Chinese language， more descriptive or prescriptive ?

[renshanrenhai]

1. How do you feel about the Modern Chinese language, more descriptive or prescriptive ?

2. Which one is easier for learning ?

3. How do you think a language should be, more descriptive or prescriptive ?

Notes:

Prescriptive linguistics: (also known as normative grammar)it believes in teaching the proper use of language, and therefore lays down rules concerning how language should be used.

Descriptive linguistics: it does not attempt to be regulative but tries to describe and analyze the language people actually use in an objective manner.

My personal view on the grammar of Mandarin is——it's too changeable. You will find some grammar rules deduced from some meaningful sentence will make non-sense it is used to generated another sentence. When you are trying to work out why does this grammar rule break down, you are very likely to get an answer that it's the habit of language use.

Based on my knowledge, I think Mandarin is more of a descriptive langue.

For every language learners at a beginner level, if the habits is more than the normative grammar in a languge, this language will very likely to throw off the learners.

[WestTexas]

huh?

[roddy]

What?

[WestTexas]

I don't see how this is a meaningful inquiry. "Prescriptive" and "Descriptive" are not quantifiable concepts, nor are they mutually exclusive, and thus it has little meaning to ask whether Chinese is more/less descriptive or prescriptive. I can only answer that Chinese seems to have less grammatical rules than English, but I only have intermediate Chinese at best.

[imron]

I think it's not so much a function of the language, but rather how it is taught.

I would guess that most people will think their native language is descriptive, whereas any foreign language they learn will appear more prescriptive. This is because their native language for the most part wasn't really learnt by studying rules. This is most in evidence when someone learning the language asks a native speaker why saying something one way is correct but saying it another way is incorrect, and the native speaker says words to the effect of "I don't know, we just say it that way." In fact, I've met quite a few Chinese people who have said words to the effect of "but Chinese is not like English, Chinese has no grammar".

However just because someone has never formally studied the rules and grammar of a language doesn't mean such rules do not exist. For example, it is incorrect to say something like 学习在北京, and to a native speaker it would sound wrong. Why? because it doesn't conform to the "way we say things" - which in linguistic terms is called "grammar" It's just that these grammatical rules have already been internalised, so the native speaker doesn't really ever think about them.

Compare this to learning a foreign language, which for many people is just something they are forced to do in school and they don't really see the language the way it's used in daily life, and therefore think it's just made up of all sorts of silly rules and so it feels more prescriptive. I've met many Chinese people who complain about how English is just full of rules and grammar, but that's really just a result of how they were taught. I certainly don't see English that way, and certainly don't think about rules and grammar when using English (although, "'i' before 'e' except after 'c'", comes in useful more regularly than I'd like to admit )

Anyway, my approach to learning Chinese has been more descriptive, which is to say, I've tried to focus more on how the language is used, however at times I feel there are gaps in my learning that could have been filled by taking a more prescriptive approach.

Edit:

My personal view on the grammar of Mandarin is——it's too changeable. You will find some grammar rules deduced from some meaningful sentence will make non-sense it is used to generated another sentence. When you are trying to work out why does this grammar rule break down, you are very likely to get an answer that it's the habit of language use.

Every native speaker feels this way about their native language I think the same way about English.

[WestTexas]

I would guess that most people will think their native language is descriptive, whereas any foreign language they learn will appear more prescriptive.

I felt this way about English before I started teaching it. I remember, after moving here, the first time I looked at an irregular verbs chart. This is not really something I'd ever given much thought to, but I noticed students having trouble with it and so gave it a look. My first thought: Jesus, there are over 500 of these!?! Also: What the hell is a past participle? Then I realized how difficult it must for for students to (1) memorize all of them (something like 400 of them are 'common') (2)Understand all the grammar necessary to use them correctly and (3) use all of them naturally in speech. Although this is natural to me, it seems almost impossible from an ESL learner's point of view. Chinese doesn't have anything like this, and that's just one example.

Another one: verb tense. Much more complicated in English than in Chinese. Another one: Conditionals. First conditional, second conditional, third conditional. Another thing I never thought about before I started teaching. The people I've spoken with who are skilled in both languages all feel that English has the more complex grammatical system. All of these people are Chinese though.

