Herb:

I agree with you. There is much more to be said about grammar than I 
did, but I was referring to basic guiding principles, and not to the 
details. Still I am getting a little confused: do you want to write a 
grammar encyclopaedia, or a practical grammar? And if you want to 
write a practical grammar ( which is my assumption) for which grade(s)
are you going to write that grammar? It appears to me that we will 
necessarily have to write grammarS, not just a grammar, each adjusted 
to some school level. One thing is to teach grammar to the elementary 
school students, another to teach grammar to college students. Each 
such level would require a grammar specifically written for its own 
purposes.

Eduard 


On Fri, 18 Aug 2006, Herbert F.W. Stahlke wrote...

>Eduard,
>
>Quite a lot, in fact, as I suggested in my posting to Phil.  Part of 
my
>problem in this discourse is that I come from a background in which
>traditional grammar includes Jespersen, Poutsma, Kruizinga, and 
others
>of the great 19th and 20th c. scholars of English grammar.  
Traditional
>school grammar, like what is found in the Warriner's series, for
>example, a series that was used widely in American high schools for
>quite a long time, is in part of reduction of this combined with a
>variety of stylistic prescriptions and proscriptions.  I don't have 
the
>negative reaction Fries had, because I go back to Jespersen on a lot 
of
>matters.  However, I agree with Fries as to the sometimes mindless 
way
>in which traditional grammar has been reduced to a few inflexible 
terms,
>concepts, and maxims.
>
>Herb

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