They never flipflopped between charges, which frustrates me about what TFA and TFS say. The original investigation opened up for two charges, rape and molestation. Later the rape charge was dismissed for lack of evidence.
Also, there was no "arrest warrant", because Swedish law works differently than US law. I don't remember the details, but a lot of detail has been, for lack of a better way of saying it, "lost in translation".
But I'm absolutely about the molestation charges never having been dropped, because I read about how they hadn't been dropped the first time the rape story came out.
And I've had consensual sex (yeah, this is/. I know) "while mutual pissing drunk" countless times without ever beeing accused or even afraid of such accusations.
Actually, this isn't as unusual a law as it sounds at first. The UCMJ (Uniformed Code of Military Justice, the law that applies to all US Military personnel) has consistently held that once someone has had any alcohol at all, even if that person bought that alcohol for themselves, then they are unable to grant consent to sex, and thus having sex with them constitutes rape.
That the hojillion cases of this occurring are not prosecuted, because the girl later grants consent after the fact, or simply doesn't care is beside the point. If the "victim" doesn't report the incident, it cannot be prosecuted.
As well, the UCMJ is the only US jurisdiction that still considers sodomy illegal, and thus don't try to get out of the rape charge by saying, "We didn't actually have sex, she just gave me a blow job." Boom, now you're on for rape (because she had alcohol and could not consent) and for sodomy (because you engaged in sex that was not penis into vagina).
Again with the sodomy stuff, technically every BJ that a wife gives her soldier husband is a crime, however the vast majority of it will not be tried, because no one knows about it, and there is no "victim" reporting it. That does not however make it legal...
I have only a working knowledge of French, I am in no position to opine about the structure of the language. In this case, I'll defer to your opinion.
You also are in no position to be opining about the nature of double negatives either, because you clearly haven't studied any linguistics, yet you refuse to defer to my "opinion" on the matter in that case either.
I'm offering you the informed educated position, and you're rejecting it.
That's a relatively recent convention. It's still perfectly valid, though perhaps not popular, to say "I believe not in this." The 'Do' is not necessary.
So, you agree then, that the "do" is superfluous, because it is not necessary.
Bad example, for your position. That's 5 negatives. Logically, 5 negatives is the same as 1.
God, I knew you'd pull this shit. Fine: "Niko nigde nita nije uradio" Same sentence, minus the never... it's still a simple negative statement.
I guess you're missing the irony of that statement. "We don't need no education.", when clearly they do.
No, they don't "clearly" need education. They speak a perfectly grammatical language, they just don't hold up to your arbitrary decisions on how language should be spoken.
No. Try reading for comprehension. My position is that it wouldn't have become the standard practice if it were superfluous.
Language doesn't work this way. The "pas" in the French sentence "Je n'est pas bête." is superfluous. As in, "Je est bête." is the positive sentence, and the "ne" is the negation. This simple negation is followed by nearly all of the Romance languages, French being the notable exception, that decided for arbitrary reasons, that one should say "pas" after the verb of a simple negative.
"being more than is sufficient or required", more than required for what? If the answer is to communicate the speaker's intended point of view, then it is not.
Let's look at some hypothetical English. The statement "*I believe in this not." could hypothetically be a valid English sentence, if English had decided to follow the rules of its Germanic heritage. However, English chose to use circumlocution in this case, and transform "I believe in this." to "I do believe in this." before applying negation, "I do not believe in this."
Being that English requires the use of a meaningless verb, which exists only to attach the negative to, makes it superfluous, as the negative alone could (but not does) suffices for communicating fully the meaning of their intent.
You're conflating issues. My position is that double negatives carry a logical meaning that is the opposite of the intent of the speaker.
The example sentence of: "Niko nikada nigde nita nije uradio" proves your position is not universally true. While it is literally translated: "Nobody never nowhere nothing did not do" Full of negation, the proper English meaning is a simple single negation.
Chaucer (you know, that world-wide well known English author?) used double negatives to mean a simple negation. Pink Floyd uses it in: "We don't need no education." and no one has difficulty understanding that this a simple negation.
Your assertion has a logical argument to it, and this is why prescriptivists believe that one should not use the double negative. However, plain empirical evidence proves de facto that they are wrong, and have misinterpreted data to fit their logical argument.
Sounding an awful low like one of those prescriptivists again...
God damn it, I'm not saying what people SHOULD be saying, I'm saying what they DO say.
Your position was that people don't ever use superfluous elements, and I pointed out via direct counter-example that people really do actually use superfluous elements to express extra emphasis. (Oh look! I DID IT AGAIN!!!)
Of course I read what you wrote, it's still wrong. Double negatives, in addition to violating the standard rules of the language are logically reversed from their intended meaning.
And your entire argument is counter-exampled by the speech of millions of people around the world. French being the most particularly available example. (In fact, nearly every negative French sentence is a double negative.)
