Heritage
>> dictionary, which clung to the prescriptive philosophy.
>
>Well, to late over here - Standard German has equalized most German
>languages and dialects. More than 100 years of Education did succeede.
>
>Anyway
>H.
>
>--
>VCF Europa am 29./30. April 2000 in Muenchen
>http://www.vintage.org/vcfe
>http://www.homecomputer.de/vcfe
There are a few characteristics, not necessarily ones of which the Black
community is proud, which certainly are traceable to one-time African tribal
culture. A few moments with a stack of police blotters will show that
there's a really noticeable tendency among Hispanics to "burgle" outside
their own community, while it appears quite common that a Black man will
steal his neighbor's TV-set, only to invite the victim and his family to
come over to watch the game at his house.
I've read/heard that this is traceable to ancient and still-practiced custom
in various west African cultures. However, I'd not recommend doing that in
THIS society. That tendency to ignore the realities of life within the
present culture, both legal and ethnic, is purported to have arisen as a
defense against burglary charges on more than one occasion.
Dick
-----Original Message-----
From: John Wilson <wilson(a)dbit.dbit.com>
To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Date: Thursday, March 09, 2000 1:13 PM
Subject: Re: languages (Ebonics)
>On Thu, Mar 09, 2000 at 10:55:38AM -0800, sjm wrote:
>> BEV follows strict rules of grammar and word use, and has syntactic
>> roots in several major west African languages like Ewe, Iwo,
>> and Yoruba. It really is not gibberish at all, no matter how
>> "wrong" it sounds to a native Standard American English speaker
>> (me included). In some ways, it actually allows much finer grained
>> shades of meaning than SAE does.
>
>I'd love to see an example of this! What really catches my attention is
>when someone begins a sentence with "know what I'm saying?", there's a lot
>of stuff like that that's really annoyingly meaningless. Also I'm not
>sure how much can really be traced to Africa, since a lot of this stuff
>really seems to have only cropped up in the past few generations. Ahhhh,
>what ever happened to Jive? Now *that* was fun to listen to! Ehh, I mean,
>that was a thing to which it was fun to listen. Never mind...
>
>John Wilson
>D Bit
There's a reason for the old saw, "Those who can, do, while those who can't,
teach." The typical teacher candidate graduated in the bottom third of
his/her high school class, went to a clearly second-or-third-rate college
and did poorly there. Because of the emphasis on "diversity" there has been
a preference for minority candidates who relied on waivers of the customary
standards to get into and through the usual educational programs, then
relied on minority preferences to get past the hiring standards, and lastly,
now rely on the system's unwillingness to take negative action agains a
member of an ethnic minority to keep them on until they attain tenure, after
which they'll do what they like, regardless.
In my years on school committees I saw plenty of hoops being jumped-through
by administration to meet their requirements without violating the various
restrictions imposed on them by the various ethnic and cultural programs
imposed from without. Unfortunately, as more of these administrators come
>from minority cultures, other problems begin to surface. In the middle
school attended by both my boys, there was a principal who used federal
money as a justification to bring "troubled" (meaning criminal) youngsters
>from other districts in with the "hope" of giving them another chance.
Several of us on the steering committees tried to put an end to this, as it
seemed to result in disproportionately high incident rates involving
ethinically charged circumstances.
I surely hope this is just evidence that the pendulum's swung too far in one
direction.
Dick
-----Original Message-----
From: Joe <rigdonj(a)intellistar.net>
To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Date: Thursday, March 09, 2000 12:38 PM
Subject: Re: languages
>Chris,
>
>Good explanation, you cleared identified a part of the problem but it's
>not all the student's fault. An even worse problem is that the students are
>taught by teachers that aren't any better educated than the students
>they're teaching. We can thanks years of preferential college admissions
>and hiring practices for that. Furthermore the quality of teachers as
>declined steadily with the rise in power of the NEA and other teacher's
>unions since most teacher's are more concerned about their income than in
>teaching. Other factors such as the decision to teach in "native languages"
>haven't helped either. Every part of the educational system is lowering
>it's standards to accomodate the worst (insert your choice here; student,
>teacher, school system, income, etc etc). And every part of the system is
>failing to support the other parts. The whole educational system is in
chaos.
>
> I wonder if the US is the only country that is having these kinds of
>problems in it's "educational" system?