[rezaf]

I agree with imron. The problem with Chinese grammar is that it is actually very complicated but I have never seen a good and complete book on it out there. All the books I have seen just show some basic rules at a very beginner level which might give us the false impression that it is easier than English grammar but these books never go beyond basic sentences and rarely analyze complete texts where the difficulty of Chinese grammar actually starts to show itself. In my view Chinese is more descriptive because the people who should find and categorize these rules have been very lazy and instead of doing their job, always skip the question by making excuses like "It's just the habit" but as more and more foreigners want to learn Chinese these days and often get confused when they begin this language, probably in the future they will start to find the rules in Chinese and then it will be more prescriptive.

Also I think the best way to learn a language is a mixture of prescriptive and descriptive.

[imron]

Have you seen the book "Chinese: A Comprehensive Grammar" by Yip and Rimmington? It struck me as being quite thorough, although I've never been one for grammar, and when I see things such as "adjectival predicative" my eyes start to glaze over.

[renshanrenhai]

However just because someone has never formally studied the rules and grammar of a language doesn't mean such rules do not exist.

I think in the say way about this. We take everything for granted in our first language as we acquire our mother tongue rather than learn it.

For example, it is incorrect to say something like 学习在北京, and to a native speaker it would sound wrong.Why? because it doesn't conform to the "way we say things" - which in linguistic terms is called "grammar" It's just that these grammatical rules have already been internalised, so the native speaker doesn't really ever think about them.

This is one of my interest in this forum. L1 language will has an invisible effect on the second language learning. Generally speaking, if a Chinese find English is hard to learn, an English speaker will feel it in the say way. This is because the internal grammar system of L1 will have an active effect on a foreign language learning when it is close to the grammar system of foreign language. A negative effect occurs in the reverse.

So i am thinking if there exist Chinglish, there must exist Engniese (this word created by myself, Chinese spoken and written that is influenced by English)

Take your example "学习在北京" again to prove one thing i have found very interesting. This is what i mean by Engniese.

The incorrect pattern"学习在北京" has the same grammar structure with the correct English pattern "STUDY IN BEIJING".

My actually intention to put this post is to confirm if learning Chinese is as hard as learning English for the people from English speaking countries. I know how difficult it is for both Chinese and foreigners to learning the language from each other, considering the great difference of grammar system of the two language.And things will be even hard when language is learnt in a non- immersion environment.

Deep in heart, i really want to give an encouragement by that if Chinese people can learning English well people from English speaking countries can do it as well.

Anyway, my approach to learning Chinese has been more descriptive, which is to say, I've tried to focus more on how the language is used, however at times I feel there are gaps in my learning that could have been filled by taking a more prescriptive approach.

Without an immersion environment, most of the learners have a tendency to start learning from the prescriptive aspects , a foreign language with grammar rules different from your L1's in particular. Once we have grasp the basic grammar rules of the language, it should be adviced to use our right-side brain to deal with the descriptive aspects of the language—— pragmatic meaning of words, generative use of rules.

But there is no linear process or unique way to learning language. One suit the learner is the best.

From what you have stated, I can tell you are a good language learner in my view.

[renshanrenhai]

I think it's not so much a function of the language, but rather how it is taught.

Good point !

[马盖云]

In reading the original post, although she referred to "the language" being descriptive or prescriptive, I was pretty sure she was referring to "the grammar", and/or the way the language is described. Imron mentioned Yip and Rimmington's grammar book. This is indeed a very comprehensive and technical look at Chinese grammar. What strikes me the most when reading it, is that it reads like an archeological study... as if they were reconstructing a language from disecting ancient texts, without listening to the possibly skewed input from native speakers. Of course, they are citing earlier books and academic theses, and many of these were written long ago, before the profusion of english-language Chinese teaching materials. The approach, to me, suggests "descriptive", as they are basically reporting what they see, and noting any major deviations from the norm.

I must gove Sally-txl a +1 for using the term "throw off the learners" only one day after learning it, and using it in the exact right way :-)

[Gharial]

You'll find few staunch prescriptivists among genuine teachers - the term is surely pejorative, so even those who are prescriptivists usually try to spin their views as providing "descriptions" of, or "guidance" regarding, the "best and finest" usage. The honest reality then is that all one can really do is consult data and point out what are either undeniable facts (such as the forms of irregular verbs - not that a young child or student won't be excused ever treating an irregular as if it were a regular), or tendencies whether strong or weak in usage (i.e. usage can be divided, which is usually as it "should" be). As for learners, the majority are more than willing to "bend the knee" to native pronouncements regarding usage - how could it really be otherwise? - and probably don't care to get too hung up (assuming they are linguistically able enough, up to the task) on pondering that many of the shibboleths imposed by the pickier/more masochistic native speakers.

