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#1 Parent callmefred - 2008-05-02
Re: Zhang, you said-to the administration of this site

Far be it from me to stand up for the Turnip, however "theses" is the plural of "thesis" so with more luck than judgement, he is correct in this instance.
Makes a change if nothing else !.

#2 Parent KGB - 2008-05-02
Re: Zhang, you said-to the administration of this site

Turnoi is a FT from eastern Europe with two PhDs. Strange enough, he cannot write correct sentences in English. ( "theses" instead of " thesis " or " themm " instead of " them ). Callmefred and Nspeaker are right in the case of Turnoi. I assumed, he paid 200USD/for each of his degrees, a common practice in eastern Europe after the socialist era.

#3 Parent Nspeaker - 2008-05-01
Re: Zhang, you said-to the administration of this site

Thanks for that Clarissa. I shall read the references mentioned.

However, I cannot at the moment see the relevance of your argument to what is quite obviously a sentence by the poster that makes no sense in any form.

Any serious effort in case of Zhang and his/her likes are not in place.

"not in place" ?. Whilst I may be able to guess what he is trying to say, should I have to when the writer is a self proclaimed genius ?, (two PhDs) plus a host of English language qualifications (he says). His lofty position he feels, entitles him to point out the most minor of infractions, usually typos, on the part of others yet he can't string a few words together in a legible grammatical form.

It is said that those who cannot do, teach. His was a good example I would suggest, of non performance.

#4 Parent Clarissa - 2008-05-01
Re: Zhang, you said-to the administration of this site

Read here:

http://www.unm.edu/~devalenz/handouts/competence.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformational_grammar

(see section on "Grammatical Theories" there)

Example:
You want to say that "something is strange". There are different ways of saying it with basically the same vocabulary but with more or less slight changes in grammatical structure, e.g.:

(1) This is quite strange.
(2) Seems strange (a so-called ellipitcal sentence with the subject pronoun "it" omitted - always the case in Chinese in such circumstances, there is no equivalent for an "impersonal" it in Chinese as in "It is strange", "it rains", etc.!).
(3) Strange! (exclamation).

.......

Sentence examples (1), (2), (3) are individual ways of saying the same thing on the part of the speaker/writer depending on a number of determining extra-linguistic factors such as situational context, mood, language variety used (formal vs. informal language, registers used, etc.). This is what Chomsky calls "performance". You may also call it less technically "individual style" of expessing yourself.

There is no such thing as a "normative" grammar but this is what your criticism in case of the Turnoi poster may imply.

#5 Parent Nspeaker - 2008-04-30
Re: Zhang, you said-to the administration of this site

Clarissa, Please clarify your point.

#6 Parent Clarissa - 2008-04-30
Re: Zhang, you said-to the administration of this site

Main thing is you got the point.
Ever heard of the terms "competence" and "performance" and what they mean in Linguistics (they were coined by Chomsky in the 1960s in connection with TGG)?

#7 Parent Nspeaker - 2008-04-30
Re: Zhang, you said-to the administration of this site

Comment:
Who cares? Any serious effort in case of Zhang and his/her likes are not in place.

More gobbledegook from the so called 'expert' who presumes to poke fun at typos by others.
Strange that he manages to put together sentences containing mouthfuls of expletives but can't achieve literacy in simple form.

A lesson or two in basic English would benefit this poster.

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