Bruce,

I am totally amazed by what you have put together!  Though I have seen your name appear many times as you have responded to questions posed by others, I had no idea that you would be such a resource as this.  One has to marvel at the variety of constructions available to us and wonder that people unschooled in the nuances you have delineated are able to absorb their meaning as though they were practiced in their use.  Though syntax may be ex post facto, it allows teachers to enable students to move from an unconscious understanding of the language to a conscious use of variant productive forms.  While grammarians have been accused by whole-language advocates of drill-and-kill instruction, the models, Bruce, that you have laid out allow us to engage students in drill-and-instill instruction.  It is through embedding such forms in our mind through the muscular system replicating these patterns and applying them to new situations that we might expand our students' verbal horizons.

Patrick Finn, author of Literacy with an Attitude, has observed that education tends to reinforce a class system, disempowering outsiders, encouraging the upwardly mobile to follow the rules, allowing many of the upper-middle-class to play with creative expression, and training the upper-class to manipulate words in order to manipulate people.  We need a new pedagogy that engages all students in the use of what Joan Bybee calls productive phrases so that they learn the art of manipulating words to craft sentences that fire the wires in readers' brains.

Dallin D. Oaks, in Structural Ambiguity in English, draws examples from a whole generation of comedians who played grammatical jokes on listeners as a way of bringing them into the fold.  George Burns asks Gracie Allen, "Where did you get those flowers?"  Gracie replied, "You said that if I went to visit Clara Bagley in the hospital, I should take her flowers.  So, when she wasn't looking, I did."

Dallin teaches students how to play with the expectations created by syntactical structures to surprise readers and hold their attention.  So, even if syntax is ex post facto, it helps students see how the language operates and can be used to elevate their writing.  This is how language supports and strengthens a culture.

Bruce, you have me pushing the button for the "next page" of your framework.  It is a wonderful gift to have shared with your colleagues.

Gregg



On Jul 12, 2014, at 7:09 AM, Bruce Despain wrote:

> ATEGers,
> 
> The formal description of English Grammar that I have been working on includes these various modal periphrases in the chapter on verb constructions with the section beginning on page 500 (bdespain.org under studies, An Analytical Grammar of English).  The framework is mathematically and logically rigorous so may not be pedigogically useful till the system is understood, but at least the constructions are in one place.  I think the serious student should ought to take a look.  
> 
> Bruce Despain
> 
> --- [log in to unmask] wrote:
> 
> From: "Myers, Marshall" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: "I'm gonna write"--verb + infinitive or verb + auxiliary?
> Date:         Sun, 6 Jul 2014 16:14:55 +0000
> 
> Glenda,
> 
> "Fixin' to" is also quite popular here, too.
> 
> I teach a unit on Appalachian English in my grammar class when I teach it here at Eastern Kentucky University, where I am retired but still teaching part-time.
> 
> As I best remember, you're in Alabama. Correct?
> 
> Check me out at Amazon.com, the book section. 
> 
> I'm at [log in to unmask]
> 
> I was formerly the Book Review Editor for the ATEG Journal.
> 
> Best Wishes,
> 
> Marshall
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Conway, Glenda
> Sent: Friday, July 04, 2014 9:36 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: "I'm gonna write"--verb + infinitive or verb + auxiliary?
> 
> Hi Marshall!
> 
> Where I live, the wording is "I'm fixin' to. We like to take our own good time when doing so won't cause a disaster.
> 
> Are you retired? Where are you living?
> 
> It's so good to hear you here.
> 
> 
> Glenda
> 
> 
> 
> Glenda Conway
> 
> Professor, English
> 
> Coordinator, Harbert Writing Center
> 
> Department of English and Foreign Languages
> 
> University of Montevallo
> 
> Montevallo, AL 35115
> 
> 205 665 6425 office
> 
> 205 482 4380 cell
> 
> [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ________________________________
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Myers, Marshall [[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Friday, July 04, 2014 8:20 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: "I'm gonna write"--verb + infinitive or verb + auxiliary?
> 
> Glenda,
> 
> Old classmate here!
> 
> "Going to" is many times regarded as a two-word modal auxiliary like the related "can," may," might" and others.
> 
> "I'm going to go"
> "I may go."
> 
> Marshall Myers
> Professor Emeritus
> Eastern Kentucky University
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Michael
> Sent: Wednesday, July 02, 2014 8:05 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: "I'm gonna write"--verb + infinitive or verb + auxiliary?
> 
> Glenda
> 
> This is the first message I have received from ATEG. I was not sure it was an active list.
> 
> I have a couple of brief observations:
> 
> 1. You could interpret the structure either way, but you also need to explain to students the pragmatic meaning of the grammar in addition to labeling it with a pedagogical grammar structure.
> 
> 2. One pragmatic meaning of "gonna" is to have an intention and subsequently a plan to do something. Intentions entail plans.
> 
> 3. You might also mention the informal spoken linguistic register of the poem.
> 
> 4. I was just reading yesterday about the progressive tense in the British National Corpus which found that overwhelming percentage of its use (65%) was what the author described as "repeatedness" or in other words, "an ongoing single event." An example of repeatedness from the corpus in the article was "You are once again doing it completely and utterly wrong." The source for this is a book chapter:
> 
> Romer, U. (2010). Using general and specialized corpora in English language teaching: Past, present, and future. In M. Compoy-Cubillo, B. Belles-Fortuno, and M. Gea-Valor. (Eds.), Corpus-based approaches to English language teaching (pp. 18-35). London: Continuum.
> 
> Romer conducted a large study of progressive in a 2005 book, Progressives, patterns, pedagogy: A corpus-driven approach to progressive forms, functions, contexts, and dialectics.
> 
> I do not think repeatedness is the pragmatic function of the line, but teaching students about using corpus studies, and pragmatics to inform our knowledge of grammar is certainly worth the time.
> 
> Mike Busch
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Greetings-
> 
> Today, in my Advanced English Grammar class, I showed Langston Hughes's "Daybreak in Alabama" as an example of a poem with two sentences.
> 
> I realized while showing the poem that I was not sure how to divide the slots of the first main clause, which is
> 
> ...I'm gonna write me some music about
> Daybreak in Alabama....
> 
> Shall I think of "I'm gonna write" as being equivalent to "I will write," thus considering "[a]m gonna" as an auxiliary to "write"?
> 
> Or shall I think of "I'm gonna write" as being equivalent to "I am going to write," thus considering "to write..." an adverbial infinitive phrase?
> 
> I would love to read some discussion on this clause and to be able to share it with my students afterward.
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Glenda Conway
> Professor, English
> Coordinator, Harbert Writing Center
> Department of English and Foreign Languages Station 6420 University of Montevallo Montevallo, AL 35115
> 205 665-6425 office
> 206 665-6422 fax
> [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
> 
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