Good teachers and successful learners therefore probably tend to gravitate towards the descriptive, and care more about their general "powers of expression" than obsessing over exact choice of form for any "particular" proposition; the flip side of the coin though is that form (in a general knowledge-ability sense, e.g. does the student know each of the words 'I', 'like', and 'bananas' in the sentence 'I like bananas', and that the SVO word order is the perfectly fine and canonical one? etc) is obviously important and cannot be shirked if one is hoping to reach any sort of appreciable linguistic level. One thus has to have some grasp and mastery of accurate form (or rather forms plural) in order to build up any meaningful fluency. (I've never liked the communicative, and IMHO false, dichotomy of accuracy versus fluency - that, or the sorts of errors that are being implicated either way, in their supposed avoidance in the slow pedantic student's speech, or in their supposed embrace in the careless jabberer's, likely aren't actually that important, even if they were real (i.e. well-researched and attested in countless communication breakdowns!)).

Regarding English, here are a few items that folks might like to chew on (or not!): I've known prescriptivists who argue in favour of the(ir) "logic" of 'didn't used to' (no matter how ill-informed they are regarding structural linguistics - viewing and treating [a] language as a whole system), but fortunately I've yet to hear anybody defending things like 'I would of gone' (in writing I mean, not speech).

Anyway, in my experience (certainly of TEFLing), prescriptivism does a lot of damage due not only to its often illogical and conterfactual rulings (versus actually dependable rules!), but also to its instilling fear and timidity rather than curiosity in the language user or learner. It is like claiming to be teaching a person to fish, and then sticking up a great big sign saying "No Fishing Allowed Here!".

I'm not sure how many SLA studies have been conducted on English people learning second or foreign languages. I've only got one such book on my shelves (Ohta's Second Language Acquisition Processes in the Classroom: Learning Japanese, see http://linguistlist....12/12-1255.html and http://books.google....epage&q&f=false), but haven't dipped into it much, as I recall that the examples that the students were struggling with seemed so basic and mundane that I wondered if the data were more symptomatic of bad pedagogy (too-controlled tasks or drills?) than the actual nature of the language(s) and/or learners themselves. (That is, SLA studies can seem to make a real meal if not a total dog's dinner of the simplest things!).

(Sally, regarding your second post): It's been a while since I read around in SLA, but one thing I've realized I for one am not very clear on is how much those (e.g. Corder, Selinker etc) who questioned the tenets of Contastive Analysis, and thus in reaction developed Error Analysis, terms like 'interlanguage', morpheme acquisition orders etc, were actually sympathetic or not to Chomsky's notions of Universal Grammar etc - I guess Chomsky was indeed an influence, but perhaps not that great a one, if (?) they were just wanting to disprove CA itself rather than jump completely on the UG bandwagon (I mean, there are still terms/theories like language transfer and/or language interference being used). Anyway, the point of bringing stuff like this up is that if one is less sympathetic to the concept of UG (and remember that language universals aren't the province of only Generative grammarians! See for example the functionalists in http://books.google....epage&q&f=false , and stuff on Cognitive Linguistics etc), it will probably follow that one is less interested in formulating beyond the language-specific (e.g. English, "versus" Chinese). (By the way, just for the record, I'm a functionalist and empiricist, and often without enough time and/or brainpower to really think "universally"!).

[imron]

You'll find few staunch prescriptivists among genuine teachers

Not sure how much exposure you've had to the teaching system in China, but English teaching there is done with a very prescriptive approach, and places an emphasis on passing written exams rather than being able to communicate.

[Gharial]

Note the word 'genuine', Imron! ;) (That's not to say that prescriptivism can't ever be right, provided of course that the prescription being dispensed is actually correct, true, a reflection of the real world. Good 'pedagogic grammars' do precisely this. Usually however prescriptivism is or becomes tantamount to proscriptivism, in which the prejudices of a minority really can start to distract, or even take undeserved precedence).

