It is nice to know that work that  Jim Kenkel and I have been doing over the past ten years might turn out to be valuable.

>>> Craig Hancock <[log in to unmask]> 01/11/08 8:47 AM >>>
 . . . our students are often making sensible errors,
and it's hard to "correct" them if we don't respect their mindset. That
also means respecting the underlying systems of the language that they
are bringing into play.  

*************
If you are interested in one proposal on what these "underlying systems of the language" that students bring to their writing, you might want to consult the following paper:

Kenkel, J. &  Yates, R. (2003). A developmental perspective on the relationship between grammar and text.  Journal of Basic Writing, 22, 35-49.

We have another paper that deals with L2 writers.  In that paper, we try to show how not respecting the "underlying systems of the language" leads to error corrections that will not help such students improve.

Yates, R. & Kenkel, J.(2002). Responding to sentence-level errors.  Journal of Second Language Writing. 11, 29-47.

At the moment, we are finishing a paper that looks at a number of non-target-like structures in ninety essays written by both native and non-native speakers.  We suggest that these non-target-like structures (we don't like the term "error" either) are principled.

Over the past several years I have tried to bring to the attention of the list our work.  Craig has said on several occasions he has read it.  

There is something right about the following by Craig:

   The most common run-on sentence, usually a commas splice, in my
experience, is the one in which the second clause reasserts the first
in some way, as in "My father was a popular man, everyone seemed to
love him."  I usually suggest the semi-colon for that pattern, which I
would describe as two intonation groups (two clauses), but only one
idea asserted. It's easiest to teach when there is a pattern, maybe a
half dozen or so in fairly close proximity.

Of course, in most of the reading our students do, they rarely see such punctuation.  This raises a question about where these non-standard practices come from.  

A theory of language which claims our knowledge of  language is based only on input (specifically, language is a series of constructions based on the frequency of those constructions in the input) has a problem accounting for these non-standard punctuation practices.  After all, if language is a series of constructions, why are students punctuation practices so deviant from most of the input they have received?   

In the papers I cited above, Jim Kenkel and I propose what those principles might be.  I think Craig's supposition is mostly right.   This is interesting because the theory of language that Craig claims is most insightful to understanding writing is Systemic Functional Linguistics.  Halliday is quite explicit that SFL is not a theory of the mind.  It is puzzling that Craig proposes we need to respect the underlying system of language our students bring to writing but he has a commitment to a view of language that cannot address what those underlying principles are.  

To be specific, I know of no paper, grounded in SFL, that attempts to explain run-ons or comma splices from SFL principles.  Craig's supposition above is not grounded in any SFL principles that I know.

Bob Yates


 

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