As another example from the Wikipedia page on the topic:
The following are literal translations of grammatically correct Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian sentences: Niko nikada nigde nita nije uradio - Nobody never nowhere nothing did not do (nobody has ever done anything, anywhere); Nisam tamo nikad ila - I did not there never go (I have never been there).
If your statement is that double negatives are logically invalid, then such a statement must apply universally. My statement is that double negatives are not logically invalid, and thus may be applied. And the facts are on the side of, drum roll please.... ME!!! Because double negatives are in fact widely applied.
That I have to explain this shit to you is not surprising, though; since you don't even know how to properly identify parts of speech...
I must say, snowgirl that I think you're being at least a little unfair in this debate. Every time I try to pin you down, you back off and qualify (in fact abandon) your responses. You stated it was a language, then waffled vigorously when pressed. You'd be slick if you were a politician, but this here debate ain't politics.
You attempted to pin some sort of validity, or "legitimacy" that only languages have, and dialects do not. I refuted such a statement, and noted that drawing a line between dialects and languages is difficult if not impossible.
Often times the only difference between the two is the legitimacy itself. Languages are recognized, and dialects are denigrated... there being no actual difference between the two groups than that.
I'm not clear how some a manner of speaking having "some aspects of verbs that must be expressed in English with circumlocution" give credence to your argument that ebonics is not "slang" or "lazy english".
Excuse me if you already know this, but verbs have a few things beyond just the "tense" that we recognize. They also have "mood" and "aspect". Aspect is used to indicate the continuity of an action, or habitual action. AAVE has more forms of "aspect" than English does, thus it requires speakers to acknowledge more information and distinction in their speech than SAE does.
I mean, you could just call "English" a lazy language in general... we have hardly any conjugation (three forms of a verb), we heavily use circumlocution and analytic speech rather than synthetic speech. We've dropped all case distinction in nouns, and retain case distinction in pronouns only for nominative and objective cases.
Do these "lazy" properties of English make even SAE "lazy" speech? Are we all lazy for killing off the subjunctive mood, or the "who/whom" distinction? Are we all lazy for dropping the distinction between cot/caught?
In fact, SAE retains more Victorian English qualities than British dialects... does that make British English lazy compared to SAE? Doesn't that fly in the face of American opinions about SAE verse British English? Of course British people speak a more refined and proper English... except that they actually annunciate less than we do.
AAVE/Ebonics, Cajun, and Appalachian all are considered "lazy" forms of speech because they're not the common way of speaking. We call the speakers lazy for "not learning how to speak properly", when they learned to speak the exact same way that we did... they just didn't have the "privilege" of learning the dialect that people have higher regard for.
Taking a longer view, having multiple (unrelated) languages in one culture is probably a very temporary affair, as in one or two generations.
You're arguing two sides of the same argument... you're arguing that NM is full of minority speakers, yet this couldn't stick around for more than a generation or two, yet NM has been that way for a multitude of generations.
The US is actually working backwards, from a fairly mono-linguistic history towards a multi-linguistic culture accepting of minority languages.
Either way, this "one language is the most efficient and thus will come to be" idea is bogus... you argued that the origins of the US show this to be true, but the origins dispute this assertion. And our culture is becoming only more diverse, not less diverse.... so current trends indicate disagreement with your original position as well.
If it were superfluous, it wouldn't be standard practice.
Certainly, because certainly people don't ever EVER do anything that might even be REMOTELY or POSSIBLY superfluous in their speech.
Wiktionary says superfluous means: "in excess of what is required or sufficient" Which, considering as you have noted people can say "I have no book." or "I haven't any books." Or whatever, then it is certainly the case that "do" is in excess, and not required or sufficient.
It's not currently fashionable to speak that way, but it's perfectly valid and some people still do say that.
Do you even read what I write? My statement was that double negatives are not logically invalid, because people can and do speak that way, in particular in most languages around the world.
You are mistaken.
Ok, let me give you a clear example here: The word "boil" can be an noun or a verb. When I say "I made a crab boil." I am not using "boil" as a verb, even though "boil" can be a verb. No less, when I say "I boiled the water." I am not using an intransitive verb, even though "The water boils." is using an intransitive verb. Each of those sentence are not using "boil" as a noun.
Now, a pronoun is something that occurs in place of a noun, namely, for a noun, or "pro-noun" like "justice pro-tempore". In the statement "I don't have any books", "any" does not occur in place of a noun. It occurs as a descriptor for a noun, which has a term, and it is not "pronoun", it's called an "adjective". Wiktionary specifically states this use is a Determiner, but certainly not a pronoun.
Now, again, if you're having difficulty understanding the fact that the "any" used in "I don't have any books" is not a pronoun then please talk with a 9th grade English teacher, because I don't want to teach you remedial English.
I see, I didn't catch that you didn't think it was English.
Well, it's difficult to classify exactly what it is. It is a form of English, in the same way that English and German are both Germanic languages. Similarly, a Russian Blue is still a cat, but it's definitely not a Calico.
