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Foreign students of English have to learn
how to identify the part of speech that a particular
word belongs to from the context in which it is found. The word “run” is sometimes a noun as in a run of bad
luck and sometimes a verb as in candidates who
run for high office. The word “green” is sometimes a
noun as in green is my favorite color and
sometimes an adjective as in green grass. The
word “fast” is sometimes an adjective as in a fast
race and sometimes an adverb as in he is fast
asleep and sometimes a verb as in
Moslems fast during the month of Ramadan.
Users of English can usually distinguish
the parts of speech that a word takes by paying
attention to word order. Adjectives normally precede the
nouns they modify and subject nouns normally precede
their verbs. Native speakers pick up this skill
naturally as they learn to talk when they are very
little children long before they know what “noun” or
“verb” or “adjective” means. Foreign students have to
learn the word order. Normally this is not an onerous
task.
However, there are cases where this
ambiguity regarding the part of speech that a word takes
misleads users of English, even native speakers of
English.
One example of this is given by Claude
Piron who noticed that some delegates to a meeting of
the International Civil Aviation Organization did not
understand what was meant by the English name for the
organization. Most of them understood the English phrase
to mean “an international organization that concerns
itself with civil aviation” whereas in fact it
means “an organization that concerns itself with
international civil aviation.” There is a big
difference between the two. The first kind of
organization would concern itself with civil aviation
generally (including civil aviation which takes place
inside of a country) whereas the second kind of
organization only concerns itself with civil aviation
that take place across international borders.
Here is a somewhat similar example: If
someone is writing about the Second World War and
mentions “a Japanese prisoner of war camp” the reader
has to know from the context whether this was a
camp where Japanese were held as prisoners or a camp
where the Japanese held their prisoners.
A whimsical but highly instructive
example comes from the field of Artificial Intelligence. One of the problems of programming computers to
understand a language is to get the computer to
understand when a word functions as a noun, a verb, an
adjective or some other part of speech. Computers, and
even native speakers of English, are taken aback by
these two sentences:
*
Time flies like an arrow.
*
Fruit flies like a banana.
If we analyze these sentences according
to the parts of speech of the different words, we find
that although at first glance they are of the same form,
in fact they could hardly be more different.
|
Time |
flies |
like |
an |
arrow. |
|
noun, subject |
intransitive verb, present tense |
conjunction |
indefinite article |
noun, subject |
|
Fruit |
flies |
like |
a |
banana. |
|
adjective |
noun, subject |
transitive verb, present tense |
indefinite article |
noun, direct object |
In the first sentence flies is a
verb, in the second, a noun. In the first sentence
like is a conjunction, in the second a verb. In the
first sentence the final word, a noun, is a subject of
an implied verb (flies), in the second sentence
the final word, a noun, is the direct object of like.
Even native speakers of English when they
write quickly may be unaware that the meaning that they
intended and the meaning that the reader intuits may be
ridiculously different. Richard Lederer is a tireless
collector of these kinds of phrases. Here are some
examples he presents in Anguished English of
headlines that have appeared in English language
newspapers. The unintended humor depends on the reader’s
not correctly identifying the part of speech which a
word takes.
First here are three examples out of more than thirty
inadvertently comical headlines which Lederer presents:
1. BRITISH LEFT WAFFLES ON FALKLAND
ISLANDS
2. EYE DROPS OFF SHELF
3. TEACHER STRIKES IDLE KIDS
1. The first example might be read
to mean either
(incorrect)
that the British left behind them
waffles (crisp battercakes) on the Falkland Islands.
or
(correct)
that the left-wingers in Britain were waffling (being
evasive) about their position on the issue of the
Falkland Islands, which had been taken over by Argentina
The humor comes from reading “British” as
a noun instead of an adjective, “left” as a verb instead
of as a noun and “waffles” as a direct object noun
instead of as a verb.
2. The second examples might be read to
mean either
(incorrect) that an eye fell from a shelf.
or
(correct) that bottles of drops for the eyes
have been removed from the shelves of stores (perhaps
because they were contaminated)
The humor comes from reading “eye” as a
subject noun instead of as an adjective and “drops” as a
verb instead of as a subject noun.
3. The third example might be read to
mean either
(incorrect) a teacher hit children who were
idle.
or
(correct) labor stoppages by teacher make
their students idle because they can’t go to school
The humor comes from reading “teacher” as
a subject noun instead of as an adjective, “strikes” as
a verb instead of a subject noun and “idle” as an
adjective instead of as a verb.
These examples are likely to startle
native speakers which is why Lederer put them in his
book. However, native speakers will quickly figure out
what was intended. Foreign speakers, especially those
who have learned English for occasional use as an
international language, may be subject to a much deeper
confusion.
Students of Esperanto do not run into
these difficulties because most of the words of the
language come with little tags, endings, which identify
their part of speech and their function:
*
The ending –o identifies a word as a
noun.
*
The ending –a identifies a word as an
adjective.
*
The ending –j identifies a word as in the
plural.
*
The ending –n identifies a word as a
direct object.
*
The ending –e identifies a word as an
adverb.
In addition to these there are six simple
verb endings which indicate that a word is a verb and
tells the tense or mood of the verb:
*
The ending –i identifies a word as a verb
in the infinitive.
*
The ending –as identifies a word as a
verb in the present tense.
*
The ending –is identifies a word as a
verb in the past tense.
*
The ending –os identifies a word as a
verb in the future tense.
*
The ending –u identifies a word as a verb
in the imperative mood.
*
The ending –us identifies a word as a
verb in the conditional mood.
If we were to translate the third
headline into Esperanto we would come up with:
INSTRUISTAJ STRIKOJ SENOKUPIGAS INFANOJN.
The –aj ending for “instruistaj”
shows that this word is an adjective in the plural, the
–oj ending for “strikoj” shows that this word is
a noun is in the plural, the –as ending for
“senokupigas” shows that this word is a verb in the
present tense and the –ojn ending for “infanojn”
shows that this word is a plural noun used as a direct
object. These endings get rid of the ambiguity that is
inherent in the English headline.
Of course it is wonderful to laugh and
the enjoyment created by this ambiguity for native
speakers who spend hundreds of thousands of hours
practicing their language far outweighs the temporary
confusion caused by the fact that English words can
sometimes be easily mistaken in regard to their part of
speech. However, for the foreign student who can never
have hundreds of thousands of hours of practice with
English but normally only one or two per cent of the
amount of practice of a native speaker, this ambiguity
can create serious confusion, something that ought not
to be inherent in a language that is used from time to
time as an interlanguage.
One of the wonderful features of English
is its conciseness. If you look at information on a
package that is given in English and French or English
and Spanish you will notice that the information in
English takes up much less space. This conciseness is a
great virtue for native speakers who have thoroughly
mastered their language. For foreign students of an
international language it comes at too great a cost:
ambiguity, confusion, misunderstanding.
Native speakers of English will need
no explanation of the humor of these examples but
explanations will be provided for readers who
learned English as a foreign language. My own
experience with French tells me that this kind of
help will be useful for many of these readers.
Chapter 7 Where English
is an Easy Language Too
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