Craig,
Some responses to your contribution aimed at trying to resolve these difficulties.
It is unfair here to characterize Bob's "challenges" as some kind of rejection of "new ideas." I am confident that the claims of cognitive linguistics are not "new" to Bob or to me, nor do either of us have difficulty understanding them, especially at the level of generality at which they might be presented - appropriately - to a group with the interests of the ATEG listserv participants. There is also really no fear here of new ideas or new perspectives. Au contraire.
Perhaps you don't realize you are perceived as doing this, convinced as you seem to be of the reasonableness of what you put forward, but you have very aggressively dismissed any claims of generative-grammar based thinking as relevant to the concerns of ATEG; the effect of this dismissal is to marginalize some list members who think differently from you. It seems to me that your post of this past Friday did just that yet again. This has gone on for many years, and includes the early discussions - on and off-list - of the formation of the New Public Grammar group as well as the even earlier discussions of Scope and Sequence. I know that efforts by me and Bob Yates to contribute to those discussions were explicitly and decidedly turned away by you because they were "generative" in nature, and in your thinking would therefore only further deepen the problem of grammar understanding/instruction that ATEG seeks to address. If I recall correctly, your rejection had to do with your conviction that assumptions of generative grammar are the primary intellectual support of the rhet-comp community that makes up most of the "anti-grammar" folk, and, moreover, that what we were offering was nothing more than "error hunting," and as such didn't contribute to your notion of a program of promoting grammar teaching for the purpose of instructing learners in the "subtleties" and "nuances" of "meaning making." (Of course, I think your characterization completely misses the point of what Bob Yates and I have written.)
I agree with you when you say that you haven't written posts criticizing generative grammar. Instead, you've moved straight at dismissing its relevance to ATEG and have done so without any discussion whatsoever, while proposing cognitive grammar and systemic functional linguistics as more useful sets of assumptions. You should not be surprised to be challenged by those who find your position uncompelling, not to mention problematic in its approach to collegiality.
Because the purpose of this list is to discuss our understandings of grammar as English teachers and to consider how to promote its effective and useful teaching in the schools, it is a natural - and positive - step to consider assumptions underlying proposals/claims and then to evaluate the evidence that supports the assumptions/claims, and also to consider how these relate to the goals of this group. (Do you have a better suggestion for how to proceed?) You are mistaken if you think the questioning of the assumptions behind your claims, or a request for concrete examples to illustrate your claims , or questions on how your claims would help explain some ordinary data are instances of some kind of childish "gotcha-ism." Instead, they reflect genuine interest in and passion for the concerns which motivate ATEG.
I am sure no one has a problem with any participant presenting some idea of any kind that the participant thinks can contribute to the interests of the list members. Such is assuredly a very important function of this list. But I don't think presentation of an idea should be accompanied by blithe dismissals of other ideas. I don't think that name-dropping or hand-waving suffices to justify such dismissals. Why not just present the idea on its own without gratuitously (and with no evidence presented) dismissing another position?
It seems to me that each of us is free to offer any thought or insight we might want to, but having done so, we ought to be ready to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of our idea with those on the list who are interested. We shouldn't be defensive about it. After all, we aren't seeking to dominate anything crucial to our or our families' material well-being. We're grammar teachers, for God's sake! :)
For instance, in one of your posts of the last day or so, you wrote that you think that cognitive grammar and systemic-functional linguistics are compatible, with an implication that this claimed compatibility strengthens their appropriateness as supports for the goals of ATEG. Well, that is all very nice to say because we all want support for our positions. But to what degree can this claimed "compatibility" be maintained? This is a fair question, and of relevance to ATEG.
I have made a real effort to read through Halliday's 1994? text, which lays out his ideas. One of the things that surprised me, given the increasing number of references to Halliday in the second language acquisition community, is that Halliday is very clear that his claims about systemic-functional linguistics have ZERO to do with the cognition of any language user. When Halliday writes about the "choices" any one "system" makes available, he is not referring to any kind of decision making on the part of the language user. He is referring solely to the variation that exists in the social community of language users. Halliday could not be clearer about this. So, it seems to me that there is no _principled_ connection between Halliday's ideas, which are resolutely social, and cognitive grammar, which is resolutely an attempt to understand human cognition as it relates to language. As someone who seeks to understand, I don't know what to make about a claim of compatibility between cognitive grammar and Halliday's notions. Should it be out of bounds, then, to ask how the two are compatible? Should ATEG members be encouraged to uncritically embrace systemic-functional linguistics as a source of support for our goals? (Please note that I don't think that to ask for a critical perspective on systemic-functional linguistics is the same as a recommendation that it be rejected as relevant to the concerns of ATEG. For the record, I think it does have relevance for us. (And, for the record, I know that Bob Yates thinks that it does too.))
