Kathryn,

   I think this mostly comes down to differences in our views of language.
 Yours may be more mainstream, but mine is more mainstream within the
writing (composition) community, which might explain why there's such a
gap between grammar and writing.
   I like the idea that anxiety is functional.  But when I'm feeling
anxiety in relation to my writing, it's not that it needs "correcting",
but that it isn't accomplishing what I want it to. (Not clear,
thoughtful, interesting, useful, convincing, whatever the purpose might
be.) Believe it or not, I work hard to make my writing seem like
something a person might actually say.
    If Herb is right (he has me convinced) the function of case has been
shifting toward the pragmatic.  Is that a weakening of the language,
something we should fight against?  I'm more apt to use it for
rhetorical effect to the extent that i understand it. At any rate, we
might be taking arms against the sea if we oppose it. I may not like
the law of gravity, but I have to live in a gravity world.
   A traditional view of grammar is that it's the set of constraints that
govern what is considered acceptable within more formal discourse. 
Most writing teachers, and I'm certainly one, feel we need to hold that
in abeyance while writing answers far more important concerns.  There's
a pretty good literature out there that shows the compulsion to
"correct' writing (rather than revise) is characteristic of
inexperienced and ineffective writers. To the extent that we spend
considerable time getting students ready to meet arbitrary and
dysfunctional standards, we have distorted the whole notion of writing.
 As you know, though, I'm all in favor of a far deeper and wider
understanding of language.  Avoiding superficial error seems a
distraction from a far richer, far more interesting subject, the
language itself and how it works and operates.
    From a functional perspective, meaning happens in and through the
grammar.  These are rhetorical choices, not merely formal ones.
    I help people with writing for "formal" registers all the time.  Most
are very happy that I demand much more than correctness.   >
    I have a great deal of difficulty with the notion of "standard
English."  We tend to talk about it as if it were set in stone and was
actually existing somewhere to be studied and emulated.  It's an
abstract concept. Even if we decide it is evidenced by the work of the
"best writers", who are we to include in that category?
   I'm certainly not in favor of losing your reader by using terms or
constructs they aren't familiar with. But that's a far cry from saying
that a dialect is inherently incorrect. You write with your audience in
mind, and that may mean recognizing that their lives have been  more
privileged than your own.
    I suspect we get to the same place from opposite directions, but I
also think the direction you come from has enormous repercussions.

Craig



You say, "These prescriptions go on making people distrust their own
> language. . . . Rather than improving writing, I think they have the
> effect of shutting it down."
>
>
>
> I think that people are most often anxious when they feel they are
> inexpert. Sometimes they react to that anxiety by trying to become more
> expert, and sometimes they react by shutting down. (I agree that a
> school grammar or teacher that seeks to shame a student or that refuses
> to acknowledge linguistic diversity can heighten this anxiety-bad
> teachers are bad for students, period.) Ultimately, though, students
> will succeed when they learn to take responsibility for how they react
> to that anxiety, and educators will succeed when they encourage students
> to take the former route by showing them how to become more expert and
> what the rewards will be if they do.
>
>
>
> I don't think it lessens anxiety to dismiss case rules as outmoded and
> irrelevant. Students will, rightly, have the uneasy feeling that other
> people are privy to information that they don't have. It may, though,
> lessen their anxiety if they can understand case rules and figure out
> when or if they need to bother to apply them. It will probably lessen
> their anxiety even more if they understand that in American English case
> usage has shifted a great deal and that the shift has a lot to do with
> the difference they hear between formal and informal registers.
>
>
>
> You say, "We don't have to be prescriptivists to have . . .  high
> standards." This raises an interesting point. (I'm assuming you mean
> high standards for language use.) From a fully descriptive position,
> what would it mean to hold a student to a high standard? Doesn't a 100%
> non-prescriptive position mean nobody's language is "nonstandard"? If no
> one's language is nonstandard, then what does it mean to reach the
> standard? I *think* what you mean is "We don't have to be pedants to
> have  . . . high standards"--? And amen to that.
