Language Learning: A Useful Starting Point
The first place to start any language, is mathematically, in the sense that something formulaic and easily recognisable requires no translation, as it is already in a universally symbolic form.
Copular expressions, sentences which in English, most commonly employ the verbal “to be” in its variously conjugated forms, are some of the easiest structures to build on, and whilst a volley of dissent may follow my saying so (due to the absence of copular verbs in some languages,) nothing could be easier than picking up a vase and uttering the fact that “this is a vase.” That it is a conceptually easy starting point is made clear by the fact that we could go even further. One could employ, if the wish is to eliminate a possibly unfamiliar determiner and demonstrative adjective or pronoun, the stark and far from aesthetically pleasing communicative concept of picking up of the vase and the indicative utterance “vase.” Yes, perhaps a tad neanderthal, but unarguably to the point.
And of course so it should be. Starting off with language that is “to the point”, the student sets off on a journey, the end result hopefully, to be “pointed” in their usage of a second language. Floundering in utterances that render one seemingly puerile does little for one’s esteem, so concrete control of a second language should be the starting point. And copular clauses, it would seem, provide a wonderful place to begin. This may be because regardless of the presence or absence of a linking verb in the student’s first language, the formulaic nature of an “existential” sentence, in its most concrete as opposed to abstract forms, is essentially an equation that is made between an object and an indicative reference, location, or descriptor, something almost anyone could grasp the idea of. Consider the following examples;
This is a book.
That is a pen.
She is a student.
The flower is beautiful.
Now whilst the functionality of a handful of simple copular expressions, in and of themselves, is somewhat lacking, and certain concepts such as determiners and word order may still prove to be initial stumbling blocks, the core concept of working from such a foundational matrix can not be overstated, and the multidirectional expansion of such clauses will guarantee that students will progress quickly, and hopefully with ease. And should they not show quite as much promise when it comes to building more sentential and syntactic muscle, then they certainly will have a useful set of clauses upon which they may encode to memory, a substantial lexical set. Consider the following expansions.
This is my money.
This is a beautiful book.
Her car is red.
And consider the following lexical expansion.
European students are friendly people.
My beautiful friend is an international English student.
The international plane ticket is expensive.
This massive university is fantastic.
The expansions that can be built on these SVC (Subject-Verb-Complement) chains are thus endless, and still fall within the realm of the English ‘simple’ sentence. So, if you will indulge my quoting of a Rodger’s and Hammerstein’s favourite, let’s start at the very beginning. When we read we begin with A, B, C. When we construct language we begin with, A equals B.
