Discussions advance when we are discussing the same kind of structures.
Unfortunately, Craig did not consider the structures which Johanna (and
I) find frequently in our student writing.
Here are the two structures Johanna presented.
1) In Deborah Tannen's book 'You Just Don't Understand', she claims that
... " or, even worse,
2) In the book 'You Just Don't Understand', it states that ..."
The point I made is that those don't move as adverbials in mature
writing do.
3) *She claims in Deborah Tannen's book 'You Just Don't Understand' that
. . .
4) *It states in the book 'You Just Don't Understand', that ..."
Here is Craig's analysis:
"In the beginning, God created heaven and earth" is to some extent a
comment about what happened in the beginning." Or consider "After
lunch, we will tackle the big problems", which seems to me a logical
answer to the question "What will we do after lunch?" I don't see a big
difference between that and "In You Don't Understand, Deborah Tannen
claims...." To me, that's also highly movable. Deborah Tannen claims
in You don't Understand that... It's an adverbial of place, telling us
where the claim has been made.
It would have helped if he had considered the ACTUAL structures Johanna
presented. Perhaps, he has very different intuitions about (3) and (4)
than Johanna and I do.
Therefore, I could not agree more with this observation from Craig:
I think you [me] may be absolutely right, that Johanna and I are
coming from a different frame of reference.
There is no question that Johanna presented very different constructions
than the constructions Craig presented in his reply.
Finally, It is always possible that Johanna and I are wrong about the
structures we are concerned with in her student writing. We may just be
silly prescriptivists about them. I have NEVER seen them in the kind of
careful writing I read. If I am wrong on this point, then someone with
access to data base can provide relevant examples that my reading
experiences are just too limited.
Bob Yates, Central Missouri State University
To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
|
