Re: Origin of English?

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Article #2283

#2283

From: Ivan A Derzhanski
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 10:34

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In article <C0nK88.4Gn@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:
>That speakers of Chinese have difficulty with English grammar is not
>all that surprising; Chinese is, to my knowledge, the only major language
>with fewer grammatical forms than English.

Or one of two, the other one being Malay/Indonesian, which I think
also belongs to the top dozen by number of speakers.

I don't quite see why it matters how many grammatical forms the
learner's own language has, though.

>But the English formal structure is on the very simple side in the Indo-
>European language family.

On the whole, yes, but if compared to Persian or Hindi, it appears
bewilderingly complex.

-- 
 `D'ye mind tellin me whit the two o ye are gaun oan aboot?' (The Glasgow
Ivan A Derzhanski  (iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk; iad@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu)    Gospel)
* Centre for Cognitive Science,  2 Buccleuch Place,  Edinburgh EH8 9LW,  UK
* Cowan House, Pollock Halls, 18 Holyrood Park Road, Edinburgh EH16 5BD, UK

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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!mcsun!uknet!edcastle!edcogsci!iad
From: iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Origin of English?
Keywords: clobbered; zillions; cut-plug
Message-ID: <12316@kesson.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 12 Jan 93 10:34:39 GMT
References: <10182@amsaa-cleo.brl.mil> <2598@cix.cict.fr> <9977@fs3.cam.nist.gov> <C0nK88.4Gn@mentor.cc.purdue.edu>
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK
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