You hit on some very important issues that I failed to cover. The issue of nominal vs. adjectival uses of the -ing form has come up for discussion before here and it was irritating to me that Mr. Sloane glossed them both as nouns. Your description of "unfolding" the meaning of a discourse looks interesting. Perhaps it might be possible to clothe it with a technical meaning as well. Can you elaborate on this process?
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
Sent: Tuesday, November 17, 2009 8:22 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: A sentence is not a complete thought
Herb, Bruce, Bill, et al.,
For some reason, when I hit "reply" and respond to posts (something I
have done many times before), they are not finding their way out to the
list. Is anyone else having this problem? This is my fourth attempt to
post on this subject, this time posting directly. If the others show up,
I apologize for the overlap and repetition.
I have a number of problems with the article, distant from tagmemics.
The primary problem is the assumption that grammar is about correctness,
that this part of it, at least, should be held for final "correction"
and have nothing to do with actual writing. This is pretty much a
consensus position in composition, but this article does nothing at all
to even call that into question.
If you dismiss the idea that a sentence is a complete thought, do you
also dismiss the idea that it has some relevance to thought? To me, this
involves a recognition that sentences have to work in harmony with other
sentences, that they contribute to an unfolding discourse. You might be
able to measure grammaticality or "correctness" with isolated sentences,
but you miss a chance to discuss effectiveness if you cut the sentence
off from its discourse context, from its contribution to the developing
meaning of a text.
The author also creates a category (X word) when an already available
category (finite auxiliary) already exists. The attempt is to help
students avoid error, but why not deepen their understanding of language
in the process? Is finite more difficult than X group?
Anyone with a deep understanding of language knows why this "trick"
is useful. An independent clause requires a finite verb phrase, and
finite verb phrases are integral to making statements and asking
questions. Why not teach that directly instead of tiptoeing around it?
The "word left over" rule is an attempt to deal with the fact that
subordinate clauses also often have finite verb phrases. The assumption
here, though, is that subordination is not an important enough (or
useful enough) concept to teach. Once again, I question the choice.
What happens with sentences like "Chestnuts roasting over an open
fire" or "Everyone ought to vote"? I think they would slip through the
cracks.
Once again we have an article claiming that understanding grammar is
not at all useful, offering "tricks" to avoid error, claiming that their
tricks are better than the old ones. I would take issue with the basic
premises.
Craig
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