I like Veit's book too, although I no longer us so generative and
formal an approach in my grammar courses.  I must, however, differ
with him on one point, that GG somehow deals with "how we actually
produce those sentences."  It's easy to interpret some of the
formalisms in that way, but GG models knowledge, not behavior, and
one of the major findings of generative-influenced
psycholinguistic research in the 60s is that the theoretical
constructs of GG are just that, theoretical constructs.  They do
not have any psychological reality.  Formalist grammarians have
become more sophisticated in their claims, and they no longer
claim that transformations are in some sense real.  They now claim
that the modularity of the grammar, separating different functions
of the grammar into different brain modules, does have
psychological reality.  I think this is equally misguided.  I'd
recommend a book like Geoffrey Sampson's Educating Eve as a
response to many of these claims.

Herb Stahlke

<<< [log in to unmask]  2/28  6:22p >>>
Dr. Veit,

Thank you for your response!  I for one will consider carefully
the approach you have taken to making GT-grammar understandable to
the lay person.  Let me tell you that I think you are doing a
great job.

Bruce

>>> [log in to unmask] 02/28/01 03:42PM >>>
Generative grammar, as generally presented, is complex, abstruse,
formula-intensive, and forbidding to lay persons--not surprising
since much
of the work is done by math types who are strangers to clear
writing.

We shouldn't assume, however, that the subject is closed to
others. I teach
a required college grammar course to education and English majors,
and the
model we use is generative. Many, if not most, students enter the
class
with low expectations (often with outright dread). On the first
day I
always enjoy "betting" my students that at the end of the course
they will
write on the anonymous course evaluations that the course was fun
for them.
In the great majority of cases, I win my bet. To their surprise,
students
find they like the course, say they learned a lot, give high
evaluations,
and develop a love for grammar.

One strength of a generative approach is that is tries to create a
model
not just of sentence structure but also of how we actually produce
those
sentences. Because the available generative texts didn't meet my
students'
needs, I wrote my own. The book's approach is generative, but with
methodology taking a back seat to content: learning the grammar of
English.

As a former primary and secondary teacher, I've always believed a
generative approach is adaptable to high schools and even the
lower grades.
I've had a long-term goal of creating a high school text, but
other book
projects and administrative duties have always intervened. I hope
someone
else creates such a text. It wouldn't be for everybody, but
grammar
teachers would benefit from a choice of approaches.

Dick Veit
University of North Carolina at Wilmington

Discovering English Grammar, 2nd edition:
    http://www.uncwil.edu/people/veit/DEG/

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