In my humble opinion the truth is somewhere in between... It is true that analysis helps, but how much in depth should it be in the beginning? I think one must find a balance because in the beginning too much complexity could be too much to sustain. I've done Genki and now I'm doing the third book of the serie, and I find Genki has a good compromise between semplicity and complexity. It gives a good amount of information that will put you on the right foot to understand those grammar constructions when you encounter them on native media. Sometimes this is not enough but you're on the right way and you must not understand everything from start. With the knowledge Genki gave me about causative and potential I am in the condition to analyze that sentence but, honestly, without the context from which it is taken I'm not able to understand the "actors" of it. But is this so essential in the beginning when there are tons of other things I still don't know? Things way more useful than this... So, it is not better to understand the basic of causative and potential first, then go on to other things you'll see every time... and then when you have a good understanding of all those things in a not so deep way, you can go more in depth with all those things. There are almost infinite details of every grammar point and you can not study every one of it in depth before going to the next grammar point, I think it is better to study in layers of complexity.

For example some grammar points are the same between the basic and the intermediate dictionaries of japanese grammar, but in the beginning it's better to study all the grammar points of the basic one, and only then proceed with the intermediate one? Or it's better to study a grammar point in the basic, then in the intermediate and finally in the advanced one, and only after this you go back to the basic one and proceed to the next grammar point? I think the first thing is better, but everyone is different and I might be wrong

Tzadeck Wrote:

Aikynaro Wrote:This is not how we understand language. Stop worrying about it so much. Go swallow enough Japanese that the grammar point makes sense without the kind of tortuous construction you've managed there. Questions like the one in the OP take care of themselves if you base your understanding of the language on what you actually encounter rather than what you are told by going cover-to-cover through a grammar textbook.

Do they really take care of themselves? I'm much more comfortable with constructions I spent a lot of time analyzing.

Also, how do you know that the path to understanding is paved faster through exposure than analysis? Certainly personal experience can't be enough, because you need to choose one path or the other so you can't compare.

Yeah, I don't want to make this a 'my way of learning was better than yours' kind of thing. I'm certainly not saying analysis is a bad thing (it's not - it's great).

But I think analysis without exposure is backwards. Analysing something that you only have no basis in is ... I dunno - dangerous. Like people who self-diagnose their issues and argue with the doctor when he's prescribing medicine, or something (it's a bad analogy, don't make me defend it). The book describes the situation and gives you a bunch of jargon to describe it but not the 'feel' for it that lets you understand it at anything but a vague intellectual level.

Analysis is great, but without context and a model of how things should be (through experience), how can you tell if your analysis is worth anything?

Anyway, I don't actually have any numbers or whatever to back me up and like everyone else I'm just crapping on so can't say anything with too much confidence. I am pretty sure though that someone with a bit more focus on exposure and a bit less emphasis on grammar books wouldn't feel the need to make this thread though. All the grammary-bits of the sentence in question appear often enough that they certainly don't sound weird when put together.

(and while I'm not a fan of the grammar-first approach for myself - I fully acknowledge that plenty of people use it and learn Japanese just fine. Just this particular thread is showing up what I think is a shortcoming specific to this approach. I encounter this sort of thing often from English-learners and I don't think I've had a single discussion about English grammar that has been aided by the sort of grammar-jargon the students have learnt from their textbooks. Most of the time it obfuscates what we actually talking about)

Sorry for rambling. Not good at expressing my thoughts on this issue.

I've found a similar sentence from ゼロの使い魔:

"朝食もテーブルでは食わせてもらえなかった。"

It's the familiar who is talking, the translation from that site with all drama translations is:

"I wasn't allowed to eat breakfast at the table either."

I know it's not the same thing because there is not the final "でしょう", but maybe it could be useful to understand the original sentence in the OP first post.

The thing that is difficult in the original sentence is that A ask B to let C do something. There are three actors and this is a little confusing, without the rest of the dialogue (or the author premise). But there is not anything technical to understand, or I'm wrong? In other words, if you encounter a sentence like that for the first time, if you know what the single parts are, with the help of context you'll understand it without the need of an explanation. Or isn't it so?

