I do think that 'To know him is to love him' consists of three clauses together, two nonfinite and the complete clause finite. In my other example, it would make a difference to my analysis if it were 'running regularly is good for you ' rather than 'running is good for you.' I would call the first a reduced clause. I analyze it in a way that participle phrases still exist, but I guess I could call them all clauses if the possibility of other clause elements is there.
I actually only use the reduced clause explanation with my upper division students who are studying to be ESL or bilingual ed teachers. I do this so I can show them how independent clauses can be combined and where the elements of those embedded clauses come from. I also do it because it usually seems reasonably transparent to me. For number of years, we have taught a Quirk et al. based grammar in this class. However, I may have to change that. The students have to take a professional certification test that seems to expect them to know quite a bit of grammar, but much of it is discussed in a more traditional way, so now I find myself saying things like this: " But you might find this referred to as a participle phrase on the test or in the text books your district uses" and things like that. It's probably more confusing to try to get them to learn more than one name for structure.
In my composition course, I stick to more traditional names for structures and use them to discuss linguistic possibilities. At my school, we use sentence combining in the developmental composition classes. I think students are more comfortable if they have a name for a structure, but I think a lot of grammar terminology just overwhelms them.
Janet
________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Martha Kolln
Sent: Thu 4/10/2008 9:00 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Clauses vs. phrases
Janet,
I think that your explanation of participle and infinite phrases as
non-finite clauses is clear, and I know that perhaps the majority of
linguists on our list agree with you. And, yes, because those verb
phrases are reduced clauses, we can call them clauses.
But I prefer to reserve "clause" for the traditional "subject +
predicate." First, the work that I do is mainly for students who are
applying their knowledge of sentence grammar to their own writing or
to the teaching of others. It's very practical to be able to define a
sentence and discuss its possibilities and its punctuation on the
basis of clauses--the subject + predicate kind. And it's very
useful to discuss all the possibilities for expanding sentences with
various kinds of phrases, both verb phrases and others, and various
dependent clauses.
I also have to dissent somewhat from the notion that "Running" in
your example doesn't make the grade as a clause because it has no
other "clause elements." But doesn't the fact that "run" is
intransitive and doesn't need any other elements to be a grammatical
sentence make a difference? The children are running. If your
example had been "Running regularly is good for you" or "Running
fast. . .", would that make a difference? And in your example "To
know him is to love him," isn't "to know him" also a non-finite
clause? So you would analyze that as three clauses, right?
For purposes of pedagogy--the kind of teaching that I think should be
going on in language arts classes of middle school and high school--I
think structural grammar is the logical choice.
Martha
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