So you'd have it be treated as a separate language altogether? We'd have DMV forms written in English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Korean, Ebonics?
"Languages are dialects with an army and a navy". It's difficult to draw the line between what is and is not a language. However, if a language/dialect is sufficiently different so as to make it difficult to properly fill out a DMV form, then yes, we should provide them in that dialect/language.
You really think it has the legitimacy of an actual language? Does hillbilly or cajun get the same status in your book?
"Legitimacy" is retarded sometimes. Depending on your opinion about the legitimacy of things, either only Taiwan or China exist. This legitimacy of only one China denies reality, where de facto, there are two.
My opinions on the matter do not matter, de facto, AAVE presents difficulties of communication, and is sufficiently different enough to deserve consideration.
I was not aware that it had rules or grammar in actual use, always figured it was just a slang way of talking. Are you sure that these "rules" and "grammar" aren't just being applied by linguists to help yourselves make sense of something that doesn't?
Linguists are actually quite easily able to detect the lack of grammar and syntax. These are widely known as pigeons. AAVE is not simply "slang" or a "lazy way of speaking". In fact, it has some aspects of verbs that must be expressed in English with circumlocution.
The origin can be caused by one thing, and the impetus by another.
This is exactly what I was trying to point you to. The reasons for us having such a limited linguistic culture, is because we have such a limited linguistic input.
BTW, I grew up in New Mexico, we were heavily Spanish speaking, and remained so throughout. About one person in four speaks Spanish in their home. Likely even more are fluent. However, when New Mexico went to become a state, the US Congress required them to switch their ruling language to English.
My grandmother was beaten in school for speaking Spanish.
You're sounding an awful lot like one of those prescriptivists now.
No, I am a descriptivist. The superfluous "do" is inserted by consensus by speakers of Standard American English. It is simply what they do. If you think they don't, then... you're denying reality.
More on point, I reject your premise. "I have not books." is the most direct negation of "I have books".
People do not say "I have not books". Second of all, the statement "I have no book" is parallel to the German: "Ich habe kein Buch". It is a possible version of expressing the statement "I don't have any books." However, SAE speakers do not say this.
You can't argue "this is how people speak" with "I think this is how it should be."
I'll save you the trouble of looking up the term "Indefinite Pronoun" [wikipedia.org] for yourself.
Do you understand that one word can have different uses? "Any" can be an indefinite pronoun, however, in the statement "I don't have any books" it is absolutely not a pronoun, if you are having trouble understanding this, please speak to a 9th grade English teacher... I don't have time to teach you remedial English.
Most new words are coined as compounds in Mandarin, rather than inventing entirely new words. Telephone for instance is "electric talk", rather than something brand new.
The same is true with proton, neutron, and electron.
That might be true for spoken language, but I think literacy becomes much more difficult the more complex the alphabet, with pictograph literacy the hardest.
Languages tend to work weird like this... the harder X becomes the easier Y becomes. For instance, abjads like Arabic and Hebrew don't record short vowels... you can literally entirely mispronounce a short vowel in Arabic, and no one thinks you're wrong... they just think you're talking weird.
Then you get into alphabets, where people start insisting that certain words be spellt a certain way, because that's how they've always been spellt, and we're not going to downgrade the vowel in this word, even though in speech, it is now simply a schwa, and there is no way for a speaker to tell if it's sepArate, or sepErate.. or really even sepirate, sepurate.
Each writing system has its own obstacles for mastery.
Oddly, while the French achieved cast literacy in the Vietnamese by switching them from ideographs to letters, they shifted the burden of literacy in those who only need recognize 10-20 characters ever, to mastering the entire spelling system.
Good in a literate society, bad in an illiterate society.
I'm quite sure everyone in the UK speaks UK English, though I know Welsh and Gaelic are still spoken in certain pockets. However, you're not going to find anyone in London that speaks either of these languages, and the Welsh and Gaelic speakers also speak English.
There is also Scots, which has been declared a minority language (some would consider it a dialect).
And because it is spoken in those areas, it is accepted as a language of common use in those areas. We had the moral gumption to ride into New Mexico and demand that they become an English speaking state.
Netherlands = Dutch. There might be some pockets of people speaking Frisian or whatever, but they don't expect the entire country to speak it to cater to them.
In particular, I'm familiar with Limburgish. Each city marker in the land of Limburg has the Dutch name, and the Limburgish name of the city. Individuals are also guaranteed the right to speak Limburgish with an interpreter for access to government.
Almost every country has a single, dominant language of commerce and government. People who speak minority languages speak the main language in addition to their own.
Like Switzerland?
While many people do speak the language of power as well as their minority language, they are granted by law guarantees of access to government in their minority language.
A single language of communications is VASTLY superior to multiple languages when looking at society as a functioning entity.
This is a very common assertion and belief of Americans, and is highly related to our general denigration of minority languages in our area.
As a result we have a single common language which gets preference.
