Discussion Forum (Archived)
Guest
Although I teach math, my students are primarily second-language-learners, and we get into some interesting discussions about English usage. They have me stumped on this one:
We put food on the table and sit in our chairs to eat it. We ride on trains and planes, but we ride in cars. Is there any reason for the choice of in or on in a situation??? When they tell me they rode to work on the car, I can't help picturing them strapped to the roof or the hood.
Good question, Jane, and we'll be discussing it in an upcoming show, so stay tuned! The short answer is there's not a whole lot of rhyme or reason to it. (But then, we English speakers have similar problems when learning a language such as Spanish. Don't even get me started on how many times I've tripped over "por" and "para"!)
We put food on the table and sit in our chairs to eat it. We ride on trains and planes, but we ride in cars. Is there any reason for the choice of in or on in a situation??? When they tell me they rode to work on the car, I can't help picturing them strapped to the roof or the hood.
This is a really good way to put it!
Not to mention that other languages follow different logic. In French, you are "dans l'avion" "dans le bus" "dans le train", and the French chuckle just as much as you did about "on the car" when a non-native French speaker says "sur le bus" or "sur le train", imagining that the person is sitting on top of the vehicle. (which in parts of the developing world is in fact where a lot of people ride trains and buses, though fortunately not planes).
This may be only slightly related and I can't remember the name of the researcher, so I apologize, but I once did a summer internship at Indiana University and a linguist there was trying to determine the associations of nouns/modifiers as well as noun/prepositions in terms of the nature and condition of the referrant.
Specifically, I remember that she was trying to link the use of some versus the to the softness and/or porousness of the object, for instance one eats the apple but some cake. A child plays with the blocks but some play-doh, etc. Of course the usage varies according to meaning, person, and region, but she was specifically working with pre-schoolers in order to get, I guess, “raw data” from speakers who merely parrot as opposed to applying post-hoc analysis as to why they would use one preposition or modifier instead of another.
This came to mind when paradox mentioned sitting on/in a chair as I remember this being one of her examples--that the preposition varies based on the softness of the chair.
The fascinating part of the experiment was that she constructed “nonsense objects” out of different types of materials and “fantasy vehicles” etc. to see if children would consistently apply the same groups of modifiers to objects they had not previously encountered. I don't remember any conclusive statements as there were so many variables as she was also testing for the relationship of the sound of the word as well.
If memory serves she was conducting the same sorts of experiments with both English and Spanish speaking children.
Would love to know if anyone recalls reading about this particular experiment or has heard of anything within the school of research.
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
1 Guest(s)