Janet,
    My observation has been that these students use comma splices when the two clauses are roughly saying the same thing, as in "My father was a generous man, he would give even when he couldn't afford to." The semi-colon often fits nicely in those slots. The good news about that is that you can praise the sentences (much of the time) and offer the semi-colon. You don't have to pounce on it as error. 
   One reason for this failure in recognition is that they have been told that "A sentence is a group of words that expresses a complete thought," but not that two independent clauses linked by just a comma constitute a comma splice. To be taught the latter necessitates actual attention to language: not only to what a clause is, but to what constitutes syntactic independence. The "complete thought" formulation is an attempt to circumvent the need for a deeper look. It has consequences. 

Craig
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Castilleja, Janet
Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2011 7:42 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: 'Bad' English

So as long as we are talking about 'correctness,' what do you folks think the psychology of comma splices?  My sense is that even students who have a reasonable exposure to the written word just perceive them as 'correct.' Students who would never (or at least rarely) write a sentence fragment or run-on sentence will write comma splices. What's up with that?

Janet


-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of R. Michael Medley (ck)
Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2011 11:45 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: 'Bad' English

I apologize for leaving one of my sentences incomplete.  Here is my complete thought:

And although I don't like #3 either [(3) This is just between you and I.], it is extremely common, and I have even heard it in formal academic (oral) presentations.  I think the appearance of the nominative form of pronouns in a compound object construction like this is interesting because almost no speaker ever uses the nominative form in objects that are not compound.
 This phenomenon seems to signal something to us about the nature of compound NPs.  I think Pinker in The Language Instinct has something to say about this construction, but I can't find the reference.


R. Michael Medley, Ph.D.
Professor of English
Eastern Mennonite University

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