Correlation does not indicate causation. We always had a common language, because the people moving here had a consistent language. We also were colonized in a time when history had words and the advancement of language was stayed somewhat by people being exposed to not just their parents' and grandparents' speech, but also those of older generations.
The US and the Americas in general do not have a single language because it's more efficient... we have it, because we were colonized, and immigrated by such heavy monocultures.
How long do our students have to spend learning proper spelling? Chinese is actually composed of a set of radicals, and a few "radicalless" forms, but mostly composed of the arrangement of radicals. In some ways, English can be just as arbitrary as the Chinese ideographs.
Languages if taught early do not interfere in the education or the limited time to study a language/etc. Recall, they don't need English-major level of knowledge in the languages, simply at most Freshman composition level of study.
Well, depending on what other ethical choices you're entertaining:) It's better than a sharp stick in the eye, but it might not fare so well against choosing to give everyone a mansion, a pony and an ipod for free:)
That stuff I see as clearly unethical... people don't need that stuff.;)
why didn't you post in German? Maybe we didn't ask about German because you weren't going on and on about German. Why you so obsessed with Ebonics?
Because it is so heavily discriminated against. Did we ask the Republicans why they were so obsessed with slaves while arguing about how slavery was wrong?
Ahh.. cultural relativism... I would say that "more useful" equals "better" in most circumstances. If you decided to wander around speaking only pig-latin, am I really expected to weigh that equally with someone who actually decided to work for some competence in communications?
I'll use myself as a particular example here. I was raised by parents who speak a relatively high register of Standard American English. I don't have to try to use Standard American English correctly.
Should we automatically benefit people like me, who didn't even have to exert talent or effort to acquire a particular dialect, accent, or register just because of the circumstances of my birth and upbringing?
Pfff... I could be the laziest most worthless piece of shit in the world, but I would still speak the dialect of power used in the United States... because I was born and raised with an advantage.
If you want to speak your own weird language, then fine. Just don't complain about "racism" if no one will give you a job because they can't understand you.
You most likely didn't choose to learn Standard American English. You picked it up from your parents. So, creating a situation where those who were raised in the dialect of power retain power, and those who were not raised in the dialect of power must go out of their way to learn the dialect of power, or be excluded, is wrong.
All people are lazy, and blacks are no less "lazy" than anyone else. The white person who inherits his father's business can hardly be described really as anything but "lazy" himself.
Disadvantaging someone politically and economically because of the circumstances of their birth, and upbringing is the very definition of irrational discrimination.
Your position here is the reason why prescriptivists assert that double negatives should not be used, however there is a thing called "negative concordance" in language.
Once a sentence is negative, one must use words that agree in negation with the negative.
What is the negative in "I do not have any books"? Right, it's the "not". But what about that "any" there? Would you really consider it grammatical to say "I have any books"? I really doubt it, because it's widely recognized as ungrammatical.
The word "any" in this statement may not be identified by prescriptivists as "negative", but it is a negative concordance.
Various other languages, in particular French use double and even more negatives all the time, and none of them see it in the logical interpretation that prescriptivists attempt to assert.
So, while your argument is logical, it is also specious, because there are hojillions of empirical counterexamples to its position.
so, one is to presume that you don't believe an oligarchy is the way the world is run? How come too you didn't bring your arguments in ebonics/aave? Did you feel they wouldn't have been well received if proposed in that dialect? Is it that you're just a fan but not a practitioner?
I'm a student of language, and have studied AAVE some, yet I am no where near able to produce correct and grammatical AAVE.
Even if I were, I would be unlikely to post in AAVE, as we are not communicating in it on this forum. I am fluent in German, yet no one would ask me why I did not post in German...
I would not like to argue that "promoting integration" is not an ethical choice, but rather it is not the best ethical choice.
Encouraging minority languages and dialects only encourages factionalism and racial tension.
An assertion that fails to recognize the wide acceptance and recognition that minority languages have across Europe. There are some languages, whose speakers are seeking independence, like the Basque, and the Catalan but the speakers of Limburgish, Bayrisch, Welsh, Scots, and Gaulish are not.
It is apparent that a culture has separatist and divisive intent entirely apart from their own language.
In fact, the speakers of Moldovan do not even speak a different dialect from standard Romanian, yet invent from thin air, the idea that their language is different in order to spur divisive sentiment.
America (all of it) with its limited dialectal variation has difficult recognizing the expansive acceptance of dialects, and minority languages across Europe.
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They never flipflopped between charges, which frustrates me about what TFA and TFS say. The original investigation opened up for two charges, rape and molestation. Later the rape charge was dismissed for lack of evidence.
Also, there was no "arrest warrant", because Swedish law works differently than US law. I don't remember the details, but a lot of detail has been, for lack of a better way of saying it, "lost in translation".
But I'm absolutely about the molestation charges never having been dropped, because I read about how they hadn't been dropped the first time the rape story came out.
