Bob,

I wouldn't actually claim that *everything* about language is learned
simply from exposure to it. Everyone, I think, would acknowledge that we
bring something to the learning process; the disagreement is over
whether the something(s) are general cognitive abilities that are used
for other things as well (like math, or cooking, or building design), or
(instead) faculties that are specific to language only. 

For that mixed construction we started with, I *can* sketch out a
possible SFL treatment of it -- just keep in mind that this is off the
top of my head, and can't be taken as evidence of what Halliday, etc.
would do with it (in other words, if it's dumb, it's my fault, not the
theory's). The sentence used a prepositional phrase with 'by' and
omitted a formal subject. Here goes:

Background points (omitting a discussion of the "triple-layer" approach
in SFL, for reasons of space):

(1) The "default" English sentence maps Agent, Subject, and Theme onto
the same element (the "subject" -- lowercase refers to the traditional
category, uppercase refers to the SFL definition).

(2) Adjuncts can't be Subjects -- it's part of the definition of
Adjunct. 

(3) Circumstances are regularly mapped onto Adjuncts, and are frequently
marked by prepositions

The construction in question uses a Circumstance of Purpose, but
positions it as Subject while retaining the marking that would be
appropriate only to an Adjunct. This *may* occur because the speaker is
treating the Purpose as a Theme, and purposes themselves are a bit
agent-like; the statistical frequency of the Agent/Theme/Subject
combination may be acting to "attract" an element that normally can't be
used as a subject into subject position.

Note that there is another quite frequent -- and annoying --
construction that almost does the same thing, but avoids the
Adjunct-as-Subject glitch by plugging in a pronoun:

By opening early, it allows the store to get more profit out of the day.

I think the motivation for this is similar -- the Circumstance as
Purpose is Thematic. Using a gerund (Opening early allows...) as subject
would position the event encoded as the gerund to be Thematic as well,
but it wouldn't mark it specifically as a Purpose. The student writer is
emphasizing the "Purpose-ness" of the action at the expense of (to us)
extra clunky phrasing, whereas formal writing would call for leaving
implicit the purpose-marking in the interest of brevity. 

Sincerely,

Bill Spruiell

-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Robert Yates
Sent: Monday, December 08, 2008 5:57 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Mixed construction (was A short note on...)

Bill,

Your speculation on why they occur are all plausible.  I would just
observe that your explanations require appeals to various language
principles interacting with each other.  Such observations don't seem to
match with a claim that our knowledge of language is strictly based on
exposure to the language.

Of course, you may be right here. 

"I suspect we *do* encounter a lot of those mixed constructions -- we
just don't encounter them in writing. I know I've heard quite a few on
news broadcasts and the like. "

On the other hand, it is interesting to note that  Biber et al. in the
Grammar of Spoken and Written English do not index "mixed construction"
and all of the references to "by" makes no mention of them.  If they are
frequent in the spoken language, this absence is strange.  

This is not the case elsewhere.  For example, Biber et al. mention
prefaces.

(1) This woman, she's ninety.

It notes that prefaces occur in conversation and not in academic
writing. (p. 964).

So, Biber et al. do note structures that occur only in the spoken
language.

**
Let's clear up something about "my view" of such forms in developing
writing.

Bill writes: ". . .  in your view, they're probably performance errors
and quite separate from what might count as evidence for linguistic
competence."

I'm interested in trying to understand why developing writers do what
they do.  I take a developmental perspective on such constructions.
From the developing writer's perspective, I don't think these are
performance errors.  Rather, they  represent something about such
writer's competence.  I think teaching needs to begin with where the
student is, so a perspective that tries to understand the writer's
principles is much more useful pedagogically than a perspective that
says this is what the writer should be doing.

One of the problems I have with systemic functional linguistics is that
it really doesn't provide any insights into why developing writers do
what they do. Halliday is quite clear his perspective of language is not
about what a language user knows. Likewise, the belief that our
knowledge of language is based solely on the language we have been
exposed to doesn't offer much of an explanation except to speculate
perhaps these structures are in the oral language and just haven't been
noticed.

Bob Yates, University of Central Missouri  

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