Tzadeck Wrote:This is not particularly difficult grammar, and whether you know kana and kanji have nothing to do with your ability to understand it. I certainly knew this grammar for a couple of years before I knew more than four or five hundred kanji.

This is also in Genki 2; JLPT N4/5 level. N3 is considerably more advanced than this, and is still only intermediate Japanese. It's just a somewhat strange example of that basic grammar.

Natural languages aren't build on grammar rules. They have patterns, and people who create the grammar rules create them in a way that tries to fit the patterns reasonably well.

So saying "this is basic grammar, just a strange example of it", is just plain incorrect. Japanese sentence patterns aren't examples of grammar rules, it's the other way around.

If it's a strange pattern, then it's not for beginners, or intermediate learners. Beginners and intermediate learners shouldn't concern themselves with strange language patterns, they should concern themselves with common patterns. And if it's strange to the point of sounding unnatural, the way the translation does in English, then no one should concern themselves with it, not even advanced learners. I'm not good enough at Japanese to make that determination, but as far as the English sentence "Yes, do you think I could get you to have her buy some oranges?", that is a sentence no student of English should ever be taught, no matter how advanced they are.

Often "advanced" topics, and not only in languages, are only more elaborate versions of "basic" topics. So just study the basic version of passive, causative etc.. which are those you'll see more, because the time you put now on those "strange" variations is stealing time you can spend in better ways just covering all the basic stuff first.

Sounds like the 80/20 rule (easiest 80% taking 20% of your time and the last 20% taking 80%). In other words, you'll get faster results starting with the low hanging fruit.

I think it's especially useful in language learning as knowing the easy stuff makes learning the hard stuff so much easier.

yogert909 Wrote:Sounds like the 80/20 rule (easiest 80% taking 20% of your time and the last 20% taking 80%). In other words, you'll get faster results starting with the low hanging fruit.

I think it's especially useful in language learning as knowing the easy stuff makes learning the hard stuff so much easier.

Although I'm still a beginner I feel I can confirm this by now. If I were to learn those unusual variations from the start I'd burned myself after a couple of days. But now, thanks to the basic things of Genki I can deal with those more complex situations without trouble.

Stansfield123 Wrote:Natural languages aren't build on grammar rules. They have patterns, and people who create the grammar rules create them in a way that tries to fit the patterns reasonably well.

So saying "this is basic grammar, just a strange example of it", is just plain incorrect. Japanese sentence patterns aren't examples of grammar rules, it's the other way around.

If it's a strange pattern, then it's not for beginners, or intermediate learners. Beginners and intermediate learners shouldn't concern themselves with strange language patterns, they should concern themselves with common patterns. And if it's strange to the point of sounding unnatural, the way the translation does in English, then no one should concern themselves with it, not even advanced learners. I'm not good enough at Japanese to make that determination, but as far as the English sentence "Yes, do you think I could get you to have her buy some oranges?", that is a sentence no student of English should ever be taught, no matter how advanced they are.

If your Japanese is not good enough to make a judgement about this sentence, then you're not in a position to know what I mean when I say it's basic grammar just a strange example. Nor to criticize that remark as being incorrect.

Aikynaro Wrote:

Quote:So here we have the "-te morau" construction in which the -te verb is causative and morau is in the potential, combined with the "probable" form of desu.

... the hell is this? Who even thinks about language in those terms?

None of the terms there are all that complicated; anyone who claims proficiency in Japanese should be able to give some explanation like that. I don't buy the idea that any learner would have a high proficiency in the language but be unable to identify basic verb forms like "causative" or "potential". This isn't highly technical linguistics we're talking about; it's material that will be in even the simplest, most dumbed-down language textbook.

I claim to have somewhere around N2 ability and I understand the sentence perfectly well, but I could not give you that kind of explanation of it. Why would I be able to? The sentence is perfectly understandable without it. I couldn't give you that sort of an explanation of the English equivalent either and I doubt anyone would expect me to be able to.

... Maybe I'm wrong and people actually do think about language in those sorts of terms. Bit of a scary thought. Then again I guess someone has to be reading all those grammar guides they put out, and what would a grammar guide be without a tonne of useless jargon to memorise along with the actual language you're trying to learn?