>
> Joe
>
>At 09:57 AM 3/9/00 -0800, Chris wrote:
>>Richard Erlacher wrote:
>>
>>[Stuff deleted]
>>
>>> I think the reason our kids don't learn languages well is because the
tools
>>> that should have been taught with English,
>>
>>[more stuff deleted]
>>
>>I recently had the sad task of judging science fair projects from three
local
>>high schools. It was pathetic. Since this thread is about language
skills
>>I'll ignore for the moment the more or less complete lack of understanding
>>of the scientific method and the extensive use of crayons in constructing
>>the presentations and focus on the stellar language skills that were
almost
>>uniformly present across all of the entries.
>>
>>The short form summary is that if I'd written in the fashion of these high
>>school students when I was in second grade I'd have been taken out and
shot.
>>Certainly there were large collections of words, some of them
polysyllabic,
>>but in general they were not arranged into anything that was parsable as
>>an english sentence. Written materials depended on spelling correctors
>>to eliminate spelling errors, sometimes with frightening yet amusing
>>consequences ("...our science fairy teacher...").
>>
>>There were a few entries which were clever, well constructed, well
executed
>>and innovative. Talking with the instructors I learned that these were
>>from the bright but bored students who twiddle their thumbs while their
>>neanderthal classmates struggled with basic coursework (in California the
>>instructional system is geared to address the needs of the lowest common
>>denominator; resources are generally not available for exceptional
>>students). The entry judged Best of Show was constructed by one such
>>student in a few hours on the day immediately preceding the judging.
>>
>>> It's a sad situation.
>>
>>It's beyond sad. It's criminal.
>>
>>FWIW, California is now going to start imposing financial penalties upon
>>high schools whose students do not perform at some minimal level. The
>>problem, of course, is that the students are already lacking fundamental
>>skills that they should have received at the elementary level, thus
>>penalizing the high schools is not going to fix the problem. Rather, it
>>will cause even more resources to be diverted to already unsalvageable
>>students while penalizing those who actually have a chance to do something
>>useful with their lives.
>>
>>*Grumble*,
>>Chris
>>--
>>Chris Kennedy
>>chris(a)mainecoon.com
>>http://www.mainecoon.com
>>PGP fingerprint: 4E99 10B6 7253 B048 6685 6CBC 55E1 20A3 108D AB97
>>
>
That's not what is going on here!
Dick
-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Strickland <jim(a)calico.litterbox.com>
To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Date: Thursday, March 09, 2000 12:57 PM
Subject: Re: languages
>>
>> allisonp(a)world.std.com wrote:
>> > Up to that point verbs and nouns were
>> > more of an abstraction needed to pass tests than working tools.
>>
>> This sentence no verb! :-)
>
>Erm. Hmm. You can construe that sentance to have a verb, but it doesn't
>make any sense if you do. :) Verb, the word, has become a verb of late.
>To verb another word, you make it into a verb. So if you verb verb (ugh)
>you're saying your sentance doesn't verb. (double ugh). :)
>
>Now you've done it. You've got me playing word games. :)
>
>--
>Jim Strickland
>jim(a)DIESPAMMERSCUMcalico.litterbox.com
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------
> BeOS Powered!
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------
That assessment is quite correct! What's not so obvious, is that the fact
that we have a special class of student, commonly known as "speakers of
other languages" hence the term ESOL for Education for Speakers of Other
Languages, is a federal-court-mandated effort to provide this somewhat
nebulous group of pupils with an additional opprotunity to secure the
education to which the constitution apparently entitles them.
However, what's not so widely recognized is that this program has priority
over mainstream classes. Consequently, as more kids' parents find a way to
get their children so-classified, local school admistrators (most the
principals) are forced to provide limited-size classes for the ESOL program.
Since the mandate is not accompanied by any additional funding, the
administrator has to take teachers from the mainstream classes and assign
them to the ESOL program where class size is limited to 22 pupils per
teacher rather than the more common 30-35 seen in mainstream classes.
That's why so many people were so PI**ED about the "EBONYX" (as it was
spelled in our local papers, though that doesn't make it correct, by any
means) thing. This would have mandated that all users of that particular
pseudo-language were entitled to smaller classes, i.e. more personal
attention, than the mainstream.
While I don't doubt for a moment that there might be potential for great
benefit to those students qualifying for the smaller class-sizes, it's
taking those resources from the already overstressed mainstream education
program.
Dick
-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Strickland <jim(a)calico.litterbox.com>
To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Date: Thursday, March 09, 2000 12:38 PM
Subject: Re: languages
>> Well, throw-in-the-towel is known (at least the acording
>> phrase is in wide use in Germany - just most don't know
>> the orgin), but what is Ebonyx ?
