English Linguistics - Essay Example

English Linguistics Extract: “In any school their must have a fight. Even in preste school their must be a fight. Fight usually starts over argument. If someone tells a person something bad they would want to fight. I have seen very bad fight. One day I was by my father’s farm. My father and his brother started to corral then eventually started to fight like little children. They fight until my uncle got a cut. Since I come this school I have never being in any fight. Their are no rule for fighting almost every day there is fight in our class.

” Within this extract, there are several deviations from standard English that should be corrected. The usage of the word ‘their’ in the first sentence is supposed to be referring to a location, but the word used is referring instead to the ownership of something by a person or group. The word should be spelled ‘there’. This same error occurs in the second sentence although it corrects another error seen in the first sentence – the use of the word ‘have’ instead of ‘be’ as it is used in the second sentence.

Have can be used to indicate possession. Because the word follows a location, this sentence should read ‘there must be a fight’ indicating present tense. The second sentence, other than the misuse of the word ‘their’ also contains a spelling error on the word ‘preste’. It is believed this word is being used to describe a priest as this would fall within the context of the sentence and would also be an accurate unit of measurement in the context of the extract as it would not be expected that a group of students studying holy scripture would be inclined to fight.

A better word to use here would be ‘seminary’ as this is the term typically used to describe the types of schools that future priests attend. The third sentence, although it agrees in tenses, has the tense turned inside out. Plurals should be placed on ‘fights’ and ‘arguments’ while ‘start’ should remain singular. Similarly, to make the cases agree in the fourth sentence, ‘would’ should be changed to ‘will’ to keep it in present tense. The fifth sentence is simply missing the word ‘a’ between ‘seen’ and ‘very’ while the sixth sentence is correct.

The eighth sentence contains another spelling error giving the piece a completely different meaning from what is believed is intended. The word ‘corral’ refers to a fence with a gate that surrounds a particular piece of land for the intention of limiting the movements of a variety of animals. It is believed the word intended here is ‘quarrel’, which refers to an angry dispute or an altercation. This meaning fits in perfectly with the context of the excerpt. Because this event being related happened in the past, it is important to keep the ninth sentence, which is still describing the fight between the father and uncle, also in the past with the use of the word ‘fought’ instead of ‘fight’.

The tenth sentence has a similar tense problem even though it has moved on to another subject. Because the speaker is talking about the time that has elapsed between now and when he first arrived at the school, this entire sentence should be placed in past tense – ‘came’ instead of ‘come’, ‘been’ instead of ‘being’. The verbs used in the extract are present, rather than past, tense. The final sentence repeats the mistake of the first two with its use of the word ‘their’ to denote location or place.

Again, the correct word here should be ‘there’. In addition, the word ‘rule’ should be made plural to fall in line with the singular tense and the sentence should be split into two distinct sentences or separated by a semi-colon following the word ‘fighting’ because of the shift in thought direction. Finally, the word ‘a’ should be inserted between ‘is’ and ‘fight’.