Aikynaro Wrote:what would a grammar guide be without a tonne of useless jargon to memorise along with the actual language you're trying to learn?

This is ridiculous. The whole point of a grammar guide is to define a grammar and break it down in terms that are understandable; that's whole point of linguistics! Just because the vocabulary is completely alien to you doesn't mean that there aren't tons of other people that actually understand it. Wiki: Causative Potential

You probably learned your fair share of linguistic terms to describe constructions and parts of your native language. In English (as well as Japanese), you have stuff like, Imperative, Declarative, Interrogative, [Dependent/Independent/Declarative/Relative] Clause, Preposition, Gerund, Transitive, Intransitive, Passive, Active, Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives. And the list goes on. All are linguistic terms which we use to describe a language.

vix86 Wrote:You probably learned your fair share of linguistic terms to describe constructions and parts of your native language. In English (as well as Japanese), you have stuff like, Imperative, Declarative, Interrogative, [Dependent/Independent/Declarative/Relative] Clause, Preposition, Gerund, Transitive, Intransitive, Passive, Active, Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives. And the list goes on. All are linguistic terms which we use to describe a language.

Can you tell by my English usage that I have no idea what most of those words mean? There's no need to know any of that to speak and understand a language. However I can see how understanding those terms can be useful for talking about grammar while learning or teaching a new language.

Aikynaro Wrote:I claim to have somewhere around N2 ability and I understand the sentence perfectly well, but I could not give you that kind of explanation of it. Why would I be able to? The sentence is perfectly understandable without it. I couldn't give you that sort of an explanation of the English equivalent either and I doubt anyone would expect me to be able to.

... Maybe I'm wrong and people actually do think about language in those sorts of terms. Bit of a scary thought. Then again I guess someone has to be reading all those grammar guides they put out, and what would a grammar guide be without a tonne of useless jargon to memorise along with the actual language you're trying to learn?

How did you learn it, then? According to you, "causative" and "potential" are useless jargon -- that immediately disqualifies every textbook and grammar book that I've seen.

yogert909 Wrote:Can you tell by my English usage that I have no idea what most of those words mean? There's no need to know any of that to speak and understand a language. However I can see how understanding those terms can be useful for talking about grammar while learning or teaching a new language.

That's what I'm talking about though. Maybe you forgot the terms, but during primary schooling, I would almost bet some of those terms were used quite a bit. And if you go and look up the proper usage of certain punctuations in English semicolons, commas, periods, etc. you'll see them again. They are the only way to concisely talk about correct grammar without ending up describing in long form all the parts that are allowed/expected in places.

It's been a while, so I can't say for sure, but I only remember one class in grade school where we diagrammed sentences - and I can't say I learned anything from the exercise anyway. That's the only time I remember hearing about anything other than nouns, verbs and adjectives. Mind you, my school wasn't one of the better schools in a country not known for great public education.

However I was a voracious reader and I believe most everything I learned, I learned by example.

I'm not too knowledgable in Japanese yet, but I can understand most of the grammar I've encountered in ~3000 core sentences without knowing the difference between causative or potential. So far, I've been learning the same way I learned English.

This isn't to say that there isn't any utility in learning about grammar more formally. This is just to say that it's not mandatory. And maybe some people learn differently.

The issue wasn't about knowing linguistic terms for language learning; although, that point was made. It was about the presence of those terms in books and how they somehow "weigh down" content and make it impossible to use. (Never mind the fact that most good books have glossaries and there is the internet.)

Sorry, I may have lost the thread there. I can't imagine too many grammar books not making extensive use of linguistic jargon. Unless they were very basic, or were some kind of catalog of example sentences. How else are you going to talk about things without giving them a name...?

It was the part about "You probably learned your fair share of linguistic terms to describe constructions and parts of your native language." that I was objecting to because it seemed to be implying that was the only way you could learn.

Aikynaro Wrote:... Maybe I'm wrong and people actually do think about language in those sorts of terms. Bit of a scary thought.

God forbid someone learn a language in a different way than you did.

yogert909 Wrote:It was the part about "You probably learned your fair share of linguistic terms to describe constructions and parts of your native language." that I was objecting to because it seemed to be implying that was the only way you could learn.