And I've had consensual sex (yeah, this is /. I know) "while mutual pissing drunk" countless times without ever beeing accused or even afraid of such accusations.
Actually, this isn't as unusual a law as it sounds at first. The UCMJ (Uniformed Code of Military Justice, the law that applies to all US Military personnel) has consistently held that once someone has had any alcohol at all, even if that person bought that alcohol for themselves, then they are unable to grant consent to sex, and thus having sex with them constitutes rape.
That the hojillion cases of this occurring are not prosecuted, because the girl later grants consent after the fact, or simply doesn't care is beside the point. If the "victim" doesn't report the incident, it cannot be prosecuted.
As well, the UCMJ is the only US jurisdiction that still considers sodomy illegal, and thus don't try to get out of the rape charge by saying, "We didn't actually have sex, she just gave me a blow job." Boom, now you're on for rape (because she had alcohol and could not consent) and for sodomy (because you engaged in sex that was not penis into vagina).
Again with the sodomy stuff, technically every BJ that a wife gives her soldier husband is a crime, however the vast majority of it will not be tried, because no one knows about it, and there is no "victim" reporting it. That does not however make it legal...
I have only a working knowledge of French, I am in no position to opine about the structure of the language. In this case, I'll defer to your opinion.
You also are in no position to be opining about the nature of double negatives either, because you clearly haven't studied any linguistics, yet you refuse to defer to my "opinion" on the matter in that case either.
I'm offering you the informed educated position, and you're rejecting it.
That's a relatively recent convention. It's still perfectly valid, though perhaps not popular, to say "I believe not in this." The 'Do' is not necessary.
So, you agree then, that the "do" is superfluous, because it is not necessary.
Bad example, for your position. That's 5 negatives. Logically, 5 negatives is the same as 1.
God, I knew you'd pull this shit. Fine: "Niko nigde nita nije uradio" Same sentence, minus the never... it's still a simple negative statement.
I guess you're missing the irony of that statement. "We don't need no education.", when clearly they do.
No, they don't "clearly" need education. They speak a perfectly grammatical language, they just don't hold up to your arbitrary decisions on how language should be spoken.
No. Try reading for comprehension. My position is that it wouldn't have become the standard practice if it were superfluous.
Language doesn't work this way. The "pas" in the French sentence "Je n'est pas bête." is superfluous. As in, "Je est bête." is the positive sentence, and the "ne" is the negation. This simple negation is followed by nearly all of the Romance languages, French being the notable exception, that decided for arbitrary reasons, that one should say "pas" after the verb of a simple negative.
"being more than is sufficient or required", more than required for what? If the answer is to communicate the speaker's intended point of view, then it is not.
Let's look at some hypothetical English. The statement "*I believe in this not." could hypothetically be a valid English sentence, if English had decided to follow the rules of its Germanic heritage. However, English chose to use circumlocution in this case, and transform "I believe in this." to "I do believe in this." before applying negation, "I do not believe in this."
Being that English requires the use of a meaningless verb, which exists only to attach the negative to, makes it superfluous, as the negative alone could (but not does) suffices for communicating fully the meaning of their intent.
You're conflating issues. My position is that double negatives carry a logical meaning that is the opposite of the intent of the speaker.
The example sentence of: "Niko nikada nigde nita nije uradio" proves your position is not universally true. While it is literally translated: "Nobody never nowhere nothing did not do" Full of negation, the proper English meaning is a simple single negation.
Chaucer (you know, that world-wide well known English author?) used double negatives to mean a simple negation. Pink Floyd uses it in: "We don't need no education." and no one has difficulty understanding that this a simple negation.
Your assertion has a logical argument to it, and this is why prescriptivists believe that one should not use the double negative. However, plain empirical evidence proves de facto that they are wrong, and have misinterpreted data to fit their logical argument.
Sounding an awful low like one of those prescriptivists again...
God damn it, I'm not saying what people SHOULD be saying, I'm saying what they DO say.
Your position was that people don't ever use superfluous elements, and I pointed out via direct counter-example that people really do actually use superfluous elements to express extra emphasis. (Oh look! I DID IT AGAIN!!!)
Of course I read what you wrote, it's still wrong. Double negatives, in addition to violating the standard rules of the language are logically reversed from their intended meaning.
And your entire argument is counter-exampled by the speech of millions of people around the world. French being the most particularly available example. (In fact, nearly every negative French sentence is a double negative.)
As another example from the Wikipedia page on the topic:
The following are literal translations of grammatically correct Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian sentences: Niko nikada nigde nita nije uradio - Nobody never nowhere nothing did not do (nobody has ever done anything, anywhere); Nisam tamo nikad ila - I did not there never go (I have never been there).
If your statement is that double negatives are logically invalid, then such a statement must apply universally. My statement is that double negatives are not logically invalid, and thus may be applied. And the facts are on the side of, drum roll please.... ME!!! Because double negatives are in fact widely applied.
