96. The Point! (II)

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The typical cloze test, invented long ago for institutions to check students’ or candidates’ knowledge, is about to change. It won’t take long to admit units that have been called form-meaning pairings, which make sense only when used together. On the contrary, insisting on the existence of slots for individual ‘words’ will only add to people’s fragmented knowledge – with a little luck, no one is doing things with this purpose in mind!

Obviously, such changes take time simply because it is a lot easier to make things stay as they are (see previous episode) than innovate.

Completing the cloze below will be easier indeed if and only if you have watched the previous episodes attentively. You’ll find the key after the page break.

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The national 1. _______ in the Land of Point was a game called Triangle Toss. And Triangle Toss was a game for people with pointed heads. The object of the game was to 2. _______ a triangle as far as you could and then run to the opposite end of a field and catch it on the point of your head. But 3. _______ Oblio had no point, he would throw a triangle and Arrow would jump up on his shoulders and the two of them would run to the opposite end of the field, Arrow making the 4. _______ on the point on the top of his head.

Now, most of the kids in the town thought that it was all right to allow Oblio and Arrow to compete as a team. But there was 5. _______ one kid who was the son of the evil Count, who was the 6. _______ to the King. And the Count’s kid insisted that, since Triangle Toss was for people with 7. _______ heads, and Oblio obviously did not fall into that category, he should not be allowed to play. Well, to settle the dispute, it was decided to have a contest – best two 8. _______ three tosses and catches. If Oblio won, he’d get to play; but if the Count’s kid won, Oblio wouldn’t be allowed to play.

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And that brings us to the game.

At the end of the game, Oblio had beaten the Count’s kid two out of three. And when the Count heard of his son’s disgraceful 9. _______ at the hands of this pointless Oblio, he was outraged. So he went to the King and reminded him of the Law of the Land, which was that all things and all people in the Land of Point was to have one. Since Oblio didn’t have one, he was 10. _______ violation of that law, which called for his banishment. Now, the King, who was a good king, was painfully aware of his duty, which was to convene the Tribunal and to conform to the Count’s 11. _______. And that’s what he did. 

And when the Tribunal reviewed the case, it could only arrive 12. _______ one conclusion: Oblio had no point; he was therefore guilty of being in violation of the law. And so it was decided that he and Arrow – for Arrow was found guilty of complicity – be banished from the Land of Point to the Pointless Forest.

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The next day, Oblio’s mother and father and all the townspeople gathered to bid a sad farewell to Oblio and Arrow. Now, everyone thought that banishment to the Pointless Forest was 13. _______ excessive, but the Law was the Law, and the people were good, law-abiding citizens, and –well – that was the first time anything like this had ever happened and no one knew quite what else to do. So Oblio and Arrow set 14. _______ for the Pointless Forest where all things are pointless and nothing is pointed.

By the way, the distance between the Land of Point and the Pointless Forest was directly proportional to the 15. _______ of time it takes to sing a song--

A BIT	A LITTLE	AMOUNT	ASSISTANCE	AT
CATCHES	DEFEAT	FEAT	HEIR	IN
INSISTENCE	OFF	OUT	OUT OF	PASTIME
POINTED	POINTLESS	SINCE	THIS	TOSS

Unforyunately, the episodes are not available on the free youtube application. The link is the same: The Land of Point

95. The Point! (I)

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Honest, how many of the lexical units based on point (noun) are you sure you know the meaning of? How many do you use in your active thematic vocabulary?

When you have consulted the examples attached in the previous post, it's time you watched the first part of a film that I hope you will enjoy: it's by courtesy of this as yet exceptionally generous World Wide Web, where information is - you'll have to admit it - at your fingertips!
The Point!

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There is no denying that language is symbolic. I take it to be the rule, for in fact we use the language to mean something, and we expect our interlocutors to see what we mean. If you have already watched the first part of this highly symbolic cartoon film, you have come to know something about Oblio, and the land he was born in. Now, being born somewhere should be a blessing for all those who actually realize that there's a lot to learn in a lifetime. To learn, that is, often the hard way. Only when you finished watching all the (eight) episodes will you grasp the underlying idea; for the time being, there's this stop-and-check of the first episode. Only then are you asked to go on watching Part Two.

Triangle Toss

'This is the town and these are the people

This is the town where the people all stay

This is the town and these are the people

That’s the way they wanted it

That’s the way it’s going to stay

"Everything’s got one

Everything needs one

Couldn’t be without one

Everyone has one

"Years ago, there was a place called The Land of Point. That was because everything in the Land of Point had one: the barns, the houses, the carts, everything – 1. _______ the people. Everyone in the Land of Point had a point on the top of his head. Everyone, 2. _______, with the exception of Oblio.

"Now, although Oblio was born 3. _______ a set of normally-pointed parents, and although he was born physically perfect in every 4. ________ respect, he was born without a point. He was round-headed. And as time passed, Oblio became increasingly 5. _______ his uniqueness. And so did everyone 6. _______, which made life in the Land of Point rather uncomfortable for him and his parents. You see, Oblio became 7. ________ an involuntary celebrity. And he was subject to the sometimes cruel and 8. _______ harassment of his schoolmates. He was 9. _______ being the only pointless person in the Land of Point and, in an effort 10. _______ make life easier, his mother knitted a pointed cap 11. _______ to wear, so as to conceal his pointless condition; but it didn’t do 12. _______ good because everyone knew he didn’t have a point, so it only managed to make Oblio a little 13. _______ . In fact the _______ real friend he had was his dog Arrow.

