Proficiency alongside "poverty".

I'm sometimes surprised, and somewhat puzzled, when I read linguistics papers written by nonnative speakers. The use of language in such articles can often range for highly proficient to quite poor. The linked text below is an example of such puzzlement. In that paper simple errors appear alongside proficient use of the language. I wonder how such a thing can occur. I wonder how a nonnative can have such skilled use of one part of the language and still make basic errors. I also wonder how such errors passed the scrutiny of the editors.

EG

"Nattinger (in Carter and McCarthy, 1998:76) suggests that language is basically a "compositional" process in which many of its words co-occur together forming single units of meaning. He call these as lexical phrases or word combinations;"


Another:

Grammatical collocations consist of a noun, or an adjective or a verb... . The followings are examples: at night, extend to"

http://jurnal-humaniora.ugm.ac.id/do...rio%20rini.pdf

M56,

Is "co-occur" a technical term? Additionally, just because errors appear in text doesn't mean that they make these same errors in speech. A lot of errors appear in text because their authors change their minds in the middle of the sentence, if you know what I mean.

<< I wonder how a nonnative can have such skilled use of one part of the language and still make basic errors. >>

I'm sure I do the same thing in Spanish sometimes. I have a broad (but not deep) knowledge of Spanish grammar, including a fair grasp of many issues that confuse non-natives such as when and when not to use the subjunctive... yet I occasionally still make mistakes like referring back to a feminine noun using a masculine object pronoun. It's not because I don't know that I have to use the feminine pronoun, but because I've only had so much practice in actually writing Spanish. It's one thing to know the rules, but another to keep them all in your head while you're writing or speaking.

It does mystify me that such errors slip by editors, though.

<< Is "co-occur" a technical term? >>

Apparently "co-occur" is a real word, but I would never use it unless it is a technical term. In any case, there's a pretty good chance that the "co-" makes "together" redundant, so it'd still be an error.

- Kef

<Is "co-occur" a technical term?>

It's common in texts about collocation.

<Additionally, just because errors appear in text doesn't mean that they make these same errors in speech. >

Indeed not.

<A lot of errors appear in text because their authors change their minds in the middle of the sentence, if you know what I mean.>

Do you think that is the case with:

"call these as lexical phrases or word combinations;" ?

Is the "as", there, an example of a writer changing his mind?

<there's a pretty good chance that the "co-" makes "together" redundant, so it'd still be an error. >

I'd say "together" is redundant, there.

How about "consists of", above? Any problem with that?

M56,

I'm an EFL teacher and the mistakes shown in your examples are the kind I'd expect from people with an advanced level of EFL/ESL and don't surprise me at all

'co-occur together'

Even native speakers sometimes make mistakes of redundancy.

'He call these as lexical phrases or word combinations'

lack of 's' on the verb. Inflexions are one of the last things of a target language that a learner gets to master, even simple things such as remembering to add 's' to the verb.

'as' many people don't realise that prepositions are often used idiomatically and therefore translate them literally where the target language uses a different preposition or doesn't use one at all.

'The followings are examples'

'following' above is an adjective used as a noun. In English adjectives don't pluralise while they do in some other languages. See my point about inflexions above. This applies to remembering when not to add inflexions as much as it does to remembering when to add them.

Just one thing; about the "call these as lexical phrases" example, specifically about what the "as" is doing there... I'd think the author was probably torn between calling "these" blah blah, and considering "these" *as* blah blah. Like someone already said, it is easy to lose track of your thoughts and restructure your sentence in your head without actually doing it in your text.

>><< Is "co-occur" a technical term? >>

Apparently "co-occur" is a real word, but I would never use it unless it is a technical term. In any case, there's a pretty good chance that the "co-" makes "together" redundant, so it'd still be an error.<<

"Co-occur" is definitely a real word, even though it is one that one would probably only show up in formal technical literary register.

<I'm an EFL teacher and the mistakes shown in your examples are the kind I'd expect from people with an advanced level of EFL/ESL and don't surprise me at all >

I agree that most of the things you focus on above are mastered late by some students. I'm just wondering how that comes about. Do you think that such advanced level students are not able to edit their own work when reflecting on, or checking, the papers they write?

I'm also wondering how such errors can escape the eyes of the editors.

<Like someone already said, it is easy to lose track of your thoughts and restructure your sentence in your head without actually doing it in your text. >

With an academic paper, do you think it's OK to leave the errors in?

<"Co-occur" is definitely a real word, even though it is one that one would probably only show up in formal technical literary register. >

That's right. The BNC (below) gives only 14 hits in one million words. Thirteen of those are in the Academic register.

http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/

"<Like someone already said, it is easy to lose track of your thoughts and restructure your sentence in your head without actually doing it in your text. >

With an academic paper, do you think it's OK to leave the errors in? "

No, of course not. But I can make such mistakes in my native language even, if I get distracted. My point being, that type of mistakes is not always due to poor or non-native language skills. Of course they are still mistakes, and the sillier they are, the worse it is in an academic paper - they show sloppiness.

<<My point being, that type of mistakes is not always due to poor or non-native language skills. >>

Your mistake there ("that type of mistakes") is due to...?

"Your mistake there ("that type of mistakes") is due to...? "
My not being a native speaker.

Your attempt to being a smartass is due to..?

<*Your attempt to being a smartass is due to..? >

attempt at

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