>
>Ebonyx was the attempt by some boards of education in California to
establish
>the slang associated with Black culture as a language so they could get
funding
>to teach english as a second language. It was always a brazen attempt to
get
>funding, nothing more.
>
>
>>
>> And, Jim, for the Grammer ting, don't forget that English
>> is a bastard based on (at least) 5 languages from 3 different
>> language families (No Offense Ment).
>
>None taken. You're absolutely correct. English took much of its structure
>from Norweigan, and much of its vocabulary from Norman French, and
simplified
>both. It picks up vocabulary from everywhere, and when that fails words
are
>simply made up. I'm thinking here of Scuba and Radar, wich both started
out
>as acronyms and are now ordinary nouns.
>
>*snip*
>
>> Serious, ain't we are going exactly the same way with
>> programming languages as with real ones ? Just instead
>> of centuries, it took only some dozend years to go from
>> Machine code (grunting sounds) to ADA (Goethes Poems)
>
>*laugh* I'm not sure I'd compare any computer language to Goethe, but it's
>a good analogy...
>
>
>> and only less than 10 years to fall back to C ?
>>
>> Gruss
>> H.
>
>I think Hans is making a bit of a joke here, but he's not far from the
mark.
>A living language is not a static thing. It grows. It evolves. Parts are
>added and other parts dropped as the society that speaks it changes. Until
>recently (ie the last 20 years or so) English was taught in a very
prescriptive
>way - x is the correct way to speak, where x is whatever dictionary and/or
>grammar system you embrace.
>
>However in the late 60s (things take time to
>filter into the education system) some language experts - notably Webster's
>Dictionary among them - began to realise that language *changes* over time.
>Websters dictionary embraced a descriptive philosophy - we're not in the
>business of telling you how you SHOULD speak, only how you DO speak.
>
>One of the results of this was the formation of the American Heritage
>dictionary, which clung to the prescriptive philosophy.
>
>Ultimately I think the descriptive folks are correct. While I agree with
Dick
>and others that as the English language is simplified it looses alot of its
>elegance and beauty, I'd rather see that than the total stagnation that
results
>with rigid prescriptiveism. A great example of what happens to a language
when
>it is artificially prevented from changing is French. With the
establishment
>of the French Acadamy and the legislation against borrowings from other
>languages, in a few hundred years French went from the language of
diplomacy
>to a linguistic backwater, populated with grotesque and awkward words
created
>to describe things where a borrowing had been previously used.
>
>None of this changes the fact that today's schools are doing a lousy job
>teaching people to communicate. (In the US). One need only look at the
web
>to see this - US domains which are so cluttered and badly designed and
where
>the text is so obtuse and irrellivant that the entire page is useless
abound.
>
>(Yes, in this graphical age, I think page layout should be taught alongside
>some understanding of grammar and spelling). Schools are instead focusing
on
>self esteem building, instead of teaching and letting students develop self
>esteem when they *succeed*. Obviously grinding a student's ego into the
floor
>every time they mess up is the wrong way to go about teaching anything, but
>so is pushing self esteem above education. *sigh* If I had children, I
would
>definately feel ripped off by todays schools.
>
>Anyway, I've gone on much longer in this message than intended, but in
addition
>to hitting a nerve this thread also hit stuff I studied in college, so...
:)
>
>--
>Jim Strickland
>jim(a)DIESPAMMERSCUMcalico.litterbox.com
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------
> BeOS Powered!
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------
--- "Merle K. Peirce" <at258(a)osfn.org> wrote:
> I do recall, though, that studying Latin did make things seem much
> easier to me, if only because the language forced organised thought.
Ditto on the Latin - 4 years in High School. I think in my case, since
I had no decent formal training in English (my native language), learning
Latin grammar produced an understanding of English grammar. I do know
that learning Latin made it easier to learn Greek. I had an idea of
what sorts of phrases and subordinate clauses exist, and so knew to ask
how these concepts translated to Greek ("cum clauses", for example, or
the many uses of infinitives)
> ...I learned the Church Latin pronunciation, which annoys everyone else, to
> my gratification...
Ack! Heretic! :-) My Latin teacher told us a story of when _he_ went
to out High School in the 1960's - they learned Church Latin and it was
a supreme effort of will not to laugh when conjugating the present tense
of the verb "scio", to know.
For the confused reader at home, it goes... "scio, scis, scit, scimus,
scistis, sciunt" and in Classical Latin C's are hard, giving us "skeeo,
skiss, skit...". Church Latin uses a soft C here, resulting in "sheeo,
shiss...". Try *that* in a room full of sophmores.
