̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - grammar

Ancient grammatical puzzle solved after 2,500 years

ta385 — Thu, 15 Dec 2022 07:00:00 +0000

A grammatical problem which has defeated Sanskrit scholars since the 5th Century BC has finally been solved by an Indian PhD student at Cambridge. Rishi Rajpopat made the breakthrough by decoding a rule taught by “the father of linguistics” Pāṇini.

“Never was so much owed by so many to so few”: Could phrases like this hold clues about universal grammar?

tdk25 — Wed, 16 Dec 2015 08:35:50 +0000

It’s safe to assume that when Winston Churchill gave one of his most famous speeches in August 1940, the possible existence of universal grammar was far from his mind.

Nevertheless, it now appears that phrases such as “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few,” could hold the key to understanding how humans acquire language from birth.

̽��ֱ��sentence features a remnant of something called the “Verb Second” constraint; a linguistic construction which appears in most Germanic languages, but has disappeared from Romance (Latin-based) grammars, such as Spanish or French.

In simple terms, Verb Second, or “V2” languages are, as the name suggests, defined by the fact that the verb tends to take second place in a sentence. Understanding why the principle was abandoned by one language family, but retained by the other, is the central objective of a new project which is being carried out by an international team of language scientists from the Universities of Cambridge and Oslo, among others.

̽��ֱ��researchers believe that the Verb Second constraint could be used to test Noam Chomsky’s famous, but contested, idea of universal grammar. ̽��ֱ��theory, developed in the 1950s, argues that humans acquire language because we possess an innate, hard-wired ability to do so.

Sam Wolfe, from the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics and St John’s College, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said: “If we want to know whether or not universal grammar exists, we need to model what is actually going on inside our heads when we learn a language, so that we can better understand the toolbox we all make use of. ̽��ֱ��question is, how do you do that? One solution is to study language properties that might give us a clue, and the Verb Second constraint seems to be one of the best examples available – a lens to test that theory.”

Strangely, English is the one example of a Germanic language that has not formally retained Verb Second, although vestiges of it, such as Churchill’s famous phrase above, remain.

Modern V2 languages are distinguishable because the subject in a sentence - the person or thing performing the action described by a verb - will sometimes appear in a position after the verb, in order to keep the verb in second place.

Take the sentence, “Today the children are playing nicely”. Here, the subject is “the children” and “playing” is the verb. In Norwegian, which is a V2 language, this translates as I dag leker barna fint. ̽��ֱ��actual word order here reads: “Today play the children nicely”, keeping the verb, “play”, second.

While Romance languages originally used Verb Second, it started to disappear from these grammars during the medieval period. Old French, for instance, seems to have abandoned it during the 16th century. Today, Verb Second is only used by one small group of endangered Romance languages, known as “Rhaeto-Romance”, which are spoken in specific parts of the Swiss Alps and north east Italy, and which will be the focus of some of Wolfe’s research .

Old English was also a V2 language and clear traces of the Verb Second remain in English today.

These include certain sentences that begin with a negative phrase. For example, in the sentence “Under no circumstances will I agree”, the subject (I) comes after the auxiliary verb (will). This is also true of Churchill’s line in his Battle of Britain address, in which the subject “so much”, comes after the auxiliary “was”.

Verb second remnants can also be found in some phrases starting with “only”. One well-known example is the Emperor’s line to Luke Skywalker at the end of Return Of ̽��ֱ��Jedi: “Only now, at the end, do you understand”. Here the auxiliary, “do” has moved to before “you”.

Why Verb Second generally survived in Germanic languages but died out in most Romance grammars remains unclear. ̽��ֱ��researchers behind the new project believe that its retention may have hinged on other features of the language being present.

If this can be proven, it will point to the existence of universal grammar. Chomsky’s theory relies on the idea that a language hangs together in certain fundamental ways, with different linguistic properties necessarily connecting to each other in order to work. These fundamentals are, the theory goes, an expression of the hard-wiring that enables any child to acquire language and use it to express concepts.

One theory that will be tested in the project is that the Verb Second itself is just one manifestation of a linguistic mechanism that is common to all languages and has parallels even in non-V2 grammars. ̽��ֱ��researchers believe that they may have already identified complementary properties in, for example, Western Iberian languages, and in French, but further tests are needed to see if these initial hypotheses are correct.

