This is arriving late...
"Firefly, firefly, firefly for me."
This snippet of the Ojibwe children's chant explained in the podcast caught my ear. It made me reflect on the flexibility of language, grammar, and expression. In English, the flexibility of language may look apparent in words like catch where we say, "Catch the ball," or "What's the catch?" Yet, this flexibility doesn't seem to match the flexibility of firefly in the Ojibwe language. Rather than noun becoming verb or verb becoming noun, firefly seems to act as its own part of speech that can cause multiple meanings (i.e. my firefly, fire fly for me, firefly fly for me, etc.). With these thoughts in mind, I had the following questions about the other texts:
In what ways, if any, can interlocking definitions within scientific writing benefit from the language styles of the Ojibwe language? Halliday mentions that "writers sometimes try to make the task simpler by adding further definitions, not realizing that in a construct of this kind the greater the number of things defined the harder it becomes to understand" (73). This is in reference to interlocking definitions and the climate example.
Can focusing on "functional what is being done" grammar cause students to lose their language? Schleppegrell states: "A focus on grammar that is functional, related to what is being done with language in the various contexts of language use, and offering students a range of options linked to the meanings they construe, can help students expand their linguistic repertoires without losing the language they bring" (126). Reflect on what tasks the author may be thinking about that need to be done, what contexts the author is implying, and what is "dysfunctional" grammar.
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