Our students may not know the term "register," until we explain it to them, but I find most of them, at least at the college level, have a pretty good understanding that the appropriateness of writing choices is sensitive to the context they're writing in.
Herb
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Amanda Godley
Sent: 2008-06-19 11:45
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: The Death of the Sentence?
To echo Craig's observation -- I just completed an analysis of
grammar/conventions/usage errors in about 200 high school students' timed
academic essays and found only 11 instances of text-messaging language. I
also gave the students a survey about their use of text messaging. 76% of
students reported that they own a cell phone and about 50% reported sending
more than 15 text messages per day (36% reported sending more than 30 text
messages per day).
It seems as if the high school students in my study engage in texting quite
a bit but still understand that it is not appropriate/effective in academic
writing.
Amanda
On 6/19/08 8:37 AM, "Craig Hancock" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Herb,
> A corrolary to this--I'm not sure if you would agree--is that the
> sentence EVOLVES over time, and it is something we all contribute to.
> It isn't invented at the top and then imposed downward against the
> unruly riffraff.
> The best standards have everything to do with what works, what helps us
> accomplish our communally evolving goals.
> Text messaging is something we should delight in and admire. I have yet
> to see any serious encroachment into the academic world. I have just
> read 43 freshmen placement essays without a single instance of
> text-messaging creeping over.
>
> Craig>
>
> Forty or so years ago I used to argue with transformational-generative
>> grammarians, and they were that then, that the sentence, in particular the
>> symbol S, was not a logical primitive but a methodological choice. It
>> represented a unit within which certain relationships, structures, and
>> constraints could be discussed without the inconvenience of answering
>> questions about discourse. This usually got us into an argument about
>> competence and performance, which I held, and hold, to be a corollary of
>> the methodological choice of S as the domain of analysis and description.
>> In informal speech, in contrast to formal lectures, addresses, sermons,
>> etc., sentences tend to correspond to the breath group, so that the spoken
>> sentence tends to be what one can say in one breath. In the early 70s I
>> was teaching a linguistic field methods course with a linguistics grad
>> student as native speaker. His language was Pashto, and as we got into
>> the syntax of Pashto, we explored a variety of canonical sentence types
>> and then started working on complex sentences, looking into subordinate
>> clauses and the constraints that apply to complex sentence structures.
>> The Pashto speaker paused at one point and said, "You can put together a
>> sentence like that in Pashto, but no one every would. When people tell
>> stories, argue with each other, talk about affairs of their families and
>> communities, they use simple sentences." That just drove home further for
>> me the observation that what a sentence can be depends very much on
>> medium, genre, discourse pragmatics, and social setting, among other
>> things.
>>
>> Herb
>>
>> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Carol Morrison
>> Sent: 2008-06-18 20:45
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: The Death of the Sentence?
>>
>>
>> I found this on leithart.com under the subheading: The History of the
>> Sentence
>>
>> Ian Robinson's The Establishment of Modern English Prose in the
>> Reformation and the Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1998) is a fascinating
>> discussion of the history of the sentence and of English punctuation, and,
>> despite its heavy-handed title, is a delight to read.
>>
>> Does the sentence have a history? Robinson shows that it does. Even in our
>> day, when the well-formed sentence is described as the key to prose
>> writing, there are many intelligible uses of language that do not employ
>> well-formed sentences - lists, lecture notes, football broadcasts.
>> (Robinson is not an opponent of the well-formed sentence; his are
>> wonderful; but he recognizes that it is not the only possible unit of
>> sense.)
>>
>> Prior to the modern period, Robinson argues, the sentence was not
>> recognized as a syntactical unit at all: "Medieval grammar, following the
>> classical tradition, was of course highly developed, but there never
>> emerged in the medieval period any conception of the sentence as
>> syntactical unit." The word "sentence" is used in the Middle Ages, but
>> means something like "sense" or "gist." "Thou speakest sentences" says a
>> character in Ben Jonson's Poetaster, and he does not mean that someone "is
>> speaking dramatically but that he is speaking sense and, in particular,
>> uttering weighty, authoritative dicta."
>>
>> --- On Wed, 6/18/08, Spruiell, William C <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> From: Spruiell, William C <[log in to unmask]>
>> Subject: Re: The Death of the Sentence?
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Date: Wednesday, June 18, 2008, 4:42 PM
>>
>> Anyone who thinks that abbreviations and "squiggle" notations like
>>
>> ":-)" are a problem in current writing should be forced to try to
>>
>> read medieval manuscripts. Start with really expensive writing materials
>>
>> (vellum anyone?), make the writing process laborious (sharpen quill, grind
>>
>> stuff for ink, blot the vellum...) and throw in a bunch of insular monks
>> (well,
>>
>> insular even for monks), and you get pages of squigglefest. At least the
>>
>> computer environment prevents some of the excesses of calligraphy that
>> would
>>
>> otherwise occur.
