Jim,
That's a very polite and thoughtful post. I have responded to Bob's
post (after you sent this), and I hope it meets your objections. I would
be happy to clarify as best I can if you still have questions. I'd like
to say, also, that I don't want to pretend to be a principal
spokesperson for cognitive grammar. I have found it very interesting and
am trying to pass on a developing understanding. A delay in responding
may just be my concern with representing views that are not only my own.
My original post was aimed more at the shape actual explorations of
language might take in a public school curriculum. I wasn't aiming at
responding to error, but am happy to include it.
Craig
Kenkel, Jim wrote:
> I read this list but don't often post to it. However, this last contribution from Craig compels me to respond. Craig's response to Bob Yates's post seems to do two things: 1) it repeats the claims that prompted Bob's question in the first place about how the theoretical claims of Langacker and Biber provide teachers with insight into the language use of student writers; 2) it seems to seek to marginalize Bob's contribution to the discussion as being socially innappropriate. What it doesn't do is respond to Bob's carefully and clearly posed question, the answer/s to which would be certainly relevant to any teacher who has looked at his or her students' writing from a language perspective.
>
> It doesn't serve the list to characterize Bob's post as hostile. I suspect that anyone who asks clear questions and receives no answer to them would feel some frustration. Given Craig's prominence in discussions on this list, I was interested to see his response but was disappointed in the lack of response to the content of the post. I am interested in how the list generally might respond to Bob's question because the answers might prompt me to do more reading in cognitive grammar and usage-based grammar to learn what insights they might offer me as a language teacher and as a writing teacher. At this point, given my interests, I am no closer to knowing how they might help me than I was before.
>
> Given the complexity of the concepts of language, language use, and writing, it is very safe to assume that no one perspective can answer all the questions we have. I don't read Bob's post(s) as marginalizing any perspective. He has only asked if cognitive and usage-based grammars can help with issues of recognizing and responding to "error" in student writing. So far, the question has not received a response.
>
> Jim Kenkel, Eastern Kentucky University
> ________________________________________
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock [[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Monday, December 08, 2008 10:08 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Quick note on education and linguistic theory (was RE: Correct)
>
> Bob,
> I’m not sure why you react with so much hostility to an attempt to present an alternative point-of-view. You seem more interested in debunking it than you are in learning about it; perhaps I’m wrong. Other people on list may in fact be more interested in it than you are. And I’m not sure why you would characterize it as “Craig’s position” when I’m quoting others or simply assume you know my position when you have been exposed to only a small part of it.
> What I said, that you reacted to as a statement against intuition, is the following:
>
>
> Among other things, cognitive linguists don't find it particularly
> useful to look at manufactured sentences like "*Mary is someone that
> people like her as soon as they see" and then ask why they don't seem
> grammatical. They find it more productive to look at the sentences that
> actually occur.
> I didn’t say that we don’t have intuitions about language or that intuitions aren’t important. In a usage based system, the belief is that these grow out of use.
>
> Langacker calls the above constraint The Content Requirement:
> “The thrust of the content requirement is that the linguistic knowledge we ascribe to speakers should be limited to elements of form and meaning found in actually occurring expressions, or which derive from such elements via the basic psychological phenomena listed in 1.31: association, automatization, schematization, and categorization. By keeping our feet on the ground, this restriction assures both naturalness and theoretical austerity.” (Cognitive Grammar: a basic introduction p. 25).
>
> Here’s a quote from Biber, from the same anthology (Kemmer and Barlow) I cited yesterday.
> “Studies of use are concerned with actual practice, and the extent to which linguistic patterns are common or rare, rather than focusing exclusively on potential grammaticality. As such, adequate investigations of language use must be empirical, analyzing the functions and distribution of language features in natural discourse contexts.”