>
>
>
> Best,
>
> Kathryn
>
>
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
> Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2006 12:30 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: using "before"
>
>
>
> Kathryn,
>    You make some delightful points.  My full phrasing was "When in
> doubt, trust your ear," which was intended to be pretty close to what
> you are saying.  The ear contributes but sure ain't the only judge.  We
> buy too many hamburgers because "What you want is what you get"  seduces
> us much more than "You get what you want".  (The whole campaign rums
> counter to our prime objection about McDonald's, that it's cheap and
> quick, but you can't get what you want there.) Beware of advertisers and
> politicians, those silver tongued devils.  By all means.
>     I'm not sure of prescriptivists who insist words stick to one part
> of speech, but school grammar does tend to imply that the lines are
> clearer than they are.  Processes become nominalized.  Happenings and
> events are spoken/written of as though they are things. The semantically
> leaning definitions for noun and verb don't prepare us for that.
>     We shouldn't fault speech for being different from writing or
> disparage speech for being occassionally inane.   It would be easy to
> quote constructions common to writing as a way to disparage it.  Both
> are capable of great and terrible things.  It seems to me that too many
> school teachers go on insisiting that ALL writing has to conform to some
> sort of formal register that rarely exists in the real world. Writing
> can enlist many of the virtues of speech (I'm paraphrasing Peter Elbow
> here) while doing the work of writing. Writing that strives to be clear,
> thoughtful, interesting, and meaningful will pull an appropriate
> language into its orbit
>     Is our insistence on case endings still a throwback to overvaluing
> latin? These prescriptions go on making people distrust their own
> language.  Rather than improving writing, I think they have the effect
> of shutting it down.  People don't need a new language, just practice in
> the genres of writing.
>     We don't have to be prescriptivists to have strong values and high
> standards.
>
> Craig
>
>
> Rogers, Kathryn (HRW-ATX) wrote:
>
>
>
> FWIW, the original sentence ("The Smiths received their invitation
> before us / we did"), which is not naturally trochaic or otherwise
> regularly rhythmic (unlike the examples by the politicians and poet),
> does sound better to me with "we did" than with "before us." I don't
> know whether this is because my ear is tinny or whether my brain wants
> the additional emphasis on the final information, which seems somehow to
> be semantically important to the speaker, perhaps even the point of the
> sentence.
>
>
>
> Also, the examples "before lunch," "before midnight," and "before our
> arrival" are all phrases having to do with time or events in time, so
> they don't seem in any way illogical to me. Maybe the more poetic "those
> who came before us" sounds OK because "us" isn't entirely literal: "Us"
> has the larger resonance of our time, our era, our advent as a group.
>
>
>
> I'll have to think about your rule, "When in doubt, trust the ear." I
> think there are many people whose speech is somewhat anemic and
> illogical, no matter how "natural" it sounds to them. You know, like
> people who talk funny and stuff. ;-) Or, more seriously, like much
> political speech that sounds very pleasing but when parsed logically
> comes down to meaningless or contradictory abstractions. If we can
> answer any query that comes to the list, any author's request for
> editing, or any question students have with "write or say whatever
> sounds fine to you," I suspect we will frustrate anyone who wishes to
> increase the richness or preciseness of their communication or who
> simply wishes to acquire a formally correct register to use for
> audiences that expect that register.
>
>
>
> I'm a pluralist, and I like having multiple registers to choose from. I
> don't want to be restricted to the dialect and register I grew up with,
> though I have nothing against either and use both most of the time. I
> enjoy the logic and precision of speech employed by, say, Jane Austen or
> Anthony Lane as much as the rhythmic achievements of Maya Angelou. I
> wouldn't ask Lane to write as Angelou does, and I wouldn't ask Angelou
> to write as Lane does. And though it is a new year and all, I can't
> imagine being foolhardy enough to stand in on this listserv for pure
> prescriptivists, however much everyone loves a good melee between
> prescriptivism and descriptivism.
>
>
>
> Best,
>
> Kathryn
>
>
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
> Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2006 10:49 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: using "before"
>
>
>
> Kathryn,
>     I think your post, giving the most formal view of the issue, is very
> helpful.  And it is very thoughtfully expressed.  It may just be that we
> see the role of the grammarian in different ways; I would like to see
> the "formal rules" as aids to human contact, not as constraints that get
> in the way of it.  "Before us" sounds better, gives us a better sense of
> emphasis, and seems to bring with it no potential for misunderstanding.