“There are still many questions over what form our innate ability to acquire languages takes, but it seems that certain properties of language may help to reinforce one another,” Wolfe added. “ ̽��ֱ��fact that Verb Second has survived in some languages but not others makes it a useful device with which to unpick that particular puzzle.”

“Traces Of History” is funded by the Norwegian Research Council. Its website, hosted by the ̽��ֱ�� of Oslo, can be found at: http://www.hf.uio.no/ilos/english/research/projects/traces-of-history/

A new research project examining a linguistic construction called the Verb Second constraint could, academics believe, help to explain how people acquire language.

If we want to know whether or not universal grammar exists, we need to model what is actually going on inside our heads. One solution is to study language properties that might give us a clue, and the Verb Second constraint seems to be one of the best examples available – a lens to test that theory.

Sam Wolfe

Wikimedia Commons

Winston Churchill’s famous Battle of Britain address, adapted here for a wartime poster, is one example of a remnant of the Verb Second constraint in English, which could hint at the existence of a universal grammar.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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… dot, dot, dot: how the ellipsis made its mark

amb206 — Wed, 21 Oct 2015 11:17:52 +0000

Punctuation is fascinating to some … but a real turnoff to others. If you’re lukewarm about the distinction between dots and dashes, and the history of printers’ marks, then Ellipsis in English Literature: Signs of Omission (Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Press, 2015) might not immediately excite you. But do read on …

Ellipsis in English Literature looks at the history of the marks used to signify a pause or tailing off in speech. Its author, Dr Anne Toner, is not a grammarian in the conventional sense but an academic with a particular interest in how writers communicate with readers using the range of punctuation marks available to them.

Toner traces in scholarly, and often witty, detail the backstory of a contentious punctuation mark. Its origins lost in the vagaries of early manuscripts, and vilified as sloppy as it became common in printed books, the ellipsis was embraced by writers as diverse as Ben Jonson and Percy Bysshe Shelley, Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf. Its champions have ranged from Laurence Sterne to the creators of the Superman comics.

Ellipsis, in its various forms, signifies silence – a lapse or pause or textual omission of some kind. Toner’s focus is on printed text and on authors carefully selected for their pioneering use of punctuation. ̽��ֱ��earliest ellipsis in Toner’s case studies occurs in an edition of Terence’s Andria, a play translated into English in 1588 by Maurice Kyffin. ̽��ֱ��ellipsis in Andria takes the form not of dots but a series of short dashes or hyphens (sometimes three, sometimes four), also known as breaks.

In Kyffin’s translation of Terence, the ellipsis is used to mark interruption. An ellipsis is a neat way of conveying to the actor a lapse into silence. But an absence of words usually signals a heightening of emotion or action. ̽��ֱ��ellipsis acts therefore as a form of stage direction. As such, it has proved to be a powerful and extremely useful dramatic resource. In speaking aloud, pausing is, after all, a vital aspect of the delivery of meaning: a slight hesitation speaks volumes. As Toner puts it: “not saying something often says it better.”

̽��ֱ��ellipsis took off fast – proof, surely, of its usefulness. Kyffin’s 1588 Andria contains just three examples. In a translation of the same play in 1627, there were 29. They appear in Shakespeare’s plays and in great abundance in Jonson’s. In 1634 a schoolmaster called John Barton wrote in ̽��ֱ��Art of Rhetorick that “eclipsis” is much used in playbooks “where they are noted thus ---”. They could register the most significant dramatic events. In the first folio edition of Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part I, to use Toner’s words, “Hotspur dies on a dash”, his last words cut short.

In early texts especially, it is not always easy to determine who exactly is responsible for marks of ellipsis, whether they originate with the author or in the printing house. ̽��ֱ��mark that was chosen would often have depended on what a printer had available. Dots also began to be used by the early 18th century for the same purposes, probably influenced by continental practice. It was only in the 19th century that the dot, dot, dot began to develop its own distinct connotations.

