Now the conversation is progressing. Although I don't use Craig's language, there is something right about this.
What I have seen from students over and over again is that when they
are trying to do new things with language, they will do so awkwardly.
***
My colleague Jim Kenkel and I call them innovations. Here is the problem with the perspective that Craig has on the nature of language and his observation above.
If language is learned from input and pattern matching, what do students have access to for the awkward constructions (Craig's label) or the innovations. If you think about it, they should have read a number of examples of people integrating others' ideas into a text. Because Craig's perspective denies innate principles, those awkward constructions have to leave us teachers perplexed. And, if grammar is tied to cognition and discourse, why should students be redundant in attributing claims to other people? Why isn't it sufficient for them to do it once?
Craig reveals the most serious problem with his perspective for teachers. He believes that "according to" and "claim" functions the same way for our students as it does for more mature writers.
"According to..." and "claims" are two ways of doing that function, a function
that most students don't have sufficient practice with. I wouldn't be
at all surprised by that sentence. My view--and I don't expect you to
agree--is that the operative grammar is locally tied to the notion of
"claiming" and both "claiming' and the schematic structure "according
to X" are tied to the goal of trying to place our own perspectives
within a dialogic frame.
In the second language acquisition literature, the above passage commits the "comparative fallacy." You cannot assume that the same grammatical form functions the same way for a second language learner as it does for native speakers -- to do so commits the comparative fallacy.
It is my belief that our students don't know or ignore that "according to" is a way to make an attribution, but is functioning for them as a way to announce a topic so that a commit can be made about it.
By the way, this is how to look at the "innovative" punctuation practices of our students. In other words, fragments and comma splices are not, from the student perspective, awkward attempts to express ideas but are principled (non-standard principles) to identify and show relationships between idea units.
My comments here show how important it is to understand the nature of language. If what we know about language is based solely on input, then you are lead, as Craig shows, to an awkwardness explanation. On the other hand, if our students know a set of principles about language, then their innovative structures might be seen as interaction of those principles when those principles are incomplete or are not easily accessible because of the task they are trying to accomplish.
If you want to see how this innate principle perspective is applied to real sentences written by real students, then see Kenkel and Yates (2009) The Interlanguage Grammar of Information Management in L1 and L2 Developing Writing. 26:4 Written Communication.
Bob Yates, University of Central Missouri
One final point that is irrelevant to this conversation that Craig keeps bringing up. He writes:
I do believe that new approaches are called for, and I apologize if
that seems an attack on those who have supported older positions. It
may be more useful to lay out our own views separately (internally
consistent) rather than present them as argument.
Craig keeps dismissing innatist views of language because they have been used to dismiss the teaching grammar. Herb has corrected him several times that the connection to not teaching grammar and innatist views of language are not based on an understanding of what the innatist views really are. In this conversation, the paragraph above is irrelevant and does not advance anything. I wish Craig would stop having to write his disgust for views that everyone here recognizes are wrong. He can, in other words, stop preaching to the choir.
>>> Craig Hancock <[log in to unmask]> 06/13/10 10:51 AM >>>
Bob,
I think I understood (understand) your example very well. I simply
don't agree that you can use it as some sort of "proof" that grammar is
innate rather than learned using ordinary (nonspecial) cognitive
capabilities.
What I have seen from students over and over again is that when they
are trying to do new things with language, they will do so awkwardly. I
work very hard with my students to help them learn how to attribute
perspectives and claims that are offered by other people. "According
to..." and "claims" are two ways of doing that function, a function
that most students don't have sufficient practice with. I wouldn't be
at all surprised by that sentence. My view--and I don't expect you to
agree--is that the operative grammar is locally tied to the notion of
"claiming" and both "claiming' and the schematic structure "according
to X" are tied to the goal of trying to place our own perspectives
within a dialogic frame. These are very important in journalism and
academic writing. (They are some of "the moves that matter in academic
writing"). I would also say they are hugely important for civil
discourse in a civil society, something very much threatened in our
current climate, where we tune into the narrow channels that reinforce
our beliefs and demonize the opposition. ("Claims", of course, can be
sarcastic at various levels. You can anticipate the "but". "Craig
claims that grammar is tied to discourse and cognition, but...")
Do we really know a word if we don't know the full range of its
meanings? Do we know a grammatical construction if we haven't mastered
the full range of its uses? A functionalist would likely answer "no" to
that. A student doers not know close to an adult grammar when they come
to school precisely because they haven't learned to use language with
an adult sophistication.
If students have trouble understanding a text, is it at least in part
because they are not seeing the connections between the words?
I think it is probably not possible for us to agree with each other
about core issues, but I do think it is important for this list that
opposing views (such as ours) are welcomed into the conversation.
I do believe that new approaches are called for, and I apologize if
that seems an attack on those who have supported older positions. It
may be more useful to lay out our own views separately (internally
consistent) rather than present them as argument.
Craig >
Craig, are you sure you understood my example? Here are the two
> sentences:
>
> 1) According to Craig, he claims grammar is tied to cognition and
> discourse.
> 2) According to Craig, grammar is tied to cognition and discourse.
>
> In (1) he is referring to Craig. Now, my knowledge of English grammar
> makes (1) decidedly odd if the writer could have written (2).
>
> Given you analysis, do you accept (1) in the writing of your students when
> they really mean (2)? If you do, then you deny the purpose of my example.
> (By the way, in edited writing, I have never seen 1 for 2, have you?)
>
> ****
> One of the great mysteries of language acquisition is that we clearly need
> some kind of input. We are not born knowing the lexicon of a language.
> On the other hand, we have judgments about grammatical constructions that
> we have never seen.
>
> I'm confident you have never seen or read sentence (3), yet you recognize
> it as English.
>
> 3) There is the woman whose daughter my daughter is prettier than.
>
> There are myriad of examples like this.
>
> Bob Yates
>
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