I read a study a long time ago, long enough that I don't remember anything about the author or source, that argued that the sentence in spoken language tends to be bound to the breath group. That is, a sentence is what you can say in one breath. From transcriptions I've done of speech in several languages, including some that don't have writing systems, I can support this claim, although, of course, there are plenty of exceptions. I've had native speakers of other lnaguages tell me that the kinds of complex sentences that occur in writing and that syntacticians love to manipulate in their research simply don't occur in natural speech. Long, complex sentences seem to be a product of writing, where the writer has time to consider what to say and how to say it and the reader has time and opportunity to reread. This stability of message directly contradicts one of Charles Hockett's design features of language, the rapid extinction of the signal. He was, of course, talking about spoken language, as linguists are wont to. But if spoken sentences tend to be as long as what you can say in one breath, does this suggest that we package and encode our thoughts accordingly?
As to tagmemics and the Hocus Pocus vs. God's Truth classification of linguistic theories, I've heard Ken Pike, it's inventor, complain that critics and colleagues both tweaked him for developing a Trinitarian theory of language. It's a Hocus Pocus theory, but if the critics are right it aspires to God's truth as well. Tagmemics, by the way, developed from a field methods need. Wycliffe Bible Translators sends out hundreds of teams to learn and gather data on unwritten languages around the world. I think they've worked on close to 2000 since the organization was founded in 1942 with Pike as one of their leading linguists. They send people with a summer's training in linguistics into language communities and equip them with a rigorous and highly detailed form for gathering data, whiich they bring to a regional center on a monthly or quarterly basis for conslutation with an experienced, trained linguist, often with a PhD from a major linguistics department here or abroad. The consultant then directs the field workers in further data gathering and analysis. Field workers who are particularly promising are frequently sent on for further training to become consultants themselves. Pike developed tagmemics, based on the model of the structuralist phoneme, to provide this framework. It's worked very well for field work.
Herb
Herbert F. W. Stahlke, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor of English
Ball State University
Muncie, IN 47306
[log in to unmask]
________________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Spruiell, William C [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: November 16, 2009 5:11 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: A Sentence Is Not a Complete Thought
Bruce et al.
I don't think that the claim that "a sentence represents a complete
thought" can ever be taken as "scientific" in any robust way, partly
because of the issue with definitions Bruce discusses. Even if we
constitute our definition of a sentence on semantic or discourse grounds
(or adopt a theory that doesn't make a strong distinction between those,
etc.), there's no way to separate a notion of "completeness" from our
choices about how to define it. In fancy-speak, "X represents a complete
thought" is the kind of proposition that can be analytically, but not
synthetically, true. If we try to move past that, we're faced with the
task of proving that our notion of completeness isn't wrong, or
something we find complete isn't actually missing something that it
badly needs, but no one has ever noticed is missing -- i.e., we're stuck
trying to prove a negative.
I'm less bothered than is Bruce about theories that erode distinctions
among subareas of grammar (as is fairly obvious from the fact that I
just called them subareas), but I do see an issue in arguing that a
theory is "good" based on it being good for something other than what it
purports to be good for. That's like a backwards, theory-based version
of an ad hominem argument (? Pro theorem?). However, at least some
Tagmemicists, if I remember correctly, view their own theories as being
of the "Hocus Pocus" type, rather than "God's Truth" -- that is, they
locate the value of a theory in its utility, without making claims about
whether the theory represents anything psychologically real in any
sense. From that standpoint, saying that it's good for classroom use is
valid for supporting the theory. Adequacy, or lack thereof, is similarly
sensitive to goals.
Bill Spruiell
Dept. of English
Central Michigan University
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bruce Despain
Sent: Monday, November 16, 2009 10:19 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: A Sentence Is Not a Complete Thought
Beth, Craig, et. al.,
After reading Sloan's paper, I sense that it is a very practical
approach to editing. The title seems to claim that a sentence is not a
complete thought! This may get the reader curious, but it is very
misleading. The author is not successful in denying the claim, only in
supporting its inadequacy as an introduction into the syntax of the
sentence. He gives examples of utterances that are not sentences, which
he fails to describe syntactically. He quickly limits his approach to
declarative sentences, about which their status as complete thoughts he
says nothing. The basis of his approach is to use the ability of the
student to transform declarative sentences into yes-no interrogative
sentences as the test of grammaticality. The transformation is kept, as
far as is possible, within the one dimension of a lineal string of words
and morphemes. (To keep the set of X-words at 20, the 18 additional
words derived by adding "-n't" are treated as if that morpheme were a
separate word.) By calling the key category the "X-word" he is able to
avoid the problems that their subsumption into a single syntactic
category brings with it. He also avoids as much as possible the problem
of "discontinuous constituents," "structural head," and any other
syntactic structure that requires analysis into a second dimension. The
use of "subject" as a syntactic term requires the further use of "topic"
as syntactic. This kind of abrogation of semantic terms into the syntax
could become contagious.
The point in these comments is not to say that the approach does not
have a lot to commend it. My concern is that the over-simplification of
grammar to its use in the task of editing seems to be presented as
support for a particular theory of syntax (tagmemics). It seems that
many other inadequate theories of syntax might be applied profitably to
the teaching of student editing. This ought to be admitted. The claim
that a sentence is a complete thought cannot be refuted on syntactic
grounds (even X-words), unless it is claimed as a statement about
syntax. Perhaps what is meant by this rule is that the utterance of a
sentence is intended by an author to bring up in the mind of the reader
a concept that may be represented by a syntactic structure that is
characterized in a certain way as complete. The fact that Mr. Sloane
uses the word "generate" in the sense of create suggests that the
generative approach, explicitly developed to characterize two
dimensional structures, has been rejected from the start. These are
just two reasons why a rule that relates the semantics of a sentence to
its syntax should probably not be used as an introduction to a study of
the syntax of that sentence.
Bruce
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
Sent: Saturday, November 14, 2009 8:40 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: A Sentence Is Not a Complete Thought
Beth,
I haven't seen it, so thanks for the heads-up. From the brief
summary,
it still seems they are more interested in formal "tricks" for writing
sentences correctly than they are in looking at the way sentences work
in harmony with each other. I'll try to keep an open mind and check it
out.
Craig>
Hi Craig,
>
> I feel certain you must have found this already, but just to be on the
> safe side:
>
> Sloane,, David E.. A Sentence Is Not a Complete Thought: X-Word
Grammar
> in English language teaching.
> Year: 2009 Volume: 2 Issue: 2 Page: 3
> ISSN: 1916-4742
>
> Abstract
>
> X-Word Grammar provides an editing technique for students that is more
> reliable than trying to identify sentences as complete thoughts. A
> sentence is redefined as "a group of words that can be turned into a
> yes-no question with no words left over; starts with a capital letter,
and
> ends with a terminal punctuation mark." Twenty auxiliary verbs play a
key
> role by moving around the subject of a sentence to identify the
correct
> structure of a sentence using both visual and oral means. Stressing
> editing skills, teachers can use X-Word Grammar as a means to simplify
> sentence punctuation, address verb endings, carry out other tasks in
> editing and evaluating writing.
>
> Available online here:
> http://ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/elt/article/view/2354
>
> Beth
>
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