Bob,
  It probably doesn't change your argument at all, but Rei doesn't use tag
questions as a test for sentences. He uses them to test for subject. You
can put tag questions at the end of structures that traditional grammar
wouldn't accept as a sentence, but that would be fine in normal talk.

"Nice shot."  "Your turn." "Hot enough for you?" "More coffee on table
eight." >

"Nice shot, wasn't it?" "Your turn, isn't it?" And so on.

I think tag questions have a highly pragmatic function, asking for
affirmation or confirmation from a listener or reader.

   As teachers, I think we can and do share a belief that students bring a
great deal of automatic, intuitive, or unconscious knowledge that can
be put to work in helping them understand what is required of them in
the context of more formal writing. I agree; a good deal of what they
need is already there. We seem to differ in how to account for it.

Craig

I am sorry I am coming late to this discussion.  I agree with everything
> that has been said.  My colleague Jim Kenkel and I have been looking at a
> collection of essays written by first year native and non-native speaking
> college students to understand the non-standard punctuation.  ALL of the
> essays had sentences that were punctuated according to the standard rules.
>  Those that were non-standard appeared to be following principles to show
> the relationship between various ideas.
>
> I am very reticent to question Herb, but there are reasons why the concept
> of the sentence is more that a "methodological choice."  It is a category
> that reflects English speakers knowledge of the language.
>
> Herb writes:
>
>   [The S (for sentence)] represented a unit within which certain
> relationships, structures, and constraints could be discussed without
> the inconvenience of answering questions about discourse.  This usually
> got us into an argument about competence and performance, which I held,
> and hold, to be a corollary of the methodological choice of S as the
> domain of analysis and description.  In informal speech, in contrast to
> formal lectures, addresses, sermons, etc., sentences tend to correspond
> to the breath group, so that the spoken sentence tends to be what one
> can say in one breath.
>
> ***
> Note the use of the word "tend."   I think Herb gives away too much with
> that word.
>
> Do we need the category of "sentence" (or clause) to describe what people
> do with they speak?
>
> A couple of thought experiences.
>
> I. Try to describe well-formed tag questions (a structure that almost
> exclusively in the oral language) in English without the use of the
> category sentence.  You know what tag questions are, don't you?  Tag
> questions are easy to describe, aren't they?
>
> II. Try to describe well-formed questions (again forms that are very
> frequent in the oral language) in English without the use of the category
> sentence.   Some sentences to consider in your description.
>
> 1) Is the woman from France?
> 2) Does the woman live next door?
> 3) Is the woman who lives next door from France?
> 4) Does the woman who is from France live next door?
> 5) Yesterday, did the woman leave?
>
> III.  Try to describe the antecedents of her and herself in the following
> strings without reference to sentence.  (I recognize that these sentences
> may not be common in the oral language, but they can be easily understood
> in the oral language.)
>
> "herself" has to refer to Mary in the following.
> 6) Mary sees herself on television.
> 7) Mary wants to see herself on television.
>
> "her" cannot refer to Mary.
> 8) Mary sees her on television.
> 9) Mary wants to see her on televison.
>
> "herself" has to refer to Jane.
> 10) Mary wants Jane to see herself on television. (but remember 7)
>
> "her" can refer to Mary
> 11) Mary wants Jane to see her on television. (but remember 9)
>
> ****
> I recognize that I am suggesting the competence-performance distinction is
> crucial.  By the way, I am not alone in this regard.  The
> competence-performance distinction is the basis for the suggestions that
> De Beaugrande in his "Forward to the basics" paper and Noguchi in his NCTE
> book use for their suggestions in how to show students how to determine
> whether a string they have written is an appropriate sentence.
>
> Finally, given what I have written above, I have no idea what the
> following means:
>
> ". . . what a sentence can be depends very much on medium, genre,
> discourse pragmatics, and social setting, among other things."
>
> Do the principles of well-formed tag questions, yes-no questions, and the
> antecedents of personal pronouns and antecedents change depending on
> medium, genre, discourse pragmatics, and social setting?
>
> Obviously, the frequency of the use of various forms change and some forms
> are very rare in some kinds of discourse (just like certain lexical
> items), but I have no idea how medium, genre, social setting changes the
> principles for any grammatical structure in English.
>
> Bob Yates, University of Central Missouri
>
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