With college students, I start out the very first day of my "advanced"
grammar class (largely English majors, but at square one in terms of
grammar) by writing the word "fish" on the board and asking the students
what part of speech that word represents. Once we have made the point that
it can, in fact, be a noun, a verb, or an adjective, we then agree that we
are more concerned with how a word functions than with labeling it one part
of speech or another for all situations.
The second point I make on the first day is that studying language is not
like studying chemistry. Language is fluid, changing according to the needs
of the speakers, etc. I pick out one or two examples of usage changes
through the centuries to drive home the point that "correctness" is a
societal construct. Wearing certain kinds of clothes in order to look
professional is also a societal construct; that fact doesn't diminish the
importance of knowing the "rules" by which one is going to be judged--fairly
or not.
It seems to me that both these points drive home the need to understand how
language functions *in general*, acknowledging, of course, that what makes
this study so fascinating is that sometimes a particular phrase, clause, or
sentence simply won't play by the so-called "rules." I tell them that there
will be times when we may disagree about how a word, phrase, or clause is
functioning in a sentence, but that's OK as long as they can defend their
view in a way that proves they understand basic patterns of thought and
methods of constructing meaning. And then we're off to study Martha's
sentence patterns.
By the way, we always tie those insights to a discussion about writing well:
which construction is more clear/less ambiguous? How could the writer's
intention be skewed by choosing one construction over another? Etc. To
understand basic sentence patterns is to understand basic THINKING patterns,
and better thinkers are better writers.
I have children ages 9 and 13, so I have thought a lot over the last decade
about how early children can understand the notion that while we have
categories and labels, they don't always work neatly. I am convinced that
pretty young children can grasp this idea. I could go into my younger
daughter's class of 4th, 5th, and 6th grade kids (a Montessori mixed-grade
class, and they have already learned "parts of speech," including verbals),
do the "fish" exercise mentioned above, and make the point that
understanding how language works (that is, how it makes meaning) means
understanding how words function *in relationship with one another in a
sentence* and not in isolation.
They can do this, of course, because in their early elementary class (grades
1-3), they were taught the parts of speech. We all know that the parts of
speech are limited (didn't the structuralists and the deconstructionists
teach us that ALL our attempts to name our experiences and our world fail
miserably?), but they provide us with a common vocabulary with which to move
on to the next level of the discussion: the "fish" exercise.
My advanced grammar class for English majors starts in a week. Many of them
are going to be language arts teachers. The ones who will struggle the most
are those who do not understand the basic concepts. How can we move to the
more sophisticated view (which, as I have argued above, they should also
have already been exposed to) if they haven't been taught the basics?
Preaching to the choir, I know--but thanks for letting me vent!
Nancy
Nancy L. Tuten, PhD
Professor of English
Director of the Writing-across-the-Curriculum Program
Columbia College
Columbia, South Carolina
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803-786-3706
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Johanna Rubba
Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2006 10:14 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Notional nouns
Supposedly, my list access has been restored. Another test ...
Let's get crazy ...
Phil defines a noun as an entity; but what is an entity? Cognitive
Grammar defines a noun as "a bounded region in some domain". By this is
meant something which is "marked off" from other things -- that is,
differentiated from other things. Also, a noun does not track the
evolution of some situation through time, which is what verbs do (hence
the frequent term "process" for verb).
This is, of course, a very vague definition, as it has to be if it is
to cover all nouns' meanings. There is also more to the Cog. Gr.
definition, defining prototypical nouns, but I won't go into that
unless someone asks me.
We also need to consider WHY languages have nouns. And why do we make
some verbs into nouns, like "flash" and "fight"? Why do we create
gerunds and noun clauses? Some linguists believe that part-of-speech
categories emerge out of discourse needs. We need nouns because we want
to talk ABOUT things. We need nouns (and other nominals) as "hooks" to
hang predicates on. We need nouns in order to direct our listener's or
reader's conscious attention to something we want to talk about (in
other words, to refer). We need nouns in order to have topics to which
we can add ever more information in a text.
As someone else pointed out, a noun names a category, not a single,
actual thing. A conceptual category, at that. This is evidenced in
English by the fact that we usually cannot use a noun (especially a
count noun) alone to talk about something. I can't say "cat is sick". I
have to point my listener to which cat I mean -- "My mother's tabby cat
is sick." Even for generic or category reference, we have to use either
"a" or a plural: "A cat is a selfish animal." "Cats are millstones." (A
famous linguist had a cat named Millstone; my favorite cat name --
though I do love cats!) Mass nouns can be used alone in the generic
sense because they already name an unindividuated type: "Sand is
gritty." "Grammar is hard." Not all languages work this way, of course.
In teaching nouns, I believe children as young as six can use the
"the", "a", and "my" tests. Since young children's literature and lives
have a lot to do with concrete things that are prototypically named by
nouns, I have no trouble with starting out with a combination of the
functional "the" test and a notional definition; but the notional
definition has to be extended fairly rapidly to include abstract
things. Again, you start with stuff that kids are familiar: a task, an
idea, a joke, a problem.
Dr. Johanna Rubba, Associate Professor, Linguistics
Linguistics Minor Advisor
English Department
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Tel.: 805.756.2184
Dept. Ofc. Tel.: 805.756.2596
Dept. Fax: 805.756.6374
URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
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