That I have to explain this shit to you is not surprising, though; since you don't even know how to properly identify parts of speech...
I must say, snowgirl that I think you're being at least a little unfair in this debate. Every time I try to pin you down, you back off and qualify (in fact abandon) your responses. You stated it was a language, then waffled vigorously when pressed. You'd be slick if you were a politician, but this here debate ain't politics.
You attempted to pin some sort of validity, or "legitimacy" that only languages have, and dialects do not. I refuted such a statement, and noted that drawing a line between dialects and languages is difficult if not impossible.
Often times the only difference between the two is the legitimacy itself. Languages are recognized, and dialects are denigrated... there being no actual difference between the two groups than that.
I'm not clear how some a manner of speaking having "some aspects of verbs that must be expressed in English with circumlocution" give credence to your argument that ebonics is not "slang" or "lazy english".
Excuse me if you already know this, but verbs have a few things beyond just the "tense" that we recognize. They also have "mood" and "aspect". Aspect is used to indicate the continuity of an action, or habitual action. AAVE has more forms of "aspect" than English does, thus it requires speakers to acknowledge more information and distinction in their speech than SAE does.
I mean, you could just call "English" a lazy language in general... we have hardly any conjugation (three forms of a verb), we heavily use circumlocution and analytic speech rather than synthetic speech. We've dropped all case distinction in nouns, and retain case distinction in pronouns only for nominative and objective cases.
Do these "lazy" properties of English make even SAE "lazy" speech? Are we all lazy for killing off the subjunctive mood, or the "who/whom" distinction? Are we all lazy for dropping the distinction between cot/caught?
In fact, SAE retains more Victorian English qualities than British dialects... does that make British English lazy compared to SAE? Doesn't that fly in the face of American opinions about SAE verse British English? Of course British people speak a more refined and proper English... except that they actually annunciate less than we do.
AAVE/Ebonics, Cajun, and Appalachian all are considered "lazy" forms of speech because they're not the common way of speaking. We call the speakers lazy for "not learning how to speak properly", when they learned to speak the exact same way that we did... they just didn't have the "privilege" of learning the dialect that people have higher regard for.
Taking a longer view, having multiple (unrelated) languages in one culture is probably a very temporary affair, as in one or two generations.
You're arguing two sides of the same argument... you're arguing that NM is full of minority speakers, yet this couldn't stick around for more than a generation or two, yet NM has been that way for a multitude of generations.
The US is actually working backwards, from a fairly mono-linguistic history towards a multi-linguistic culture accepting of minority languages.
Either way, this "one language is the most efficient and thus will come to be" idea is bogus... you argued that the origins of the US show this to be true, but the origins dispute this assertion. And our culture is becoming only more diverse, not less diverse.... so current trends indicate disagreement with your original position as well.
If it were superfluous, it wouldn't be standard practice.
Certainly, because certainly people don't ever EVER do anything that might even be REMOTELY or POSSIBLY superfluous in their speech.
Wiktionary says superfluous means: "in excess of what is required or sufficient" Which, considering as you have noted people can say "I have no book." or "I haven't any books." Or whatever, then it is certainly the case that "do" is in excess, and not required or sufficient.
It's not currently fashionable to speak that way, but it's perfectly valid and some people still do say that.
Do you even read what I write? My statement was that double negatives are not logically invalid, because people can and do speak that way, in particular in most languages around the world.
You are mistaken.
Ok, let me give you a clear example here: The word "boil" can be an noun or a verb. When I say "I made a crab boil." I am not using "boil" as a verb, even though "boil" can be a verb. No less, when I say "I boiled the water." I am not using an intransitive verb, even though "The water boils." is using an intransitive verb. Each of those sentence are not using "boil" as a noun.
Now, a pronoun is something that occurs in place of a noun, namely, for a noun, or "pro-noun" like "justice pro-tempore". In the statement "I don't have any books", "any" does not occur in place of a noun. It occurs as a descriptor for a noun, which has a term, and it is not "pronoun", it's called an "adjective". Wiktionary specifically states this use is a Determiner, but certainly not a pronoun .
Now, again, if you're having difficulty understanding the fact that the "any" used in "I don't have any books" is not a pronoun then please talk with a 9th grade English teacher, because I don't want to teach you remedial English.
I see, I didn't catch that you didn't think it was English.
Well, it's difficult to classify exactly what it is. It is a form of English, in the same way that English and German are both Germanic languages. Similarly, a Russian Blue is still a cat, but it's definitely not a Calico.
So you'd have it be treated as a separate language altogether? We'd have DMV forms written in English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Korean, Ebonics?
"Languages are dialects with an army and a navy". It's difficult to draw the line between what is and is not a language. However, if a language/dialect is sufficiently different so as to make it difficult to properly fill out a DMV form, then yes, we should provide them in that dialect/language.
You really think it has the legitimacy of an actual language? Does hillbilly or cajun get the same status in your book?