Finally, you ask about my reference in my earlier post to "the grammar of literacy." I think you may have taken an interpretation different from what I intended. What I mean to refer to with this expression is the set of grammatical constructions typically found in contexts of "advanced literacy" but less commonly found in more informal settings. These would include heavy nominalizations, complexities in the sentence subject position, clefts, right and left displacements, etc. As a trained and experienced ESL teacher who experienced the heady claims of the 80's and early 90's of the English for Special Purposes movement/fad?, I could hardly be more unconvinced that there is any kind of "grammar" that would distinguish the language patterns used by one academic group versus another. I worked for years in post-university admission ESL programs where I taught English L2 graduate students with TOEFL scores from 550 to 600+, with academic majors ranging from English literature to Management to Music to Physics. I tried to figure out how to introduce my students to what they would need to know to write in their chosen disciplines, and I never succeeded in discovering out how the language they needed to use was significantly different - other than vocabulary - from discipline to discipline. So, I am initially very skeptical about such claims.
I think we should be cautious before uncritically embracing or rejecting any perspective. I don't know why we have to think that the complex phenomenon we work on is susceptible to a unified explanation. No generativist type I have ever encountered would ever claim that all language phenomena can be somehow derived from some kind of innatist principles. Just look at Pinker - _Words and Rules_ - which shows that even for an "innatist" like Pinker there is a wide swath of language that has to be accounted for by some kind of general cognitive principles.
In other words, I don't understand the need, at this stage of our uncertain knowledge, for conflict in a group with the goals of ATEG.
Jim Kenkel
Eastern KY Univ
________________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Sunday, February 08, 2009 4:25 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Developmental phases of grammar knowledge
Jim,
I'm happy you're taking the time to air out frustrations. I have some
of my own. I take your post in good faith and respond in kind.
In pretty much every one of those posts, Bob is the one who challenges
new ideas. He seems, quite frankly, to be threatened by them. I don't
start these conversations. I don't write posts criticizing generative
grammar. In fact, as evidenced by his post on the physics question, I
usually regret my conversations with Bob very quickly. I would be happy
to ignore his posts, but he often pounces on mine. I would like to have
different views layed side by side instead of being asked to defend so
often. I would like friendly clarification questions, not "I don't see
how this can possibly be true" or "If Craig thought hard about
cognitive linguistics he would see" sort of statements. He seems to
want to hold me up as the pillar of these positions, so he can
discredit them by discrediting me. He seems to want to derail
productive talk about positions different from his own. In short, I
find his responses very hostile and not at all helpful.
This current thread started because I said I don't think it is a given
that all children learn language in preordained sequence of stages. If
we look at it from a cognitive perspective, it's easy to call that
assumption into question. I'm not sure it's productive to believe that
all children come to school knowing the same language. If we were more
attentive to this, perhaps we could be more effective in mentoring
children into the language of school.
Cognitive positions are very different from generative positions, and
the literature presents it that way. I'm not making this stuff up. If I
prefer one over the other, I don't mean that personally. Quite frankly,
if I don't bring it up, many people on list won't know this stuff is
out there. I get posts, by the way, thanking me for it. If I start
getting complaints, I'll stop.
Is this welcome on the list? I hope so. I will be followng these ideas
out somewhere. I am passionate about it and will find people to talk
to.
If you have a program on how generative grammar will help us solve the
crisis in grammar in the schools, why not present it? I'm not going to
say it's not possible, but I haven't seen it yet. Why are you holding
back?
I'm sorry I missed your comment on innateness. It seems to contradict
what Bob has been saying. He seems to reject the idea that there can be
"a grammar of advanced literacy." Would that include physics? Is it
possible that advanced literacy differs in the technical disciplines?
Do your views on this differ from Bob's?
Bob seems to dismiss the possibility.
Craig
Craig,
> I suspect that some of the exacerbation/frustration that crept into
> Bob's responses to your posts are not very different from mine.
>
> First - and foremost for me - is your insistence in these discussions
> that generative-inspired notions of grammar have NOTHING to say that
> is useful to the goal of promoting the teaching of grammar. In fact,
> you over and over again maintain that generative grammar is even
> responsible for this situation because you believe that generative
> grammar claims that grammar is learned naturally from very ordinary
> exposure to input/verbal interaction . . . whatever.