-ethan
P.S. - if I've messed up the full conjugation, my apologies; it's off the
top of my head, 18 years later. The nugget of the story, however, is accurate.
-ethan
=====
Even though my old e-mail address is no longer going to
vanish, please note my new public address: erd(a)iname.com
The original webpage address is still going away. The
permanent home is: http://penguincentral.com/
See http://ohio.voyager.net/ for details.
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger.
http://im.yahoo.com
Not so! The subject is compound, i.eVERBS and NOUNS (the conjuction AND
makes it compound) the verb is WERE, and MORE is a predicate nominative,
i.e. a substantive (any word functioning as a NOUN) with a role of modifying
the subject. The preposition OF points to ABSTRACTION which modifies the
predicate nominative. The past participle NEEDED modifies the term
ABSTRACTION in its role as a modifier of MORE, which modifies the subjects.
THAN compounds the modification by the preposition by providing a second
object of the preposition OF, which further modifies the term ABSTRACTION by
limiting it.
Now, that's more detail than one normally needs to understand the lines in
the daily paper's comics, but there are sentences, more likely to appear on
the editorial page than in the sports section, which often deserve and too
often require careful analysis prior to concluding one knows what's being
said. You may disagree with that analysis, but it certainly does underscore
that the quoted sentence is complete. It also serves as an example of the
numerous devices about which current high-school graduates know nothing.
Dick
-----Original Message-----
From: Eric Smith <eric(a)brouhaha.com>
To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Date: Thursday, March 09, 2000 12:14 PM
Subject: Re: languages
>allisonp(a)world.std.com wrote:
>> Up to that point verbs and nouns were
>> more of an abstraction needed to pass tests than working tools.
>
>This sentence no verb! :-)
<> projects with it, be able to word-process but not necessarily spell-check
<> be able to run good educational software. I'm already biased towards a Ma
<> Plus (and own one), but certainly ready for suggestions. NeXT? MicroVax
<> 3100? Cost, hardware and software, is a factor, of course.
Why only one box? Why not several each with it's attributes would induce
a greater range of thinking. Also applying similar skills to different
boxes teaches troubleshooting and similarity of use.
The latter is funny as I had someone (an adult) today tell me their
system had to have Word to write a memo as they didn't know how to use
Write... Write is stripped down Word! Lazy!
With the common classics like Apples, CPM crates and all you can get a
lot of different things to investigate. If you can teach anything, teach
them how to find out when the answer is not obvious or in the standard
books. Learn how to use information sources, printed and electronic.
Being able to figure it out is believe it or not a very valuable skill
in this cookie cutter world.
Allison
-----Original Message-----
From: Tony Duell <ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk>
To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Date: Thursday, March 09, 2000 2:54 PM
Subject: Re: PDP-11/05 with RX02 :-(
>>
>> I can't find my book on the M8256 (RX211) so I don't know if the switches
>> are set right.
>>
>> I have a PDP-11/05 here that works fine and boots up RT11 or XXDP on an
RX01
>> with an RX11. When I replace the RX01 system with an RX211 and an RX02
and
>> try and boot RT11 the CPU hangs up at:
>>
>> 173546 , run light on. Requires a full reset to clear.
>>
>> I have tried other RX211s, RX02s, and cables and the same problem occurs.
>>
>> The disk is being accessed for a little while (4 or 5 "clicks") and
dies....
>
>A few quick things to check :
>
>1) You are trying to boot an RX02 version of RT11, not an RX01. While the
>RX02 can read/write RX01 disks, the RX211 and RX11 need rather different
>software to drive them, so an RX02 can't _boot_ a bootable RX01 disk.
>
I know. I was trying RX02 RT11v4. BL
>2) You've got the DIP switch in the RX02 (on the upper, controller,
>board) set correctly. I'm pretty sure that how to set this is on the web
>somewhere, but if you can't find anything (and nobody else beats me to
>it), I'll try to find the fine manual.
>
I guess so. The RX02s are from LSI systems.
>3) The RX211 is a DMA (NPR) device.
You just said the magic words! I have never been blessed with a RX211 before
(always big drives or RX01s). Many thanks for saving me hours of going
through boxes to find out it was a NPR device. Thanks again.
<very happy PDP-11/05 systems now>
john
PDP-8 and other rare mini computers
http://www.pdp8.com
>You need to cut the jumper between
>pins CA1 and CB1 on the backplane of the slot where the RX211 is
>installed. That's the most likely problem if you've just pulled an RX11
>and replaced it by an RX211.
>
>-tony
>
>