"Legitimacy" is retarded sometimes. Depending on your opinion about the legitimacy of things, either only Taiwan or China exist. This legitimacy of only one China denies reality, where
de facto, there are two.
My opinions on the matter do not matter, de facto, AAVE presents difficulties of communication, and is sufficiently different enough to deserve consideration.
I was not aware that it had rules or grammar in actual use, always figured it was just a slang way of talking. Are you sure that these "rules" and "grammar" aren't just being applied by linguists to help yourselves make sense of something that doesn't?
Linguists are actually quite easily able to detect the lack of grammar and syntax. These are widely known as pigeons. AAVE is not simply "slang" or a "lazy way of speaking". In fact, it has some aspects of verbs that must be expressed in English with circumlocution.
The origin can be caused by one thing, and the impetus by another.
This is exactly what I was trying to point you to. The reasons for us having such a limited linguistic culture, is because we have such a limited linguistic input.
BTW, I grew up in New Mexico, we were heavily Spanish speaking, and remained so throughout. About one person in four speaks Spanish in their home. Likely even more are fluent. However, when New Mexico went to become a state, the US Congress required them to switch their ruling language to English.
My grandmother was beaten in school for speaking Spanish.
You're sounding an awful lot like one of those prescriptivists now.
No, I am a descriptivist. The superfluous "do" is inserted by consensus by speakers of Standard American English. It is simply what they do. If you think they don't, then ... you're denying reality.
More on point, I reject your premise. "I have not books." is the most direct negation of "I have books".
People do not say "I have not books". Second of all, the statement "I have no book" is parallel to the German: "Ich habe kein Buch". It is a possible version of expressing the statement "I don't have any books." However, SAE speakers do not say this.
You can't argue "this is how people speak" with "I think this is how it should be."
I'll save you the trouble of looking up the term "Indefinite Pronoun" [wikipedia.org] for yourself.
Do you understand that one word can have different uses? "Any" can be an indefinite pronoun, however, in the statement "I don't have any books" it is absolutely not a pronoun, if you are having trouble understanding this, please speak to a 9th grade English teacher... I don't have time to teach you remedial English.
Most new words are coined as compounds in Mandarin, rather than inventing entirely new words. Telephone for instance is "electric talk", rather than something brand new.
The same is true with proton, neutron, and electron.
That might be true for spoken language, but I think literacy becomes much more difficult the more complex the alphabet, with pictograph literacy the hardest.
Languages tend to work weird like this... the harder X becomes the easier Y becomes. For instance, abjads like Arabic and Hebrew don't record short vowels... you can literally entirely mispronounce a short vowel in Arabic, and no one thinks you're wrong... they just think you're talking weird.
Then you get into alphabets, where people start insisting that certain words be spellt a certain way, because that's how they've always been spellt, and we're not going to downgrade the vowel in this word, even though in speech, it is now simply a schwa, and there is no way for a speaker to tell if it's sepArate, or sepErate.. or really even sepirate, sepurate.
Each writing system has its own obstacles for mastery.
Oddly, while the French achieved cast literacy in the Vietnamese by switching them from ideographs to letters, they shifted the burden of literacy in those who only need recognize 10-20 characters ever, to mastering the entire spelling system.
Good in a literate society, bad in an illiterate society.
How can you see that it's only "wrong" because we say it is?
It's wrong for the same reason Cajun or hillbilly speak is wrong, it's just not proper English.
I think the point is, it's not English. It has its own rules, and grammar. And it therefore deserves recognition as a valid form of SPEECH.
I'm quite sure everyone in the UK speaks UK English, though I know Welsh and Gaelic are still spoken in certain pockets. However, you're not going to find anyone in London that speaks either of these languages, and the Welsh and Gaelic speakers also speak English.
There is also Scots, which has been declared a minority language (some would consider it a dialect).
And because it is spoken in those areas, it is accepted as a language of common use in those areas. We had the moral gumption to ride into New Mexico and demand that they become an English speaking state.
Netherlands = Dutch. There might be some pockets of people speaking Frisian or whatever, but they don't expect the entire country to speak it to cater to them.
In particular, I'm familiar with Limburgish. Each city marker in the land of Limburg has the Dutch name, and the Limburgish name of the city. Individuals are also guaranteed the right to speak Limburgish with an interpreter for access to government.
Almost every country has a single, dominant language of commerce and government. People who speak minority languages speak the main language in addition to their own.
Like Switzerland?
While many people do speak the language of power as well as their minority language, they are granted by law guarantees of access to government in their minority language.
A single language of communications is VASTLY superior to multiple languages when looking at society as a functioning entity.
This is a very common assertion and belief of Americans, and is highly related to our general denigration of minority languages in our area.
As a result we have a single common language which gets preference.
Correlation does not indicate causation. We always had a common language, because the people moving here had a consistent language. We also were colonized in a time when history had words and the advancement of language was stayed somewhat by people being exposed to not just their parents' and grandparents' speech, but also those of older generations.