> Over a period of several years now, this claim of yours has been
> responded to many times. However, you continue to present to the list
> the same gross misrepresentations of generative grammar, and then go
> on to appeal to this parody as reason for dismissing the assumptions
> of generative grammar as potentially relevant to this list's concerns,
> and you repeatedly position generative grammar as a clear negative.
>
> This rhetorical strategy of yours is "tiresome" and "frustrating."
> What is the point of it?
>
> Just two days ago, on Friday, February 06, 2009 1:26 PM, you presented
> the latest example of this rhetorical strategy, one I consider
> uncollegial and irresponsible, and which I hope we would try to avoid
> on this list.
>
> "If you think grammar is innate and meaningfully neutral, just a
> system of forms, then don't teach it. It just happens. If you see it
> as learned and deeply connected to cognition and discourse, then you
> ought to attend to it and not just expect it to happen.
>
> There are views of language which support the teaching of grammar and
> views of language that support our current status quo. Bob and I are on
> opposite poles of that argument."
>
> This claim is both ridiculous and insulting. No one who reads this list
> can believe that Bob Yates, active here for more than a decade and
> involved with ATEG since 1991, supports the "status quo." Nor can
> anyone who reads this list believe that Bob Yates believes that grammar
> knowledge of the type this list is most interested in - i.e., the
> grammar of more advanced literacy - "just happens."
>
> Two months ago on this list there was a discussion about "innateness."
> I made a small contribution to that discussion on Dec 9 and argued
> that no "generativist" would claim that the grammar of advanced
> literacy would be learned without some kind of focused
> attention/instruction. At the time, you did not quarrel with what was
> written, but apparently it had no effect on your thinking. Instead of
> ignoring what are at least intended to be substantive comments, it
> would be better to explain why they are problematic.
>
> There was also an appeal to move away from the disparaging
> rhetoric - an appeal which obviously has been disregarded.
>
>
>
> We can do better than this.
>
>
> Jim Kenkel
> Eastern Ky Univ
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________________
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock [[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Saturday, February 07, 2009 11:06 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Developmental phases of grammar knowledge
>
> Bob,
> It's hard to read this without getting frustrated. First of all, you
> seem to present yourself as an expert on what I'm trying to say.
> Secondly, you seem much more interested in putting me down than you are
> in discussing the very rich and interesting views of language that are
> now being developed (and showing great promise.) I said it before and
> I'll say it again: this is silly. If I am such a foolish person, then
> don't rely on my explanations. Read Langacker. Read Halliday. Read them
> with an open mind, not with a defensive one.
> It is hard to react to this in part because you make three or four
> mischaracterizations in a row, sometimes using one to set up another.
>
> In wanting to deny that students have to be "mentored" or "instructed" on
>> grammar, Craig feels the need to reject any observations that EVERY
>> native
>> speaker knows a lot about the language and this knowledge is not the
>> product of mentoring or instructing or whatever.
>
> First of all, do I want to deny that students need to be mentored? Do
> I reject the notion that every native speaker knows a great deal about
> language? No to both. (Is the first claim a typo?) And certainly any
> theory about language needs to come up with an understanding of the
> human cognitive apparatus. Children wouldn't learn language if they
> weren't able to learn language. We can't teach a stone to talk.
>
> Here's another confusing summary of my views that I would object to:
> "If that is the case, then there is a problem with his view of
> language
> that what a child knows about language comes ONLY from interaction (and we
> know there is great variation on what that interaction) grammar needs to
> be more prominent in the curriculum)."
>
> Again, I don't ever remember saying that interaction alone accounts for
> language. It is a critical component in any theory, including
> generative. The rest of the sentence just confuses me.
>
> Here's a nice friendly statement:
>
> If Craig thought about cognitive grammar a little harder, he would realize
>> that this knowledge might be the result of the fact that humans all have
>> the same cognitive capacities. As a consequence, proposing a special
>> language facility is not necessary. However, he doesn't want to
>> acknowledge that possibility because he believes that claim keeps
>> grammar
>> an insignificant part of the curriculum. To my knowledge, cognitive
>> grammar is interested in accounting for knowledge we all have about
>> language without the need to cite some kind of special language
>> facility.
>
> I certainly do want to think about cognitive grammar a little harder. I do
> that most every day. I have realized A LONG TIME AGO that it posits that
> all human beings have the same cognitive capacities. Where in the world
> does that come from except from personal hostility? Why in the world would
> that make grammar an insignificant part of the curriculum? Am I missing
> something? The last part of it is telling: cognitive grammar accounts for
> knowledge about language as "usage based"; it doesn't assume that we all
> have the same knowledge about language and then try to account for that.
> It is much more adept at describing differences among languages.
