Utah is considering cutting the 12th Grade

General Discussion
61

But the problem is that there is at least one sentence that we can break down. From linguistics phrase structure rules, we get the overarching rule that dictates what a sentence is as S -> NP VP. Which means that a sentence is composed of a Noun Phrase and a Verb Phrase at the highest level. There are rules governing how the Noun Phrase and the Verb Phrase are composed, but as long as you ultimate manage to create both of those properly, you would have created a sentence. Overall breakdown of the sentence is:

       S composed of NP and VP below

NP -------------------VP composed of verb (2) and NP ( 7)
(1)
|
|
|------------------- NP (7) composed of NP (5) and CP (6)
|
|
|
| --------------- NP(5) composed of (3) -------- CP composed of (4) and everything right of it.
|

n(1)–v(2)-n(3)–c(4)
Utah doing shit that doesn’t make sense again.

What are we looking up above? This would be the tree diagram that explain the sentence. Some of the issues with this sentence is that it is a written form of a dialect as opposed to the prescriptive grammar. A prescriptive grammar is a rule of grammar brought about by the grammarians’ attempt to legislate what speakers’ rules should be, rather than what they are. Which means that instead of using the natural grammar describing how we form things, which is one of the things that linguist seek to do, the sentence is being judge on rules that do not account for the dialect that is being transcribed in the sentence above.

On the whole, it ultimate conforms to the rule of the sentence as it has both a NP and a VP in the sentence. Although because we are not quite familiar with some of the features of the dialect, it may seem disorganized on a shallow analysis. The first odd thing that the sentence does is what this one is not doing: using “is” in conjunction with doing. I asked my professor about this little anomaly which he explained as a redundancy that is eliminated by certain dialects as African American English; what some people describe as ghetto.

The second part that is a bit confusing is the CP part which stand for complementizer phrase. Usually describes an embedded sentence (sentence within a sentence such as: Jake said that Fred bought a bike; with “Fred bought a bike” as the embedded sentence). The issue with this part of the sentence is that the object of the sentence is omitted. An example that my professor gave me to explain it is: The person that mary saw. The preceding sentence also has an omitted object. Additionally, the CP portion of is working as a relative clause. Apparently this would have been a pain in the ass to describe and taken about 3-4 additional trees like the one above to properly describe. If anybody wants to know, the answers are in following course of linguistics focusing on syntax.

Remember kids, all prescriptive grammars are just a bunch of assholes wanting to sound like uppity bitches. All languages and subsequent dialects are equal in their infinity. Man, one could probably do a dissertation for linguistics just on forums.

edit: had to redo the tree above, which makes it look significantly less like a tree but should look a lot clearer now.

62

That is an awfully long-winded way of telling Septimus to take the stick out of his ass.

imo.

63

I’m glad you took a linguistics class, like I did, but “doing” is not a verb, and “doing shit that doesn’t make sense again” is a participial phrase. I’m sure a good chunk of SRK will think you’re right and I’m wrong because you wrote a lot of text and I didn’t, though.

64

The problem is that you are being an asshole for no good reason. I gave a proper explanation as to what was going on with that particular sentence and you just went around waiving your dick. There is a lot more going on with the syntax of that sentence than what my professor wanted to elaborate at the moment but meh, it is what it is. Doing, in this case, is the verb. As mentioned, people are throwing a hissy fit because that particular dialect drops the “is.” Otherwise, in prescriptive grammar, the sentence would read “Utah is doing shit and again doing that shit does not make sense.” But you know, prescriptive grammars vs descriptive grammars. Either way, sentence is explained in its context. IT IS a proper sentence. everybody can bounce off.

Maybe Utah can keep that 12th grade, teach linguistics and avoid such unnecessary grammar nazism.

65

The problem with linguistics is that it tries to throw out the window effective communication. I agree; as long as you get your point across, you should be able to ignore some of the more esoteric rules of grammar. However, if you never understand the rules in the first place and never understand why most of them exist, you’re doing yourself a disservice when you fail to properly convey your thoughts to your peers and associates. Take into consideration the context of BullDancer’s post?that he’s criticizing the usefulness of secondary education while putting into plain view that he, as a product of this educational system, has failed to learn the basic tenets of sentence composition (I’m deeply sorry for picking on you, BullDancer). The juxtaposition of what he intended to convey and what he actually wrote betrays his message by showing that while he says he values secondary education, he did not value it enough to learn what he could from it while he was part of it.