>
> Here he is again (et. Al.) in The Longman Student Grammar:
> “Traditionally, both in theory and in pedagogical practice, grammar has been separate from vocabulary, as if they were two totally independent aspects of language and language learning. This separation is artificial, as becomes evident to anyone who uses a large corpus for studying grammar. What becomes clear is that, when they use a language, people bring together their knowledge of word behavior (lexis) with their knowledge of grammatical patterns. These two aspects of language interact in lexico-grammatical patterns.”
>
> These are not trivial perspectives, and I don’t think it serves the list to try to dismiss them summarily.
>
> Craig
>
>
>
>
> Robert Yates wrote:
>
> This is a list about the role of grammar in the classroom. Whatever we mean by grammar must be grounded in some theory of language. Therefore, there is something fundamentally wrong in the following formulation.
>
> Craig writes:
>
> I don't think it is useful to the list to have an argument for
> different approaches, especially since a more articulate presentation
> of these views is available within the literature.
>
> ****
> Let's consider what Craig says is a view of language that must be taken seriously.
> Craig quotes Kemmer and Barlow:
>
> "Because the linguistic system is so closely tied to usage, it follows
> that theories of language should be grounded in an observation of data
> from actual uses of language....Intuitions about constructed data
> cannot be treated as the sole, or even primary, source of evidence as
> to the nature and properties of the linguistic system." (Kemmer and
> Barlow, from the introduction to the same text.)
> ***
>
> Even corpus linguists have to use intuitions to decide what relevant examples are from their corpus.
>
> [An example from Biber et al.'s Grammar of Spoken and Written Language, a corpus based grammar of English.
>
> The identifying pattern
> Clauses following the identifying pattern answer the question 'Which one is/was X?' The copular verb is invariably be. . . .
>
> My headmistress was the president of the Shakespeare league. (conversation)
> The only reliable source of work is the water industry. (newspaper) (page 146)
> **
> My observation: Only intuitions about those example sentences allow Biber et al. to say such a pattern answers the question. NOTHING in actual sentences says they answer such questions. On almost every page in Biber et al. are descriptions of the structures that are based strictly on intuitions.]
>
> Let's take seriously the notion that "constructed data cannot be treated as the sole, or even primary, source of evidence as to the nature and properties of the linguistic system" FOR PEDAGOGICAL PURPOSES.
>
> Consider the sentence from a real essay a student wrote.
>
> (1) By taking time out of your day to get something for someone else just really shows that you really care about them.
>
> If the source of knowledge about the language system is from actual language use, what language sources was the writer of sentence (1) exposed to for her to produce such a sentence? I sure would like to know how an approach to language which claims our knowledge of language comes from "real language" answers that question.
>
> More importantly, as writing teachers, how do we KNOW that sentence (1) is problematic. What kinds of language were WE exposed to that accounts for our judgment about sentence (1)? If we have never been exposed to mixed constructions and were never explicitly taught they are problematic (as writing teachers, were we?), how do we recognize them? Under the approach Craig says we should consider, our intuitions are based on the language we have been exposed to.
>
> As teachers of grammar and writing, we encounter strings written by our students that are not in the texts they read. And, just as importantly, those strings our students write are not in the texts WE read. Yet, we are able to make judgments about those strings all the time. If usage is so fundamental to our knowledge of language, what is the nature of the language we are exposed to that accounts for our judgments. (Does anyone regularly note that sentences like (1) don't occur in writing? How do you note the absence of something if your only knowledge is based on what you are exposed to?)
>
> Of course, it is always possible that we possess no innate knowledge about language, as Herb points out. And, it possible that there is no competence/performance distinction. However, Jim Kenkel and I have proposed, assuming innateness and difference between competence and performance, that some of the "innovative" structures student write, like sentence (1), can be explained.
>
> A theory of language is fundamental for what we as teachers of grammar and writing do. What Craig is proposing as a theory of language can't explain what our students do and, more importantly, what we as their teachers do when we respond to their writing.
>
> Bob Yates, University of Central Missouri.
>
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