Linda,
The College English Association is having its national meeting in Indianapolis, your home town, March 26-28, 2015. On Saturday March 28, 12 of us will be presenting as part of the new "Grammar Strand." At least 4 of us are ATEG members! This promises to be a wonderful conference! I would appreciate any information you have about Indianapolis.
Here's another conference not to be missed. Our own ATEG 26th Annual Conference is coming up on July 24-25 at Prince George's Community College, Largo MD. We are putting together a 2-day Pre-Conference Workshop and have another field trip in the works. For more information, check out our new ATEG website at: http://ateg.weebly.com/
Sherry
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Linda Comerford
Sent: Monday, February 16, 2015 3:20 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Passive Voice vs. Copular + Predicate Adjective
Changing subjects, am I writing to the correct people about what I believe is an upcoming grammar conference in Indianapolis at the end of March? I’m interested in both attending it as well as providing some guidance about Indy as I live there.
If anyone knows anything about this and can provide some details, I’d appreciate it.
Linda Comerford
Cell: 317.696.4444
Office and Fax: 317.786.6404
[log in to unmask]
www.comerfordconsulting.com <http://www.comerfordconsulting.com/>
From: Linda Di Desidero [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Sunday, February 15, 2015 8:32 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Passive Voice vs. Copular + Predicate Adjective
Just two more cents toward Herb's suggestion about stativity, as that clearly seems to be the key to this question:
We think of something being closed as an adjective that describes the current state or condition of the thing. We do not think of it as something that has happened or been done to the thing. Even when we talk of something as partially closed, we are referring to the state of the object, not to what has been done to the object. For that reason, viewing "X is closed" as passive seems odd. Better to view it as stative/descriptive.
On the other hand, if you add an agent, the passive view emerges:
The window is closed by me every Wednesday at 2 pm.
In this case, I am not referring to the state of the window so much as the action that is carried out on it.
Linda
Linda Di Desidero, PhD
Director, Leadership Communication Skills Center
Marine Corps University
Gray Research Center, Room 122
Quantico, Virginia 22134
703-784-4401
On Sat, Feb 14, 2015 at 9:38 PM, Hancock, Craig G <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Herb,
I think we can say that something is "partly" or "partially" closed. (window, door, bridge.) My university sometimes "partially closes" and is therefore "partially closed" as a result. (They cancel classes but keep the offices open.) "I didn't see who actually fired the shot because the door was partially closed." We can use "very" before open in some contexts ("He had a very open personality"), but it seems awkward to me in others. ("The window was very open" *?) I think we would probably say "wide open."
You could explain it also as a question of "construal." Someone closed the port, but for a boat approaching from sea, that may be irrelevant. The child who wants to know if he has a snow day doesn't care who closed the school. And, of course, the TV station will give a list of "school closings," which construes the whole action as a "thing." We also have "the close of the show" as an option.
I vote for teaching about prototypes early and often. We do a terrible job with parts of speech in our schools. Students memorize definitions that are close to worthless in application. Certainly, we should teach that the boundaries are not rigid or fixed and that words shift category routinely. Students recognize prototypes for things like furniture or fruit. My experience has been that they enjoy looking at language that way, not least of all because it seems to fit.
Craig
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