To digress, I am assuming you are still in college. I don’t know what your major is, but I am assuming you have to take a breadth of general education classes, some of which include writing. Imagine writing something like, “Utah doing shit that doesn’t make sense again,” in one of your papers in one of your non-linguistics classes. You and I both know exactly what will happen and how it will make you look in the eyes of your instructor. It’s the same in the real world: write something like that on your resume, for example, and you’re not going to get a second glance from a potential employer. I’m not here saying that you should painstakingly and meticulously proofread every post you make on SRK, but I think you and I will both agree that how one writes casually does effect (yes, this is the correct one) how one writes professionally.

Or maybe I just enjoy being an asshole about things.

66

The issue is not necessarily doing enough to get the message through, but how is it that we know what makes up that sentence. The phrase structure rules are an attempt to break down the language into the components that we somehow learn when we are small. Some things don’t fly in english, for example: the handsome, athletic, interesting iguana." That works in our grammar rules because the hole thing becomes the noun phrase (NP). NP - Adj NP, in other words, as long as you keep stacking adjectives in front of a noun, it can keep getting bigger. This is good until it runs into one of the other phrase structure rules which is NP- Det NP. Det is a determiner (words like the). So you can say “the handsome, athletic, interesting iguana” but not “handsome, athletic, interesting the iguana.” One works, the other one is royally fruity.

This is also where things get fruity. Bulldancer did not fail to learn english; he simply learned a different dialect. The overarching rules are all the same as in english. he wouldn’t be able to say “Utah doing shit that the doesn’t make sense” or “Utah doing is shit that doesn’t make sense.” The former has a wrong use of a determiner, the latter is not using the word “doing” properly at all. We would have to sit down with the dialect to find the rules that explain why it does some things, like omit “is” with a gerund and simply use the gerund as the verb, and other such shenanigans. But the dialect itself is just as valid as any other. The reason why we have the particular prescriptive grammar is because somebody arbitrarily decided to create these rules for it. It just so happens that the prescriptive grammar that we consider proper is the one we use in academia and business. If the city of Atlanta was transplanted to the past, our English might look a bit different. Hell, our english looks significantly different than ye Olde English.

67

but the number one schools globally are mostly american.

68

Right. Language is fluid, and so are its rules. However, if today’s dominant dialect is Atlantian (I made that up) or ye Olde English, you best believe I would be abiding by its arbitrary rule set (and its badass “kn” phoneme, which no longer exists in English). I would do this because I value effective communication?achieved through the use of common rules?over linguistic freedom.

69

also there is no jazz in utah

70

Nothing to do with linguistic freedom. All to do with what people do when they are separated geographically. But I do agree that it is rather nice to have a language of business to keep things cohesive. Makes shit easier for a lot of things; but shitting on somebody for speaking a different version of the same language is still an asshole thing to do.

71

Welcome to SRK. :rofl:

72

Pretty much. i think its kinda funny now that the person who pushed for no child left behind and all that other garbage is making a u-turn on the policies she campaigned. What 12 grade needs is proper classes in it. it should be one whole year of sharpening skills, but at the same time we don’t have a huge culture of learning in the U.S. so meh, I’m gonna stock up on pitchforks and see how this pans out.

73

i dropped out of high school before year 12 because i found high school to be a mostly horrid experience and went straight to university majoring in software engineering. I hadn’t learned anything in the educational system since about 6th grade other than calculus, the other things were just completely repeated over and over in the same level of detail. School did not prepare me for the difficulty of college where I learn something new every week and if I had the choice in my life to go back and change things I would’ve taken mostly mathematics so i can get all the calculus in like 7-8th grade and then went straight to “college”. or rather something of the same level of education. the other thing is that the younger a mind is the easier it learns and i am extremely angered that about 6 years of my life were wasted like that by high school / middle school. instead i had to read shit books, write shit 5 paragraph essays about them that i always got a 100 on anyway, get the same basically nonexistent level of knowledge on the history of the world that i could get by reading wikipedia… instead i had to learn spanish because “you’re more well rounded if you do learn a foreign language blah blah shows that your mind is capable of it”… guess what fuckers i grew up in a bilingual household, i do speak hungarian fluently, but there’s no hungarian class or test or even just a test out of the bullshit. my mind is perfectly capable of several languages. a lot of this stuff is unneeded and should be optional. and a lot of it the way it’s taught is like okay i’m here and then there’s a bunch of dumbasses in the same class with me and fuck that shit having to even communicate with those people and the teacher having to be all slow because of that and dudes looking at me funny because i’m “that weird kid that doesn’t pay attention but does good on the tests anyway”. fuck that whole situation. i could go on for hours about how much i hate the school systems.