> Why not use it, regardless of the formality of the context?
>     This brings up the whole issue of "rules" in language, how they are
> "derived", and who determines what is appropriate in whatever register.
> My own sense is that we should try to work in close harmony with the
> natural rules of the language as we put them to work in achieving
> various purposes.  "Trying to tap the heart of the common reader" (a
> great turn of phrase, by the way) requires us to act in harmony with
> "rules" your logicians haven't understood and seem unlikely to
> acknowledge. Because their rule would put us at odds with the common
> reader (and there is a common reader in all of us), we should discard
> it.
>     It seems to me that "before" shifts from preposition to conjunction
> very readily and commonly, so we are very alert to the possibility.
> (Before lunch or Before we eat lunch. Before midnight or Before the
> clock strikes midnight. Before our arrival or Before we arrive.)  The
> prepositional phrase gives us a shortened version of what we often
> understand as action or process, even in nominalized form. Another rule
> here might be something like "whatever is concise, rich in meaning, and
> clear is pleasing to the ear." Perhaps the "common heart" has a viable
> aesthetic as well.
>     Or, when in doubt, trust the ear.
>      But I am very happy to agree to disagree. People look for very
> different things in "grammar". I think we load the issue a bit, though,
> when one way is thought of as "logical" and the other as "breaking a
> rule."  When something works, we can try to understand why.  Language is
> rule driven, with or without the handbooks.
>
> Craig
> Rogers, Kathryn (HRW-ATX) wrote:
>
> Ah-well, yes, the construction is commonly used as a prepositional
> phrase. I was assuming that your questioner wanted to know what would be
> considered correct and/or logically desirable by people in the habit of
> following formal rules (because he asked a professor, who then asked a
> grammar listerv).
>
>
>
> I think that the speakers you quote wish to project an image of
> familiarity (even to the point of folksiness) and not necessarily of
> formal correctness. The construction "before us" is certainly
> comprehensible and common. It's only when you pause to think about it
> that the illogic becomes apparent. (And, FWIW, "Let's Thank Those Who
> Came Before We Did" doesn't scan prettily.)
>
>
>
> "Before us" is common and easily understood-and if I were a speechwriter
> for a politician or a poet trying to tap the heart of the common reader,
> I might very well choose that option.
>
>
>
> So it's pretty much a matter of desired register. For most American
> readers/listeners, most of the time, one can use "before us" as a
> prepositional phrase without anyone smarting or flinching. But whether
> the folks writing the dictionary will include "before us" in the
> examples of "before" as a preposition or whether a grammar book will get
> behind the construction is another issue.
>
>
>
> Best,
>
> Kathryn
>
>
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Nancy Tuten
> Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2006 7:26 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: using "before"
>
>
>
> Thanks, Kathryn, for taking time to help me think through this issue.
> This is the kind of question that astute students often pose, too, so I
> think it is worth considering. You (and Warriner) have addressed the
> point I find most interesting in terms of teaching: whether other
> subordinating conjunctions besides "than" and "as" can have an
> elided/elliptical verb.
>
>
>
> But I'm still not convinced that "before" cannot be a preposition in
> such a construction. My colleague sent a follow-up e-mail adding these
> thoughts to our discussion of the sentence "The Smiths received their
> invitation before (us) (we [did])":
>
>
>
> Here's something else that I've found:  President Clinton and Governor
> Joe Manchin III both used the phrase "those who came before us" in their
> inaugural addresses, and Maya Angelou used the title "Let's Thank Those
> Who Came before Us."  Doesn't the preposition "before" have the same
> sense in those phrases as in the sentence we're analyzing?
>
>
>
> Those examples call into question our assertion that the prepositional
> phrase "before us" is illogical in reference to time. The prescriptivist
> in me wants to say that even presidents and famous authors can make
> mistakes, but the descriptivist in me must admit that both constructions
> seem defensible.
>
>
>
> I'm surprised we haven't heard from anyone else on the issue.
