Dr Winford James
trinicenter.com

Teaching critical thinking skills - 2

By Dr. Winford James
November 28, 2004

Teaching critical thinking skills - 1 November 21, 2004

The most valuable contribution that Professor Alec Fisher made to my education in his critical thinking workshop is his provision of a number of 'thinking maps' - really, sets of essential questions one must ask oneself and answer in order to effectively develop and utilize particular thinking skills. In the previous column, I presented his compare-and-contrast thinking map, which I repeat here:
  1. How are they [the elements contrasted] SIMILAR (perhaps given your PURPOSE)?
  2. How are they DIFFERENT (again, perhaps given your PURPOSE)?
  3. Which similarities and differences seem SIGNIFICANT?
  4. Do you see any PATTERNS in the significant similarities and differences?
  5. What CONCLUSION is suggested by the significant similarities and differences?
In this column, I propose to apply this map to an area of grammar (the simple present tense) in two languages (Standard English and Latin). My purpose is to determine whether there are any plural verbs in (Standard) English and Latin. Let's do it together.

First, I present the simple present tense paradigms (or conjugations) of the two languages in respect of the verb 'to fight', which is 'pugnare' in Latin; and I want you to note that I use the columns labeled 'singular' and 'plural' to conveniently place verbs in relation to their singular and plural subjects. For English, the paradigm is as follows:

PERSON
SINGULAR
PLURAL
1
(I) fight
(we) fight
2
(You) fight
(You) fight
3
(He/She/It) fights
(They) fight

And for Latin, it is:

PERSON
SINGULAR
PLURAL
1
pugno
pugnamus
2
pugnas
pugnatis
3
pugnat
pugnant

Now, let's apply our thinking map. Our first question is, How are they SIMILAR given our purpose? Apart from the procedural fact that they can both be conjugated or put into some framework or system such as the one I have presented (with the columns 'person', 'singular', and 'plural'), the only similarity seems to be that in both paradigms there is a stem or root plus suffixes or attachments to them. In English, the stem or root is 'fight-', to which is attached only the suffix 's' in one instance, and in Latin, the stem or root is 'pugn-', to which are added the suffixes {o, as, at, amus, atis, ant}.

Our second question is, How are they DIFFERENT given our purpose? They are, in a number of ways. First, 1st person singular 'fight' does not carry a suffix while 1st person singular 'pugn-o' carries 'o' as a suffix. Second, 2nd person 'fight' does not carry any suffix while 2nd person 'pugn-as' carries the suffix 'as'. Third, 1st person plural 'fight' does not carry any suffix while 1st person plural 'pugn-amus' carries the suffix 'amus'. Fourth, 2nd person plural 'fight' does not carry any suffix while 2nd person plural 'pugn-atis' carries the suffix 'atis'. And finally, 3rd person plural 'fight' does not carry any suffix while 3rd person plural 'pugn-ant' carries the suffix 'ant'.

Our third question is, Which similarities and differences seem SIGNIFICANT? The one real similarity I have identified (presence of a suffix on the 3rd person singular form in each paradigm) does not seem to be significant since Latin has a suffix in every case, not just in case of the 3rd person singular. But there is at least one significant difference. It is that while English has one suffix in the entire paradigm (and, therefore, two verb forms), Latin has six different suffixes in its paradigm (and, therefore, six verb forms).

Our fourth question is, Do you see any PATTERNS in the significant similarities and differences? Since we have established that there are no significant similarities, we can only answer this question by treating with significant differences, of which there is at least one. But to treat with this difference, we have to understand what a pattern is constituted of, and we have to reason well. I asked Professor Fisher what the constituents of a pattern were and he couldn't (or simply didn't) answer the question. But I propose that a pattern has at least two constituents, as follows: relative frequency of (significant) elements and symmetry of those elements.

From the point of view of relative frequency, we can see that English has the pattern of an '-s' added to the verb in respect of ONE AND ONLY ONE PERSON-NUMBER COMBINATION: 3rd person singular, but lack of an '-s' in respect of ALL THE OTHER combinations. And we can see that Latin has a different suffix or attachment for EACH OF THE COMBINATIONS.

From the point of view of symmetry, we can see that English is asymmetrical in having one suffix for one and only one person-number combination but no suffix for any of the others. Which means that there is no suffix for two verbs listed in the singular column, or for any of the three verbs listed in the plural column - clearly a case of asymmetry. But the Latin pattern is symmetrical in that in the singular column all the suffixes are exclusively singular (i.e., the same suffix does not occur in both columns!), and in the plural column all the suffixes are exclusively plural (i.e., the same suffix does not occur in both columns either!).

Which brings us to our final question, What CONCLUSION is suggested by the significant similarities and differences? The conclusion is clearly that while Latin has plural verbs, English doesn't. We know that Latin does because its pattern is that all the suffixes associated with plural subjects are unmistakably plural and all those associated with singular subjects are unmistakably singular. And we know that English doesn't because the lack of a suffix is associated with both singular and plural subjects.

So that the paradigm I presented for Latin is okay, but the one I presented for English is not. This is how the English paradigm should look:

3RD PERSON SINGULAR
OTHER PERSON-NUMBER COMBINATIONS
{He/She/It} fights
{I, you, we, they} fight

The English system is simple, isn't it? It is certainly far less complex than the Latin one. And one more thing, it clearly isn't based on the Latin system of multiple suffixes symmetrically distributable in singular and plural columns.


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