"Me and my Arrow

_______ than narrow

Wherever we go

Everyone knows

It’s me and my Arrow…"

ANY	AWARE OF	A SORT OF	ELSE	EVEN
FOR HIM	FROM	LONELIER	MANY	MUCH
ONLY	OTHER	STRAIGHTER	THAT IS	THAT WAS
TO	TO	UNEASY	UNUSUAL

  

94. The complex world we live in

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‘I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.’ Socrates

The Vocabulary Movement stated, among other fundamental ideas, the fact that knowing a word – we finally agreed in the previous post to call it a lexical unit (precisely because it may be represented by more than one stretch of letters) – makes it easier to recognize the structure the unit is used in. Again, what about the structure? Don’t we have to know that, too?

I’ll take an example, and if its combinatorial possibilities make it easier for me to get to the meanings it has developed, I will agree that knowing that lexical unit is enough for me to build fluency. Now, knowing the lexical unit with all its combinatorial possibilities should lead us to the next step: how many of them are necessary for a student to say he or she has a command of the whole field that the nucleus has developed?

I chose POINT (noun) – from the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English Online (LDOCE). You will find the full display with examples in the attached pdf: The Point

How many of the following uses do you know?

1. [countable] a single fact, idea, or opinion that is part of an argument or discussion:

point about

2. the point

3. [uncountable] the purpose or aim of something:

point of

4.  [countable] a particular place or position:

5. [countable] an exact moment, time, or stage in the development of something:

6.  [countable usually plural] a particular quality or feature that something or someone has

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Socrates drinking hemlock (condemned to commit suicide)

somebody's/something's good/bad points

point of

7.  [countable] one of the marks or numbers that shows your score in a game or sport:

8.  [countable] a sharp end of something:

9. boiling point/freezing point/melting point etc

10. the point of no return

11. point of departure

12. be on the point of (doing) something

13. up to a point

14. to the point

15. make a point of doing something

16. when/if it comes to the point

17. in point of fact

18. not to put too fine a point on it

19.  [countable] a sign (. ) used to separate a whole number from any decimals that follow it

20. [countable] a mark or measure on a scale:

21.  [countable] a very small spot of light or colour:

22.  [countable] one of the marks on a compass that shows direction:

23.  [countable] a long thin piece of land that stretches out into the sea:

24.  [countable] British English a piece of plastic with holes in it which is attached to a wall and to which electrical equipment can be connected:

25. points

[plural] British English a piece of railway track that can be moved to allow a train to cross over from one track to another.

Then again, you might like it in the shape of a 'semantic flower', like this (Visual Thesaurus):

93. Where Does Structure Come into Play?

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Here’s another challenging myth which, unfortunately for most students, hovered over [English] language teaching since the 1980s.

The importance of vocabulary cannot be denied. Still, the very notion of vocabulary sends us to the dictionary – such a useful tool when it comes to looking up meanings (and translations). But wait: take any ‘word’ – let’s call it a lexical unit – and see if it functions in isolation, if it helps you create an utterance. Any good dictionary will give you examples of that lexical unit’s environment and so it will make you see that lexis without structure as a support for phonological realization will take you nowhere.

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If language is used and useful for communication, wouldn’t it be natural to ask ‘how much lexis and how much structure’ is necessary for someone to boast of good language skills? Yes and no. Honestly, it would be almost indecent to think about a person’s head (in this case the person is a student of English) as if it were a bowl in which to mix ingredients. But wait, there’s more: such ingredients as lexis and grammar must not be mixed, or blended, they must be combined. It is the combinatorial possibilities of the language that leaves us a faint hope of creating our discourse, for – in fact – languages have already been created and, like all living languages, they are constantly renewed, enriched, and transformed through use by their speakers, who have inherited it and are passing it on to their children.Well then, where does vocabulary stop its influence and where does the fearful <grammar> start manifesting?

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I’m looking at one of those areas where finding the fine line between ‘lexis’ and ‘grammar’ is almost impossible. They have been generally known as collocations, and they range from a combination of two words which generally go together to fully formed sentences (why? – because the speakers of the language found the combination useful and, by usage, it has become conventionalized, that is, a lexical unit).

The example is taken from Ronald Langacker’s Cognitive Grammar (2008) and, do believe me, it gives food for thought indeed.

When someone had the inspiration to combine moon with night so as to express the idea that that night there was no (visible) moon in the sky, the combination a moonless night was created. A good template it was, for other, similar combinations appeared:

A childless couple

A hopeless situation

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A treeless plain

A fruitless search

A cordless phone

What I mean by conventionalized lexical units in this case is that one cannot manifest his or her free will in order to come up with a combination like *a giraffeless zoo. It would be worthy of poetry, though. The conclusion is obvious: you have to accept them as they are and build fluency. It is practically impossible to build fluency without using conventionalized lexical units.