Lexicon as major system of English

By William Roger Jones

Recently, I presented one strategy and addressed one classroom application of using The Korea Times in getting to know a word in that major system of English language named lexicon.

Also, I mentioned that the major systems overlap. Especially, you can see this extended commonness in grammar, another major system having auxiliaries (morphology, orthography, and syntax). Grammar in its broadest sense refers to the rules of speech and writing of Standard English.

It is complex and includes using words in specific ways according to their parts of speech, and verb tenses and their agreement in sentence construction, as well as correct use of punctuation and mechanics, etc. This is the prescriptive grammar that we are taught in school to use if we wish to sound educated and painstakingly learn if we wish to receive a good grade from the English instructor. The ``Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language" contains 1,800 pages and some 3,500 points requiring grammatical exposition, largely points to do with syntax.

The descriptive grammar such as what we really speak (nobody speaks textbook English), Ebonics and Chicano English, and the creative hybrid ``new Englishes such as Chinglish, Japlish, Konglish, Singlish, and Taglish, etc., although interesting and amusingly having communicative purposes we must suppress, for if displayed could very well hinder one's chances to obtain particular employment or to achieve a position of social status.

The Korea Times is a circulating library we count on and its communicative experts (writers) shape language use by best choice of linguistic preference. We rely upon their clarity. This use of register-bound English is the social context accepted by most speakers. We are often fraught with "rules of English" to the point of pedantry, and thus miss the communicative purposes of English.

Communication can be had if we give attention to core content words that carry high information load verses grammatical words (or function words). Linguist David Wilkins states, ``Without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed. If you spend most of your time studying grammar, your English will not improve very much. You will see most improvement if you learn more words and expressions. You can say very little with grammar, but you can say almost anything with words!"

Thus upon this, our strategy for this week is to choose a paragraph from a topic of interest from the opinion, business, arts and living, or sports section, etc. of The Korea Times and to examine it for meaningful communication.

The classroom application or assignment for students is to eliminate the grammar or function words and do a statistical analysis. They should find that between 40 and 50 percent of the majority of the paragraph's words are high frequency grammar-function words and that ```on their own have very restricted usefulness: Try having a conversation with the twenty most commonly used words in written and spoken English: the, of, to, and, a, in, is, it, you, that, he was, for, on, are, with, as, I, his, they!"

The first paragraph of Jane Han's front-page article (The KT Sat.-Tues., Sept. 10-13, 2011) may serve to illustrate the assignment: ``Between Lim Jung-sun and her parents in Korea, a phone call from the bottom of the heart used to be enough for any holiday, whether it be Christmas or Chuseok, or Korean Thanksgiving."

Now, a rendering of the same paragraph minus the fluffy grammar-function words: Lim Jung-sun parents Korea, phone call bottom heart used to be enough any holiday, be Christmas Chuseok, Korean Thanksgiving. Thus, by count we have removed 46 percent of the words, and although diminished, we still have enough evidence of Jane Han's original paragraph to surmise meaning. Thus, our proof that nouns and verbs are powerhouses compared to other parts of speech.

A precaution to be regarded here; in spite of grammar's derisions, students must realize that function words are the glue that holds a sentence together, eliminating the need to conjecture the meaning of a statement. Grammar is now a serious and lively study. The grammatical functioning of a word is part of its being. And, we try to determine this by its label or part of speech. We find that a word can wear many hats and the Latinate tradition does not accommodate the inconsistencies.

Latin grammar is not a good model to base our English grammar upon. Subtleties of words cannot be revealed by a limited set of labels, thus, we need various subsidiary rules. Our language ever changes and we can see so in the truth of the epigram by computer language programmer Alan Jay Perlis: ``In English every word can be verbed." Nevertheless, The Korea Times reader knows that language appears when spoken in some order, and the written order stems from the spoken order.

William Roger Jones has taught English in Korea for five years. He presently teaches with the English Program in Korea (EPIK). He has written a novella with his Korean wife, entitled, “Beyond Harvard.” He can be reached at billjones47@hotmail.com.