fuck this institution where dudes be telling me not to wear a hat, not to listen to music in between classes, no cellphones because some bullshit story about some girl calling her mom to get picked up during a school shooting then the mom got shot too (they actually said this was why). fuck 8 hours of class and 2 more hours of homework that i just ended up never doing because i knew i would get a good enough grade to go to college anyway. fuck high school for not challenging me a single time and making me complacent by the time i got to college and there was something actually difficult.
school was more about forcing us to think one way rather than teaching us how to think and why to think about things so we can make our own decisions.

74

You do realize how many people in those schools are from other countries though, right?
We have prestigous insitutes of higher education…filled with people from other countries. I wonder how the average american 12thh grader would do one one of those other countries’ college entrance exams.

75

Yeah b/c getting a high school diploma handed to you has made things better, right? Those people don’t try primarily b/c they know they don’t have to. Once they get forced to do so they’ll finally start working. Then maybe a high school diploma could actually be worth something again instead of being a 13 year publicly funded piece of toilet paper.

76

lol… you think people actually do something the other 3 years of high school? it has absolutely nothing to do with being the last year of school and everything to do with the fact that high schools don’t teach you shit.

You also fail to realize that the last year is optional. Although anyone in their right mind would skip the last year anyway. If you are a smart, hard working kid you need to skip 12th and go straight to college because you aren’t learning dick shit in high school anyway and if you are a fucking moron kid that doesn’t give a shit I’d rather you be flipping burgers and contributing to society than me and the rest of america paying for another year of “education” that you don’t care about anyway.

Wait a minute, in the last post you rant and rave like 12th grade is super fucking essential and now you bash the american high school system claiming that all our great colleges are filled with a majority of foreign students (which isn’t true).

Which is it? Is our high school educational system so trash that we get our asses kicked by other countries or are our high schools so great that we absolutely HAVE to have that final year of “learning”. My guess is that you just saw and opportunity to bash america and took it because it’s the cool thing to do. Even though it’s not the average american’s fault our educational system is complete shit, it’s our educators lack of intelligence that is the problem.

77

For those who said high school is worthless, you learned chemistry, biology, physics, trig, etc, all in middle school?

78

No, but those of us who took those classes in high school and then took them again in college quickly found out that your high school class equated to about three weeks of the college course.

79

Most of the time, the college course goes into more detail than what was covered in high school. I see no problem with high school classes giving you an intro for the college courses. Also, I did well in the science courses while in high school which helped me decide my major. If I did horribly in bio/math/etc, I probably would have gone into business, history, or something else. This may not be true for a lot of people, but for me it was. In high school I hated history and English. In college always tried avoiding those classes because I knew (from high school) they were very difficult for me. So I focused more on the sciences which I learned (from high school) I had a knack for.

You’re also forgetting about AP classes, which are taught in high school. By taking AP Euro, AP US, AP Econ, etc, I didn’t have to take those classes at college which saved money as well as time. Now I can take classes I actually want to take, not some GE requirement. So high school, for me, was very beneficial. Not to beat a dead horse, but senior year was insane because that’s the only year I could have taken AP Gov, AP Econ, AP Spanish (how else can you take 3 years of spanish before AP Spanish 4?), and AP English.

IMO, high school also serves the purpose of babysitting your 14-17 year old’s. What else can they do during that time if they don’t go to school?

80

pretty true.

repackaged same ciriculum was a problem here too. grade 4 socials studies was the same as grade 11, only grade 12 tried to do something different.

they should make k-7 like k-5

they waste everybodies time from 5 years old till 12 years old.