>>
>>
>>
>> I suspect that the comments about sentences in that piece were actually
>>
>> comments about punctuation. If so, I'm not really sure how to maintain the
>>
>> claim that clearly demarcated sentences are necessary for clear thought,
>> given
>>
>> that -- in all probability -- Plato, Aristotle, etc. didn't mark sentence
>>
>> boundaries in writing at all. Languages always have clause complexes;
>> writing
>>
>> systems may or may not orthographically mark these in various ways.
>>
>>
>>
>> All that having been said (I don't usually adopt absolute positions, but
>>
>> I'll certainly use absolutes), I *do* tend to notice a link between
>>
>> orthographically-unstructured writing, etc. and bad argumentation in my
>>
>> students -- but I don't think the first causes the second. Instead,
>>
>> it's simply that students who don't read much good argumentation tend
>>
>> not to argue well, and if they're reading mainly text messages from other
>>
>> students, they're not reading much good argumentation. Other studies
>>
>> (including something from NCTE that I may be able to dig out later) have
>> shown
>>
>> that students *are* reading a good bit -- but I suspect what they're
>>
>> reading is the kind of texts that are produced by others in their age
>> group,
>>
>> and that emphasize easy social interaction over critical thinking. "U R
>>
>> teh uber-newb, d00d!" is fascinating in its own right, but if that's
>>
>> the kind of thing you're used to, you'll find academic or business
>>
>> writing quite alien.
>>
>>
>>
>> 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 Craig Hancock
>>
>> Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2008 1:35 PM
>>
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>
>> Subject: Re: The Death of the Sentence?
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>
>> Carol,
>>
>> I read the article in part because the inbox announced that Martha
>>
>> Kolln had been consulted. Martha's comments are about the only
>>
>> thoughtful part of it. It left me thinking that it's not the death of
>>
>> the sentence that's a problem, but the general shallowness of
>>
>> conversation about it, including those (Martha the main exception) in
>>
>> our "discipline" of English who weighed in. I suspect they thought
>>
>> any
>>
>> working journalist could handle the topic, but the results in this case
>>
>> are comic.
>>
>> The idea that the sentence was "invented several centuries" ago
>>
>> and
>>
>> "brought order to chaos" is the sort of silliness that fills the bulk
>>
>> of the article.
>>
>> It's high tine for NCTE to begin advocating at least some direct
>>
>> teaching about language.
>>
>>
>>
>> Craig >
>>
>>
>>
>> Hi everyone. This was in my NCTE inbox this morning, so some of you may
>>
>>> have read it. (This is only part of the article). I bolded the second to
>>
>>> last line because it interests me: Does anyone know who
>>
>> "invented" the
>>
>>> sentence?
>>
>>>
>>
>>> The Fate of The Sentence: Is the Writing On the Wall?
>>
>>> By Linton Weeks
>>
>>> Washington Post Staff Writer
>>
>>> Sunday, June 15, 2008; Page M01
>>
>>>
>>
>>> The demise of orderly writing: signs everywhere.
>>
>>> One recent report, young Americans don't write well.
>>
>>> In a survey, Internet language -- abbreviated wds, :) and txt msging --
>>
>>> seeping into academic writing.
>>
>>> But above all, what really scares a lot of scholars: the impending death
>>
>>> of the English sentence.
>>
>>> Librarian of Congress James Billington, for one. "I see creeping
>>
>>> inarticulateness," he says, and the demise of the basic component of
>>
>> human
>>
>>> communication: the sentence.
>>
>>> This assault on the lowly -- and mighty -- sentence, he says, is
>>
>>> symptomatic of a disease potentially fatal to civilization. If the
>>
>>> sentence croaks, so will critical thought. The chronicling of history.
>>
>>> Storytelling itself.
>>
>>> He has a point. The sentence itself is a story, with a beginning, a
>>> middle
>>
>>> and an end. Something happens in a sentence. Without subjects, there are
>>
>>> no heroes or villains. Without verbs, there is no action. Without
>>> objects,
>>
>>> nothing is moved, changed, destroyed or created.
>>
>>> Plus, simple sentences clarify complex situations. ("Jesus
>>
>> wept.")
>>
>>> Since its invention centuries ago, the sentence has brought order to
>>
>>> chaos. It's the handle on the pitcher, a tonic chord in music, a stair
>>
>>> step chiseled in a mountainside.
>>
>>>
>>
>>>
>>
>>>
>>
>>>
>>
>>>
>>
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>>
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>>
>>
>>
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--
Amanda Godley, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
English Education
University of Pittsburgh
5111 Wesley W. Posvar Hall
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
412-648-7313
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