"Belief", "Beliefs," and "Issues of Belief"

[studiot]

15 minutes ago, joigus said:

Yes, my favourite example are phrasals. The verb "look" is my preferred example:

look into

look after

look down on

look up to

One of the best little pieces of comic theatre of all time was based on this.

Here is wikipedia, you may be able to find a ytube of it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_sketch

 

18 minutes ago, joigus said:

Where can you see the error, please? The article is quite long...

Yes indeed it is quite long, so I do not find it suprising there are some contentious points.

The author is rather dismissive of the use of auxiliary verbs in general and the verb to be in particular.

He claims that the verb to be is unneccessary and has almost withered away.

Not so.

Consider the travels of Marco Polo to China, a jourrney that took several years.

Had he been English, Marco might have said, "I'm going to go to China next week."

As he left Italy he might have said "I'm going to China".

Two years later he was still "going to China", he had not by then arrived.

One thing he would not have said would be "I go to China".

The action was "imperfect" as it occupied an extended length of time and was still in progress during other events that might be spoken about.

Imperfect here means that it is not complete at the time of utterance.

A perfect action is complete from start to finish. An imperfect one may never be completed for some reason.

 

Two other gripes with the article.

Firstly no mention is made of the difference between spoken and written language when comparing English to other languages.
It is my belief that this difference is one of the key factors as most languages are largely phonetic, English being the glaring exception.

So it is emminently possible to learn and know many words and the associated grammar in English but not to be able to say or recognise them when spoken.

Even English speakers sometimes have this trouble.

Take the letter a as in car or cat.
The big difference in the pronunciation of the 'a' leads to two difference pronunciations of the word castle, which confuses many.

Secondly the thesis that it was the influence of the Vikings who did away with the manyfold word endings.
One wonders why they did also do this with old French.
Or why the endings were still there in middle English a couple of centuries after the end of the Viking era.

 

 

[vexspits]

1 hour ago, joigus said:

Yes, my favourite example are phrasals. The verb "look" is my preferred example:

look into

look after

look down on

look up to

...

Completely different meanings.

In Spanish those are fused:

"comprender", "aprender", "desprender", "reprender", "sorprender"

Certainly not unique to English. You mentioned Spanish:

Acabar con/de/por
Dar    a/con
Estar   de/con/para/por

On 6/21/2020 at 12:02 PM, joigus said:

One thing that concerns me both as teacher and as speaker is to develop a trick that doesn't require to stop and think about grammar while you're speaking or writing, so that the language flows more naturally. Let's say I want to find a trick

I would just focus on the problematic word (belief) and the few instances in which it makes you stumble, find an appropriate pattern, paste it on your kitchen wall in a large font, stare at it every day during your morning coffee until it is drilled into your head. 

So, say, in the case of an opening sentence where you are doling “it” out:

"I'm going to give you a piece of advice"

or,

"Let me give you some input"

Just avoid the “companion”, pick something like: “Let me share with you a belief (of mine)” and stick with it like it is the best thing since sliced bread. And yes, “forget about the distinction between "belief" as countable and "belief" as uncountable.”

My two cents.

[joigus]

2 minutes ago, vexspits said:

Certainly not unique to English. You mentioned Spanish:

Acabar con/de/por
Dar    a/con
Estar   de/con/para/por

Oh, yes, 

"estar por" ("estoy por creerte")

"dar por" ("le dieron por muerto")

"tener por" ("lo tengo por cierto")

"deber" = must

"deber de" = might

"pasarse sin" ("puedo pasarme sin ello")

LOL. Probably hundreds of those more. I think we tend to oversimplify other people's language. Most of the rules are learnt by use, not by reading lists or studying grammar and syntax.

Nice contribs. @studiot & @vexspits (+1,+1) Thanks a lot.

1 minute ago, joigus said:

"estar por"

Edit: Sorry, you already mentioned this one.