> I have gone easy on the count/non-count challenge. It seems to me that
> generative grammar should be on the defensive when it comes down to
> recognizing that languages differ greatly across the world. If this
> grammar is given us "for free", why don't all humans share it? If it's
> innate,why do some languages have it and others not? The explanation
> requires innate capacities that are not used, switches that are or are
> not turned on, and so on. It gets cumbersome.
> We also have count/non-count distinctions that are item specific. We
> might readily say "He showed us three woods that would work", but I
> don't think we readily say the same with "lumber." "He showed us three
> lumbers that would work" seems awkward. We somehow have to account for
> layers of uniqueness, sub-categories. We learn words, certainly, from
> interaction. It's not a stretch to believe we learn the grammar along
> with it.
> I believe systemic functional linguistics and cognitive linguistics are
> compatible, though you are right to say they tend to focus on different
> things. SFL is oriented toward discourse, CG toward cognition. But I
> think that's a matter of a different focus of attention; one doesn't
> negate or contradict the other. By having a usage-based and functional
> orientation, they are distinct from generative approaches and see
> themselves that way.
> Langacker, for example, points out that discourse functions are built
> into the grammar. "One aspect of an expression's import, often a
> crucial one, is how it relates to previous or following expressions.
> And being abstracted from usage events in discourse, conventional
> linguistic units also have this property. The discourse connections
> they specify are inherited by the expressions that incorporate them"
> (2008, 460). Like SFL, these elements (and he includes information
> structuring) are thought of as woven into the grammar, not a separate
> (pragmatic) layer.
>
> Again, I don't think we serve the list well with hostile discourse. I'm
> sure I didn't respond to all your objections.
> People may in fact be able to learn some language from observation
> alone. A child in a hostile or indifferent environment will no doubt
> pick up language as a matter of survival as he/she overhears the
> language around and tries to make sense of it. It is hard for me to
> imagine that this is ideal. We still need to posit "communicative
> intent" and "pattern finding" cognition. I suppose a "usage
> environment" is the necessary element, along with whatever cognitive
> apparatus we all bring by virtue of being human. But I don't think any
> of us would want to trust our children's fate to this sort of test.
> Mentoring would mean we take responsibility for orienting a child in
> new language worlds.
> Reducing my position to "grammar must be formally taught" isn't
> helpful.
>
> Craig
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Let's understand what the debate about theories of language and teaching
>> grammar is about.
>>
>> Craig and I agree that the teaching grammar in the curriculum is being
>> neglected. He is trying to find a way to make it more important.
>>
>> He believes, incorrectly I think, that claims that students already know
>> grammar before they get to school is responsible for this sad set of
>> affairs. (People who cite claims that language is part of our
>> biological
>> endowment so grammar is already in place seriously misunderstand those
>> claims and why formal knowledge of grammar is important in writing and
>> reading.)
>>
>> In his belief that claims that grammar is innate have lead to the sad
>> state of grammar in the curriculum, Craig is looking for a theory of
>> language which validates his view that grammar must be formally taught.
>> He finds such views in "cognitive grammar" and ties that into the
>> systemic
>> functional linguistics which is not interested in what people know about
>> language but what are the range of grammatical choices in specific
>> contexts.
>>
>> In wanting to deny that students have to be "mentored" or "instructed"
>> on
>> grammar, Craig feels the need to reject any observations that EVERY
>> native
>> speaker knows a lot about the language and this knowledge is not the
>> product of mentoring or instructing or whatever.
>>
>> As a consequence, he is not even away that sometimes his evidence, such
>> as
>> it is, doesn't support what he wants it to support.
>>
>> I cited the count/noncount distinction because it has never been, to my
>> knowledge, part of the K-12 curriculum. Despite Craig's claim that
>> children are exposed to "radically different" language, every native
>> speaker seems to get this distinction.
>>
>> If that is the case, then there is a problem with his view of language
>> that what a child knows about language comes ONLY from interaction (and
>> we
>> know there is great variation on what that interaction) grammar needs to
>> be more prominent in the curriculum). Here is Craig's belief how
>> "cognitive linguistics" can explain the count/noncount distinction.
>>
>> I think Langacker does a wonderful job handling count and non-count
>> (mass nouns) as cognitive categories. There are some very interesting
>> ways in which nouns shift from one category to another. "Yellow", for
>> example, is not normally a count noun, but we can say "I like the
>> yellow" or "I tried several yellows." "I don't like many wines." "He
>> had too many beers." "I love diamond." (non-count). "She wore several
>> diamonds." (count.) I suspect that these are learned as we pick up
>> vocabulary. There's no reason to believe the count/non-count
>> distinction is a purely formal system, separate from our interaction
>> with the world and our ways of talking about it and conceptualizing it.
