Dick,
     I seem to be getting caught with my books in the wrong place. My memory is that Pinker does mock the view that a native speaker needs to be taught his/her native language and does take on the prescriptivist tradition in a very thoughtful way for its failure in respecting the complexity of what the child already knows. These are truisms that anti grammar compositionists echo quite often. Pinker may not have intended that, but he also doesn't address directly the question of what it is useful for a native speaker to know consciously about his/her language. It's not fair to criticize him for not doing what he never intended to do, but it does leave those two enterprises apart.
    The curriculum in US schools these days certainly varies from place to place, but I think TYPICALLY there is lots of reading and writing, but not much attention to language.  The New York state curriculum standards for English tend to favor attention to Literary Elements, but grammar itself is treated more as a behavior that needs to be "correct." 
    My own roots are in composition (and literature) rather than grammar, so that may explain why these seemed to me like two different worlds. If you learn "the principles of syntax...at work in the human mind," it can seem as though that has no direct relevance to reading and writing. They may not contradict, but it's hard to see the overlap.
   Martha's work, which I admire deeply, might be relevant to this. Understanding English Grammar is a nice take on traditional grammar somewhat reformed. Rhetorical Grammar is an attempt to apply grammar to writing, and it seems a very different enterprise. The chapters on basic sentence patterns seem almost irrelevant to the rest of the book. She has done us all a great service by taking on these two tasks, but they don't slide seamlessly into each other. It's hard to make them overlap. 
   My own sense--and I know this is a big tent discussion--is that solutions to these problems can come more readily from the functional/cognitive side. At any rate, it's an area that hasn't been developed as well as it could. If our approach to grammar is not simply formal, then reading/writing applications should at least theoretically come more easily.

Craig
    
________________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Dick Veit [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, September 05, 2011 10:24 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: The Domain of Grammar

Craig,

Let me say in return that everything you say is also clear and sensible, and I agree with it. Not everything that is true is useful in every context. One person whose primary concern is educating students in reading and writing will focus on what students need to know and the best methods for teaching it to them. Another who studies how language works may focus on describing the principles of syntax and phonology that are at work in the human mind. The latter person may well celebrate the marvels of human language skills. The former may find it less relevant to do so.

For my entire career I taught both writing and syntax courses. I've written textbooks in both areas. Although each field informed the other, my classes and emphases in the two areas were very different. But they never seemed in conflict in any way, and it always surprises me when people say they are. (I certainly don't mean you, Craig.)

It's been years since I read Pinker's The Language Instinct. I agree with his assertion that we are born with brains that come structured with certain properties (call them instincts if you like) and that among these is a well developed ability for children to acquire the language that is spoken around them without special instruction. The evidence for this seems to me overwhelming. But I do not recall Pinker ever claiming that an innate capacity for children to acquire language precludes the need for educating them in language skills, and I would certainly never say so.

My position in brief:

Kids have an innate capacity for learning language. What they pick up and the speed with which they do it is amazing as hell. Just knocks your socks off. They also need lots of education. They need to read a lot, write a lot, and be trained in reading and writing.

My position may be wrong, but it is not contradictory. (I could expand on why it isn't, but a six-paragraph post is already long enough.)

Dick



On Sun, Sep 4, 2011 at 10:09 PM, Hancock, Craig G <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
Dick,
   Everything you say is very clear and sensible, and I would agree with it. I have made the same arguments, or tried to, in my classes. Yet I have become increasingly uncomfortable with the position over the last few years. It's not that it's wrong, so much, as that it relies very heavily on thinking about grammar as a formal system. It's true in a very limited domain.
   You could make somewhat the same case about vocabulary. With few exceptions, our students are experts in vocabulary in that the words which they are using are being used in ways close to the ways they are being used by those around them. If they have non-mainstream ways of using a word, chances are good they share those non-mainstream uses with a community of users. And describing that knowledge would certainly take a great deal more than a single semester. Plato (Socrates), if my memory is correct, made the argument that the concepts tied to those words are innate. But I believe if you tried to make the case that our students are masters of vocabulary, you would be met with a very different kind of resistance than you get from making that claim about grammar. What they know about words is sophisticated and complex, and they may have a hard time describing that knowledge to us, but it's not enough.
   If knowledge of grammar is separate from putting that knowledge to work in the world, and if our prime focus is on whether the forms being used are "grammatical" (shared by others), it's easy to say that the grammar the child has is an expert grammar. But if grammar is inherently functional, then the fact they they are "poor writers" and "inarticulate speakers" means that they lack expertise, a very critical expertise, which comes with full acquisition of a grammar. If the "domain of grammar" includes use (and not simply correctness), then they are not experts.
   From a functional view, we can't fall back on the notion that the grammar is already there or will inevitably happen on its own (more or less biologically, as Pinker would have it.) We have to more or less mentor it into being. Automaticity is a feature of language that allows for attention to be more centrally on meaning while some kinds of processing are happening at a below conscious level. The grammar the student presents in production has become automatic, and we certainly need to respect what the student knows, even unconsciously, as we mentor progress. But we seem to be missing the eight hundred pound gorilla in the room--far too many students are far too inarticulate. It has become far too easy for educators to ignore grammar (other than error) when addressing that very real problem. If the teaching of grammar is primarily a description of forms or of the rules for the generation of forms, then the gap between grammar and the higher aspects of literacy seems very wide. But if the domain of grammar includes the production of effective text, then there is no gap at all. One can't happen without implicating the other.

Craig


________________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [ Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/<mailto:ATEG@To%20join%20or%20leave%20this%20LISTSERV%20list,%20please%20visit%20the%20list's%20web%20interface%20at:
%20%20%20%20%20http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and%20select>

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/