I do not like to read misrepresentations of my claims about the nature of language.

Johanna Rubba wrote:

>  I think the most practical aspect of teaching
> grammar in K-12 is to understand how sentence structure creates coherent
> texts, and determines the style of these texts. This is pretty squarely
> the center of your concern as a teacher. Halliday's grammar tries to
> contribute directly in this way; American discourse analysis does so
> indirectly (being immediately preoccupied with understanding spoken
> language) and some stylistics  does so; maybe stylistics is the
> epicenter of this field, but I don't know stylistics well.  We may hear
> from Bob Yates/Jim Kenkel on this topic, who don't believe there is any
> regular, describable sentence-grammar/text-coherence connection. This is
> one reason they speak out against SFG. Linguists in the functionalist
> tradition disagree on this point.

Jim Kenkel and I have NEVER said there is not "regular, describable
sentence-grammar/ text-coherence connection.   We have consistently maintained
that whatever the principles are for which describing "a well-formed text" (and
that is the wrong terminology to use) those principles are very, very different
from the principles which describe a well-formed text.

Let me give an example of what I mean.  One of the ATEG teaching tips shows how
students can use questions to determine whether they have joined two independent
clauses with a comma and created a comma splice (or run-on sentence).   Any
independent clause in English can be determined with this question test and the
test is very robust in its results.

I know of no equivalent property as a run-on for a text which identifies an
"ungrammatical text."   And, just as importantly, no equivalent test like the
question test, which identifies whether a given text is well-formed or not
well-formed with regard to this property.

It is from examples like this one that Jim and I believe that the properties of a
"well-formed text" are different from the properties of a well-formed sentence.
One of our many criticisms of SFG is its claim that in fact there are such
properties at both the sentence and text level.

Despite having colleagues and professors who have told us no coherent account of
text grammar exists, Jim and I have actually read claims about a text grammar and
have found such claims to be seriously flawed.  We have shared our findings at an
ATEG conference.  We paid special attention to the claims of SFG.

We would very much like Johanna to recommend for us all a useful text grammar for
concerns of teachers who teach writing.  And, as Johanna has reminded us several
times, she has read introductory texts on SFG, perhaps she can point us to the most
insightful paper or chapter on the properties of text in the SFG literature.  If it
is possible, we would very much like to know which functionalists works that she
has found especially insightful on the text-grammar interface.  We are especially
interested in whether these functionalists provide  a convincing account that
properties of texts are just like the properties of sentences with well-formed
conditions that every speaker/writer of English can recognize.

Finally, this does not mean that Jim and I are not interested in the grammar-text
interface.  For the last two years we have given several papers on the text-grammar
interface in the writing of non-native speakers.  We have had a paper accepted at
the form-meaning connections in SLA conference in Chicago in September  which dealt
with exactly this issue.  That conference has been postponed until February.  I
would be happy to send an RTF version of the paper we were going to give on this
issue to anyone who asks for it.  Just send me a message off the list  to request
an electronic copy of the paper.

Bob Yates, Central Missouri State University

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