I've taught in China and Japan, and am well aware of the perceived problems of their style of education, but at least they've kept the study of foreign languages compulsory (not that I think this is necessarily a good thing!), which ultimately can only mean that no matter how little FL is taught and learnt on average, it is still a lot more than in e.g. the UK nowadays! (And even when FLs were compulsory in the UK, the standard of teaching could be abysmal in comparison - I just know that I was taught very little, practically nothing, during my five years of secondary-school French! But so-called communicative methods may have transformed modern FL teaching beyond all recognition, for those fewer students who now volunteer to study FLs in UK schools). Anyway, it'd be interesting to see if there have been many if any international measures of FL attainment over the years... (might see what I can find on Google!).

[renzhe]

I've always understood the terms "descriptive" and "prescriptive" as describing the way a language standard is defined. So English is descriptive, in the sense that dictionaries add new words whenever they become common, and new grammar becomes 'accepted' by respected references once it has become widespread enough, and then it is also taught as correct. So abominations like "funguses" and "matrixes" get introduced to major dictionaries, although they are essentially mistakes. Contrast with a language like Spanish or French, where there is a central authority on language which rules what is correct by decree, and there is higher resistance to adding words like "lol" and "wtf" to dictionaries.

So you have the situation where Portugal completely reforms their orthography by decree, something that has already happened in the German-speaking countries over a decade ago. You also have the situation where the German genitive has mostly died out in common speech, but is still taught and still the only correct case to use with many prepositions in writing. You won't find a German teacher telling you that it's OK to use dative instead, although that's how almost everyone speaks.

From that point of view, I'd say that Mandarin is definitely prescriptive. You are told what standard Mandarin is, down to the last -er. There is a very strict test in which you have to nail the neutral tone and erhua (most of which is arbitrary) in order to get many jobs. Dictionaries tend to be strict too, in my experience. All my written dictionaries agree on the tones of nàli & zhèlǐ. There is loads of variation in these tones (neutral or not) in common speech, but you won't find it in the dictionaries.

OT: I do like the principle of letting the language evolve, but if "should of" and "defiantly" ever become proper and accepted, I think I'll give up on the English language.

[Gharial]

Good points, Renzhe! I was rather thinking of just prescriptive or descriptive approaches to FL teaching ("in a vacuum" as it were), though those boil down to and can probably best be summed up simply as: "First and foremost, explicitly describe, with any prescribing merely implicit; proscribing shouldn't be necessary at all". (That is, strong prescriptions are only needed when patients are exhibiting actual symptoms of genuine disease LOL). Or, as IIRC a linguist (probably a corpus linguist) once said, "The description is the prescription".

(Sally): It's natural that a teacher of a language with a rather prescriptively-described national standard might react against that, have reservations to the contrary. At least that's a lot more natural than those who might well have the freedom to teach as well as possible and however they please then quite perversely turning their backs on data and seeking refuge, for them doubtless solace almost, in prescriptivist dictats!

[WestTexas]

Have you seen the book "Chinese: A Comprehensive Grammar" by Yip and Rimmington? It struck me as being quite thorough, although I've never been one for grammar, and when I see things such as "adjectival predicative" my eyes start to glaze over.

Yeah this book is pretty robust. I like its organizational structure and appreciate how thorough it is. It seems like a lot of the Chinese grammar books online all say the exact same things and don't go into quite enough depth, so i appreciate this book.

[imron]

My personal view on the grammar of Mandarin is——it's too changeable.

Haha, just came across this, which is somewhat relevant.

[creamyhorror]

Haha, just came across this, which is somewhat relevant.

Heh, 方文山 certainly does this in some Jay Chou songs: "你发如雪 凄美了离别".

[dxcarnadi]

Hello renshanrenhai

 

You wrote .. many years ago:
"1. How do you feel about the Modern Chinese language, more descriptive or prescriptive ?
2. Which one is easier for learning ?
3. How do you think a language should be, more descriptive or prescriptive ?"

 

My answers are:
To 1: more descriptive
To 2: the prescriptive ... like German or English.
To 3: it depends ..
o prescriptive: for impersonal communication like office, authorities, business ..
o descriptive:  for personal communication like .. to families, friends ..

 

My reasoning:

Chinese Grammar is a descriptive one: why is the word "context" in Chinese so important?

 

English/German word order: Grammatical word order (GWO) .. it's simple .. straightforward!

Chinese word order: Pragmatic word order (PWO)
I tried to understand .. what is "Pragmatic"?
The answer is .. Pragmatic stands between Syntax and Semantic.
I.e. .. communication transmitter and receiver use "private" protocoll. Otherwise .. misunderstanding.

 

No wonder .. "this (Chinese) language will very likely to throw off the learners".
I am a learner!
Good day. ?