The US and the Americas in general do not have a single language because it's more efficient... we have it, because we were colonized, and immigrated by such heavy monocultures.
I'd argue that "do not" is the negative in this context. When you stripped it out, you said "I have any books" and not "I do have any books".
The "do" is a superfluous word added merely because that is how we grammatically insert the negative into a statement.
I'd label the any as an indefinite pronoun.
LK
Please look up "pronoun". The "any" here is most certainly not a pronoun, as grammar precludes all use of a pronoun in this position.
Insert dialect/language debate here.
Either way, speaking Louisiana Creole properly is the proper way to speak it.
How long do our students have to spend learning proper spelling? Chinese is actually composed of a set of radicals, and a few "radicalless" forms, but mostly composed of the arrangement of radicals. In some ways, English can be just as arbitrary as the Chinese ideographs.
Languages if taught early do not interfere in the education or the limited time to study a language/etc. Recall, they don't need English-major level of knowledge in the languages, simply at most Freshman composition level of study.
Well, depending on what other ethical choices you're entertaining :) It's better than a sharp stick in the eye, but it might not fare so well against choosing to give everyone a mansion, a pony and an ipod for free :)
That stuff I see as clearly unethical... people don't need that stuff. ;)
why didn't you post in German? Maybe we didn't ask about German because you weren't going on and on about German. Why you so obsessed with Ebonics?
Because it is so heavily discriminated against. Did we ask the Republicans why they were so obsessed with slaves while arguing about how slavery was wrong?
Life isn't fair. Get over it. Having dozens of separate dialects and languages in one nation is impractical and unworkable.
So, the Netherlands is unworkable? The UK is unworkable?
Funny, I didn't get the memo.
Ahh.. cultural relativism... I would say that "more useful" equals "better" in most circumstances. If you decided to wander around speaking only pig-latin, am I really expected to weigh that equally with someone who actually decided to work for some competence in communications?
I'll use myself as a particular example here. I was raised by parents who speak a relatively high register of Standard American English. I don't have to try to use Standard American English correctly.
Should we automatically benefit people like me, who didn't even have to exert talent or effort to acquire a particular dialect, accent, or register just because of the circumstances of my birth and upbringing?
Pfff... I could be the laziest most worthless piece of shit in the world, but I would still speak the dialect of power used in the United States... because I was born and raised with an advantage.
If you want to speak your own weird language, then fine. Just don't complain about "racism" if no one will give you a job because they can't understand you.
You most likely didn't choose to learn Standard American English. You picked it up from your parents. So, creating a situation where those who were raised in the dialect of power retain power, and those who were not raised in the dialect of power must go out of their way to learn the dialect of power, or be excluded, is wrong.
All people are lazy, and blacks are no less "lazy" than anyone else. The white person who inherits his father's business can hardly be described really as anything but "lazy" himself.
Disadvantaging someone politically and economically because of the circumstances of their birth, and upbringing is the very definition of irrational discrimination.
Your position here is the reason why prescriptivists assert that double negatives should not be used, however there is a thing called "negative concordance" in language.
Once a sentence is negative, one must use words that agree in negation with the negative.
What is the negative in "I do not have any books"? Right, it's the "not". But what about that "any" there? Would you really consider it grammatical to say "I have any books"? I really doubt it, because it's widely recognized as ungrammatical.
The word "any" in this statement may not be identified by prescriptivists as "negative", but it is a negative concordance.
Various other languages, in particular French use double and even more negatives all the time, and none of them see it in the logical interpretation that prescriptivists attempt to assert.
So, while your argument is logical, it is also specious, because there are hojillions of empirical counterexamples to its position.
so, one is to presume that you don't believe an oligarchy is the way the world is run?
How come too you didn't bring your arguments in ebonics/aave? Did you feel they wouldn't have been well received if proposed in that dialect? Is it that you're just a fan but not a practitioner?
I'm a student of language, and have studied AAVE some, yet I am no where near able to produce correct and grammatical AAVE.
Even if I were, I would be unlikely to post in AAVE, as we are not communicating in it on this forum. I am fluent in German, yet no one would ask me why I did not post in German...
I would not like to argue that "promoting integration" is not an ethical choice, but rather it is not the best ethical choice.
Encouraging minority languages and dialects only encourages factionalism and racial tension.
An assertion that fails to recognize the wide acceptance and recognition that minority languages have across Europe. There are some languages, whose speakers are seeking independence, like the Basque, and the Catalan but the speakers of Limburgish, Bayrisch, Welsh, Scots, and Gaulish are not.
It is apparent that a culture has separatist and divisive intent entirely apart from their own language.
In fact, the speakers of Moldovan do not even speak a different dialect from standard Romanian, yet invent from thin air, the idea that their language is different in order to spur divisive sentiment.
America (all of it) with its limited dialectal variation has difficult recognizing the expansive acceptance of dialects, and minority languages across Europe.