̽��ֱ��ellipsis might have been useful and persistent, but not everyone approved of the incursions made by this little interloper. Some words, and some actions, are indescribable (better left to the imagination) or unprintable (too rude). For this last purpose, ellipsis marks became the tool of the censor. But authors can work censorship creatively for their own means. What can’t be said can be hinted at with an ellipsis and a well-placed ellipsis can itself convey something risqué, frisky or downright sordid.

But not only that, early on, different types of ellipsis were condemned as marks of lazy writing. ̽��ֱ��dash was slammed as over-casual and ill-disciplined – slapdash. In the 18th century, Jonathan Swift pointedly rhymed “dash” with “printed trash”, while Henry Fielding chose the name ‘Dash’ for the unlikeable grub-street writer in his play ̽��ֱ��Author’s Farce. Likewise in the 20th century, in an essay on punctuation marks, the philosopher Theodor Adorno associated series of dots with a commercialised form of writing. Ford Madox Ford and Joseph Conrad used ellipsis points over 400 times in their relatively short novel ̽��ֱ��Inheritors, to mark unfinished sentences, as well as to create an atmosphere of the hazy, the vague and mysterious. ̽��ֱ��critics were savage. As recently as 1994, Umberto Eco decried the “ghastliness of these dots”.

̽��ֱ��unorthodox nature of the ellipsis has posed problems for those who want language to be more governable by rules. In consequence, over the course of the 19th century, ellipsis marks began to be standardized in appearance and defined by usage. Lindley Murray’s extraordinarily successful English Grammar, first published in 1795, did much to promote the dash as a respectable mark of punctuation. Murray listed the mark alongside the primary marks of punctuation (following those heavy-weights, the period and colon), though continuing to warn against its improper use “by hasty and incoherent writers”.

Printers also preferred a uniform method of punctuating, not least to accommodate the rising rates of book production over the course of the 19th century. ̽��ֱ��creation of a printed text is a collaborative effort between writer, editor and publisher, printer and proof reader with the power of punctuation lying largely in the hands of the printing house. ̽��ֱ��journey that text makes from the author’s pen to the printed book in the reader’s hand makes it susceptible to multiple forces of intervention, particularly in matters of punctuation.

“Punctuation seems precariously exposed to non-authorial management in a way that word choices are not,” writes Toner. She continues: “Authors were encouraged to leave punctuation marks to printers because of their expertise in pointing [punctuating] or […] so that they could implement a house style […] Ellipsis points are especially vulnerable to alteration.”

Where manuscripts survive, we do have certainty about authorial intention and preference, though still complications can remain. Jane Austen, for example, made use of both dashes and series of dots when writing a number of her juvenile works which remained unpublished in her lifetime. In her printed novels, dots appear occasionally to signify incomplete sentences and interrupted dialogue. In spite of Austen's early employment of dots, it is hard to determine whether the few examples in her mature novels are hers.

Centuries before the first emoticons popped up on our screens, authors have responded to punctuation’s pictorial possibilities. Erasmus saw round brackets as crescent moons and named them lunulae. Asterisks are stars (visually and etymologically), and have been exploited as such, most notably in Sterne’s Tristram Shandy in which the eponymous hero loses his way as he tries to follow those starry marks. In the 17th century, ellipses are often known as ‘eclipses’ (singular, ‘eclipsis’) – heralding a brief darkness. Journalist and broadcaster Lynne Truss sees them as black holes.

Nebulous in some contexts, the ellipsis is prescriptive in others. Theodor Adorno saw repeated dots as impressionistic, a typographical shorthand for “an infinitude of thoughts and associations” beyond the communicative powers of the hack journalist. Samuel Beckett employed those same dots in his drama as unnervingly precise instructions for delivery. One actor working with Beckett understood them as musical rests and records counting the number of dots in an ellipsis as beats in time.

Perhaps few people imagine, as Adorno did, the semi-colon as a drooping moustache. But punctuation, and how we see and use it, as always, is in flux. There are winners, there are losers. Semi-colons are, in many forms of writing, an endangered species. ̽��ֱ��apostrophe is on the wane. Increasingly, commas are used in place of full stops.

