Vol 01 No 4 TESL Reporter

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Yoe k OE

X

teaching english as a second language
vo l 1 no 4 L voi I
A

laie hawaii

summer

1968

J MORTON this paper presents a few of the most prominent differences between structure of tongan that cause problems in the teaching of english to ton gan Tongans many of the problems encountered by the tongan in studying english arise from his attempts to transfer the patterns of tongan structure over o the english both in speaking and m in writing the result is that where ever the structure of his native lan guage differs from that of english he has difficulty and makes mistakes since this paper is not designed to present a highly technical discussion of the subject a minimum of the technical jargon of descriptive linguistics will be used however all of the material of the paper has been derived by the research methods of descriptive linguistics to the linguist desiring a more detailed and technical description of the matters in this paper the authors doctoral dissertation A descriptive grammar of tongan wilh prove helpful l at the outset it should be pointed out that aqhsdst basic structural 0e s d difference b eipween english and tongan i of the devices a m attiica used to sigal am mamccall meaning sign 2
0

A sttrutctu comparison ri ruc ur al o pa s s engliis h and tongan of e
by ERMEL

called highly synthetic or inflected languages depend upon modification of the word to indicate grammatical
engcomparison lish and tongan page 1 by ermel J morton controlled guided and free wriA

ccoxlxtexitsf xl a o stru tura
by
TESL

page 3 richard port church college of western samoa

ting

plans

curriculum

p age 4 e

teaching the
by

alice pack an invitation to publish

itth

of english
page 5 page 6

isjaslof

some lan gu ages iricbuufjfiing the so l l of m fVn i e rm l dr errm u1 J Mmtoon is the di m a tn m on p4eitloorr o40h e linguiticcs last c o oe h guis stics r chl 3cttt att nicks arol llege in rex ica kk j r eg iort ro b Idh
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concepts for example spanishhabllo hab o 1 I speak hable 1 I spoke shows a change of grammatical meaning effected by use of a suffix in english are found such inflections as see saw seen and as walk walked walking etc in all of these instances the change in grammatical meaning is signalled by inflection of the word another grammatical device used in many languages is that of allowing context to indicate the precise grammatical meaning with no change in the form of the word the number of e r a amp e most nouns in japanese for foxexmplle

TESL

reporter

2

tsuia hakooybbox tsibo hak o x sw

is indicated by context hako to inki

and 1o a nd t0 nd and inki tsubo fiinkstiand 6 n k a nd may mean either the box and the inkstand or 99 the boxes and the inkstand depending upon the context the japanese language except in a few in stances makes no overt distinction between singular and plural nouns leaving the meaning to be inferred n hi ch from context or the situation in iwwhich the nouns are used with regard to english and tongan english makes use of context to a greater extent than tongan a structural difference that presents a number of problems to the tongan learning english forttuna e unattelly however the number of english nouns having the same form in singular as in plural is not too great and the extent of the problem

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is limited a

function words used

group of languages in fact the main grammatical device in tongan is that of using function words to signal grammatical meaning the tongan subject marker specifying subjects of transitive verbs is an instance of such a function word if sione john is to be used as a subject it must be preceded by the

separate words which may be designated as function words convey grammatical concepts in a number of languages tongan belongs to this

TESL
A

reporter

function word e as in the sentence john called nae jj ia e 7one sion l il ui a e past tense marker uj him rn c4 a e subject ja him to call i Joha oh marker and sione jojhnnn7 in japane se the function word wa also marks e w a as171 f subjects as in wattashe wa hon wo a motte imaku 1 I have the bookn s I wattashi w a k a as T woa subject marker 17o inon moo n book wo direct object or h0 and goal marker motte have imaku present tense As indicated s wa marks the subject and wo the direct object in this sentence the e of tongan and wa and wo of japaresse are separatte wordg conveying para ef ne a s f- e grammatical meaning the use of separate words is the third major type of grammatical device word order another type of con textual device is also used to convey grammatical meaning in a number of languages including eng lish the well known example of the doig bit the man as contrasted with or o the man bit the dog illustrates the use of word order in signalling the subject and object in the sentance do & o the change of subjects from 12g tto man and the change of goals or direct objects from man to dog is effected by a change of word order the subject precedes the verb and the object follows it many languages use the device of word order to indicate the relationship of modifier to the word modified english makes much ct6 e more use of word orrcdhar as a gramma tical device than does tongan

johnin 7

1

19

quarterly publication of the english language institute and the BATESL program of the church college i
of hawaaiii aw
TESL

S gn a three siignalllliing devices
major grammatical devices in used n sign alling grammatical meaning inflection or changes made in the word use of separate words or function words and use of context to signal meaning however since this paper is in no way an attempt to explain the types of grammatti mma e cal devices used in languages gen erally but is rather an attempt to bra point out the differences in the use of such grammatical devices by eng lish and tongan the examples so far given will suffice to lay the groundwork for the discussion which follows continued on page 6

three

thus to summarize there are

editor william D conway assistant professor of english and
pack assistant professor of english and TESL alritsih les arelevant to teaching c eng as second language in hawaii the south pacific and asia may be submitted to the editor through box 127 the church college

staff

mrs

alice

of hawaii laie hawaii 96762 manuscripts should be double spaced and typed not exceeding three pages deadline for the fall edition is august 25 1968