>
>
>
> Best,
>
> Nancy
>
>
>
> Nancy L. Tuten, PhD
>
> Professor of English
>
> Director of the Writing-across-the-Curriculum Program
>
> Columbia College
>
> Columbia, South Carolina
>
> [log in to unmask]
>
> 803-786-3706
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Rogers, Kathryn (HRW-ATX)
> Sent: Tuesday, January 03, 2006 11:34 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: using "before"
>
>
>
> Hi, Nancy,
>
>
>
> Per Warriner's grammar and the part-of-speech labels for "before" in
> Webster's New World Dictionary, your analysis is correct. It is an
> incomplete construction with an elided verb (as you say, "before us"
> would be illogical as a prepositional phrase because "us" isn't really a
> time or an event in time). So, according to formal rules and logic, the
> correct pronoun is "we," though in common speech, people almost never
> honor the formal rule when first-person pronouns are involved.
>
>
>
> Warriner states that an incomplete construction occurs "most commonly"
> after the words _than_ and _as_, but does not rule out other
> subordinating conjunctions. It may be that the "rule" your colleague
> found about only "than" and "as" taking elided verbs is an attempt to
> remedy awkwardnesses like the one in the sentence in question. So it may
> be a style dictate rather than a rule of traditional grammar.
>
>
>
> At any rate, as a point of correctness, I would use "we," and as a point
> of style (at least), I would include "did" at the end of the sentence to
> avoid the awkwardness.
>
>
>
> Best,
>
> Kathryn
>
>
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Nancy Tuten
> Sent: Monday, January 02, 2006 6:39 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: using "before"
>
>
>
> Happy New Year, listers.
>
>
>
> A retired colleague and friend called and asked me to weigh in on the
> following grammar question, which someone had posed to him:
>
>
>
> In the following sentence, is "before" a preposition, in which case the
> pronoun should be in the objective case?
>
>
>
> "The Smiths received their invitation before us."
>
>
>
> Or, is "before" a subordinating conjunction launching a clause with an
> elliptical verb, in which case the pronoun should be in the nominative
> case?
>
>
>
> "The Smiths received their invitation before we [did]."
>
>
>
> My first response was to vote for the latter choice, even though I
> cannot imagine ever using "we" in that sentence without also
> saying/writing the verb. Unlike the second clause of the sentence "She
> is three inches taller than I," the clause starting with "before" sounds
> really wrong without the verb plainly in sight (or earshot). We
> concluded that it probably sounds wrong precisely because "before" can
> be a preposition or a subordinator, whereas "than" can serve only in the
> latter role.
>
>
>
> We debated whether we could really say, though, that one choice was
> right and one wrong-or even that one choice was better than the other.
>
>
>
> We also considered the notion that "before," when used as a preposition,
> isn't really logical in front of an object referring to people because
> it is not logical to speak of time ("sooner than") in relation to
> people. That is, "before noon," "before Tuesday," and "before next week"
> all make sense because those objects are all time designations. But is
> it logical to refer to time by saying "before [person/people]"? (Of
> course, we can use "before" to mean "in front of," but that is a
> different sense completely: "She gave the speech before a crowd of six
> thousand.")
>
>
>
> The next day, my colleague called back to tell me that he did some Web
> surfing and discovered a number of pages arguing that only "than" and
> "as" can have an elliptical verb. Is that so? I know that we use those
> two to point out a common pronoun error associated with their use, but
> are they the only two?
>
>
>
> I suppose that a little creative avoidance is in order here! Either of
> these sentences would avoid the problem:
>
>
>
>             "The Smiths received their invitation sooner than we did."
>
>             "The Smiths received their invitation before we did."
>
>
>
> I told him that I knew JUST the place to go with this issue, and I will
> forward your insights to him!
>
>
>
> Thanks for your thoughts,
>
>
>
> Nancy
>
>
>
> Nancy L. Tuten, PhD
>
> Professor of English
>
> Director of the Writing-across-the-Curriculum Program
>
> Columbia College
>
> Columbia, South Carolina
>
> [log in to unmask]
>
> 803-786-3706
>
>
>
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