̽��ֱ��upstart ellipsis, once so racy and suggestive, remains constricted. We avoid using dots and dashes in formal writing but in our haste to communicate the moods of our thoughts, we just can’t resist them. What next for those ghastly little dots? Watch this space …

Inset images: Terence, Andria, translated by Maurice Kyffin: London, 1588 ( ̽��ֱ��British Library Board, C.13.a.6 sig. Iiiiir); Joseph Conrad and Ford M. Hueffer, ̽��ֱ��Inheritors: an extravagant story: London, William Heinemann, 1901, p. 232 (Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library).

We avoid them in formal writing but they pepper our emails … In 'Ellipsis in English Literature', Dr Anne Toner explores the history of dots, dashes and asterisks used to mark silence of some kind. ̽��ֱ��focus of the book – the first to look exclusively at the backstory of these marks – is communication.

Not saying something often says it better

Anne Toner

̽��ֱ��British Library Board, C.13.a.6 sig. Iiiiir.

Terence, Andria, translated by Maurice Kyffin (London, 1588)

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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̽��ֱ��riddle of the Syriac double dot: it’s the world’s earliest question mark

ns480 — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 10:38:43 +0000

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� manuscript specialist, Dr Chip Coakley has identified what may be the world’s earliest example of a question mark. ̽��ֱ��symbol in question is two dots, one above the other, similar in appearance to a colon, rather than the familiar squiggle of the modern question mark. ̽��ֱ��double dot symbol appears in Syriac manuscripts of the Bible dating back to the fifth century.

Syriac is a language of the Middle East with a large Christian literature and its golden age was in the centuries before the rise of Islam. Syriac studies are blessed by the survival of a collection of very early manuscripts, the remnants of one derelict monastery library. In the 1840s, the British Museum stumped up almost £5000 to buy them, and scholars have lived off this purchase ever since.

Manuscripts of the Bible are not even the majority of the collection now in the British Library, but they have their special points of interest. One of these is the way that the graceful and flowing Syriac script is peppered with dots. Some of these dots are well understood, but some are not – some, indeed, probably not even by the scribes, who did not copy them consistently. All this made for a confusing picture, and it needed a patient scholar to start to make sense of it.

One step at least has been taken by Dr Coakley, a manuscript specialist at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library who teaches Syriac to students in the Divinity and Middle Eastern Studies faculties. “When you are sitting round a table reading a Syriac text with students, they ask all kinds of questions – like what the heck does this or that dot mean – and you want to be able to answer them,” said Dr Coakley. “In addition, as I’ve got older I’ve got fascinated by smaller and smaller things like punctuation marks.”

̽��ֱ��double dot mark, known to later grammarians as zawga elaya, is written above a word near the start of a sentence to tell the reader that it is a question. It doesn’t appear on all questions: ones with a wh- word don’t need it, just as in English ‘Who is it’ can only be a question (although we use a question mark anyway). But a question like ‘You’re going away?’ needs the question mark to be understood; and in Syriac, zawga elaya marks just these otherwise ambiguous expressions.

“Reading aloud, the same function is served by a rising tone of voice – or at least it is in English – and it is interesting to ponder whether zawga elaya really marks the grammar of the question, or whether it is a direction to someone reading the Bible aloud to modulate their voice,” said Dr Coakley.

Question marks in Greek and Latin script emerged later than in Syriac, with the earliest examples dating from the eighth century. It is likely that these symbols developed independently from each other and from Syriac. Hebrew and Arabic, close neighbours of Syriac, have nothing comparable. Armenian, another neighbour, has a similar mark, but it seems to be later.

Last month Dr Coakley presented his theory that the question mark is a Syriac invention “rather nervously” at a conference in the United States. But so far none of his fellow scholars has come up with an earlier question mark in any other ancient language.

Dr Coakley is quietly thrilled by his finding. “I’d describe it as a significant footnote in the history of writing,” he said. “And it’s satisfying to have made sense of some of those weird dots.”

Manuscripts written in Syriac, an ancient language of the Middle East, are peppered with mysterious dots. Among them is the vertical double dot or zagwa elaya. A Cambridge academic thinks that the zagwa elaya is the world’s earliest question mark.

I’d describe it as a significant footnote in the history of writing.

Dr Chip Coakley

British Library Board

Extract from the New Testament in Syriac from the sixth century

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