I wasn't implying that. In that part I was making the case that linguistic terms are something you have been exposed to most likely in the course of formal education in like middle school or high school. So to act like putting them in textbooks or reference material some how makes the material or the learning process "unnatural;" was just ridiculous. Understanding the terms isn't required to learn a language, but they definitely make it easier to look stuff up and make sense of things.

Aikynaro Wrote:, and what would a grammar guide be without a tonne of useless jargon to memorise along with the actual language you're trying to learn?

Oh come on, it's not even 1% of the total amount of stuff you need to memorize.

Stansfield123 Wrote:As far as I can tell, John555 is a beginner, who doesn't even use Kana, and doesn't know the Kanji yet.

He finished RTK1 in March. The sticking to romaji is just one of a series of bizarre choices.

:tentatively raises hand: everyone here does know that this is the topic of a major internet flame war, right? Antimoon/AJATT popularized the idea of consuming massive quantities of target language input and figuring out the grammar organically. Most foreign language instruction in most? parts of the world involves the opposite: teaching grammar as rules throughout the class and making students apply them. If it wasn't for this thread recreating a microcosm of that global flame war, I wouldn't link to, e.g., this decent summary of both sides of the argument and a dollop of the author's proffered insights: "the input hypothesis and the fallacy of antimoon and AJATT" (2010). Everything that could be said about this has been by all sides. :ducks and runs:

Edit: why post a summary of the upstart Antimoon argument when one could just linkbait to the source: Why you shouldn’t rely on grammar rules. But still I assumed everyone here was at least aware of this argument...

aldebrn Wrote::tentatively raises hand: everyone here does know that this is the topic of a major internet flame war, right? Antimoon/AJATT popularized the idea of consuming massive quantities of target language input and figuring out the grammar organically.

Not really. Antimoon was written by people who had already taken classes, and AJATT is fine with basic textbooks or grammar dictionaries.

aldebrn Wrote::tentatively raises hand: everyone here does know that this is the topic of a major internet flame war, right? Antimoon/AJATT popularized the idea of consuming massive quantities of target language input and figuring out the grammar organically. Most foreign language instruction in most? parts of the world involves the opposite: teaching grammar as rules throughout the class and making students apply them. If it wasn't for this thread recreating a microcosm of that global flame war, I wouldn't link to, e.g., this decent summary of both sides of the argument and a dollop of the author's proffered insights: "the input hypothesis and the fallacy of antimoon and AJATT" (2010). Everything that could be said about this has been by all sides. :ducks and runs:

Edit: why post a summary of the upstart Antimoon argument when one could just linkbait to the source: Why you shouldn’t rely on grammar rules. But still I assumed everyone here was at least aware of this argument...

I've already said this but I think the truth is in between. Rule out grammar study and pretend to learn only by immersion starting from 0 to fluency is an extreme way of thinking, but the same goes for an exaggerated study of grammar when you're still a beginner. Why not balance both sides? Just do basic grammar study to prepare yourself to basic immersion, then when you've mastered the basic and you feel you need more, only then start studying intermediate grammar and then do immersion of an intermediate level... etc..

I think it's folish tu study all the rules and exception of grammar in details you don't need just now, when you still have, for example, a basic vocabulary (see the romaji thing). It's like if you decide to study 5000 kanji from the start before anything. The OP decided to use romaji because he admit for the beginning stage it could be useful... still he is studying particular of grammar that surely he won't see for the next few months, especially as long as he rely on romaji. Why extreme immersion is bad but extreme grammar study is ok? Just find a compromise for your level...

Tzadeck Wrote:If your Japanese is not good enough to make a judgement about this sentence, then you're not in a position to know what I mean when I say it's basic grammar just a strange example. Nor to criticize that remark as being incorrect.

This has nothing to do with my Japanese ability.

Saying that "a sentence is an example of a grammar rule" is wrong no matter what natural language you're talking about, including all the ones I don't speak.

yudantaiteki Wrote:None of the terms there are all that complicated; anyone who claims proficiency in Japanese should be able to give some explanation like that.

So the 95% of native Japanese who would go "Huh?" to that explanation should stop claiming proficiency?