>> Is "wood" count or mass? "They broke through the plaster to wood." "He
>> tried several woods before he found one that looked right." The
>> question came up in my class just the other day about "trouble." "He
>> got into trouble." "Nobody knows the troubles I've seen." These are
>> fairly dynamic categories.
>>
>> All of the examples are known to all NATIVE speakers. (I don't remember
>> Langacker saying anything about the kinds of interaction children need
>> to
>> get all of these structures and Langacker identifies no speech community
>> that does not have the full range of structures because certain kinds of
>> interactions never take place.) Has ANYONE noticed a native speaker who
>> is
>> completely befuddled by "I tried several yellows"?
>>
>> The point is that all native speakers know almost all of English
>> grammar,
>> and they especially know about the count/noncount distinction in English
>> nouns. NO one has to mentor them. And, the best evidence I have for
>> this
>> is that dictionaries for native speakers say nothing about this
>> distinction, nor do dictionaries consider the examples Craig has. I
>> point
>> out that this lack of description for native speakers means everyone
>> seems
>> to have the same knowledge.
>>
>> If Craig thought about cognitive grammar a little harder, he would
>> realize
>> that this knowledge might be the result of the fact that humans all have
>> the same cognitive capacities. As a consequence, proposing a special
>> language facility is not necessary. However, he doesn't want to
>> acknowledge that possibility because he believes that claim keeps
>> grammar
>> an insignificant part of the curriculum. To my knowledge, cognitive
>> grammar is interested in accounting for knowledge we all have about
>> language without the need to cite some kind of special language
>> facility.
>>
>> His commitment to systemic functional linguistics, a view of language
>> that
>> is only interested in characterizing the possible range of choices a
>> language user has in a given context, means in citing Langacker and all
>> of
>> the variation in the count/noncount distinction, Craig is able to say:
>> "Because language is the result of interaction and not everyone has the
>> same kind of interaction, some speakers won't get all the variations.
>> It
>> is just those speakers that need to be mentored to get those
>> variations."
>>
>> Craig's commitment to systemic functional linguistics means he is only
>> interested in what is possible in a language. Remember he likes to cite
>> corpus data to account for what we know. Because I really believe we
>> need
>> a competence (what is possible in a language) and performance (what we
>> actually do) distinction, grammaticality judgments are one way to
>> discover
>> what are underlying competence is.
>>
>> In this discussion, it is unfair for me to use grammaticality judgments.
>> This is so because Craig has no theory of language that accounts for
>> them.
>> Remember he claims our knowledge of language comes in interaction. So,
>> he writes this response which completely ignores the examples I used.
>>
>> There can be a number of different reasons why certain structures may
>> strike us as "not possible" in the language. "Bob likes ice cream
>> and..." may very well come up in the right kind of context. "I like ice
>> cream and fudge. Sally likes ice cream and nuts. Bob likes ice cream
>> and...?" With the right inflection, it would be treated like a sensible
>> question. An utterance needs motivation, and new utterances need to pay
>> off before they will be accepted.
>>
>> I noted (1) and (2) are possible, but only (3) is a possible wh-question
>> and not (4). Craig did not explain why EVERY native speaker knows the
>> normal wh-question is not possible for (4). The problem that a strictly
>> interaction account has when it comes to grammaticality judgments is
>> that
>> we have to notice structures we have never heard. Can anyone report what
>> structures they have never heard and therefore they KNOW such structures
>> are not possible in English?
>>
>> 1) Bob likes ice cream with what?
>> 2) Bob likes ice cream and what?
>>
>> 3) What does Bob like ice cream with?
>> 4) *What does Bob like ice cream and?
>>
>> (Our judgments about 1-4 can be explained by the fact that in 1 and 3
>> "what" is the object of preposition and in 2 and 4 "what" is part of a
>> coordinating construction. However, that observation does not help a
>> theory of language that claims there is no special knowledge that we
>> have
>> about language. From that point of view, there is no such thing as a
>> preposition or a conjunction. I have no idea how "interaction" makes it
>> possible for a person to figure out the constraints on movement that
>> exists for one and not the other.)
>>
>> The following statement is an empirical question.
>>
>> Cognitive and functional approaches are not naive. They give very
>> robust explanations for all the phenomena you bring up as "proof"
>> against them.
>>
>> However, to the degree that such approaches are robust explanations,
>> those
>> explanations are robust for EVERY native speaker.
>>
>> Bob Yates, University of Central Missouri
>>
>> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
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>>
>
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