Patricia,
I certainly call them sentences in my classes, since my students -- and I! -- have grown up with that term. There's a problem, I think, only if we start assuming that writers in 900 c.e. thought that their texts had boundaries exactly where we'd put them, and were just waiting around for the right punctuation to be developed. We all have a natural tendency to reify descriptions that we initially adopted for their pragmatic value, so I think it behooves us to acknowledge on a regular basis that our units and labels might not reflect "reality" in any sense.
Bill Spruiell
Dept. of English
Central Michigan University
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Patricia Lafayllve
Sent: Tuesday, June 24, 2008 8:17 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: The Death of the Sentence? and the importanceofthecompetence-performance distinction
Bill-
Thanks for the reply - I know that specific grammatical structures certainly
varied (as much as spelling did!), but I guess where I get fuzzy is where,
and at what point, we cut them off from "sentence" as we define the word
now. And, as a corollary, what words to use when describing Old English
literature. Beowulf, of course, is verse-form, and that's a whole 'nuther
kettle of lutefisk, as they say. But when you're looking at things like the
Chronicle and other works...can you call the statements sentences?
Perhaps that's more or less a rhetorical question, but for me it's a very
grey sort of area.
-patty
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Spruiell, William C
Sent: Tuesday, June 24, 2008 6:05 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: The Death of the Sentence? and the
importanceofthecompetence-performance distinction
Patricia,
I certainly don't mean to say that before the Renaissance, people didn't
make full assertions, ask questions, and the like -- as one of the previous
posters remarked, categories like "assertion" do seem fundamental. Take the
most recalcitrant Roman monument inscription (the kind that's just row after
row of all-capital letters with no spaces) and you can pick out chains of
assertions, some of which have additional background assertions linked to
them, and so forth. If we take a section of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and
translate it to modern English, there are many points in which we can rather
uncomplicatedly create a translation with standard, punctuated sentences.
The Chronicle was compiled from the marginal annotations monks made in the
monastery calendars and the like, and if you're going to make a single
assertion about what happened in year X, and you have in mind an audience
that might be reading what you write years after you've died, what you write
is probably going to be exactly what modern text practices would call a
sentence. "In this year, a two-headed calf was born in Wixbridge."
What happened in the development of the modern notion of the sentence, I
think, is a move from "those are good breaking points" to "those are THE
primary breaking points, and there are specific marks that go with them" --
the kind of move that, for example, forces the grammarian to decide whether
"although" and "however" should have the same punctuation options. Some of
the other Chronicle sections, like the one detailing the altercation between
Cynewulf and Cyneheard, don't resolve into sentences quite so unambiguously.
You clearly have a string of clauses in the original (give or take a few
cloudy bits due to the writer's reliance on pronouns in that piece), but you
can see more than one arrangement that would work for a modern translation.
I've taught Old English a number of times, and students inevitably want to
know the *right* arrangement (there are definitely wrong arrangements, but
that's a different thing entirely). Their expectation is based on modern
notions of the sentence; I suspect to the Chroniclers, if you read it and
could follow the story, it was fine.
Bill Spruiell
Dept. of English
Central Michigan University
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Patricia Lafayllve
Sent: Tuesday, June 24, 2008 12:10 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: The Death of the Sentence? and the
importanceofthecompetence-performance distinction
Hello everyone.
I'm following this discussion with keen interest, but for the sake of
clarity (in my email, at least!) I am going to cut out things I am not
directly replying to...
Regarding this:
It might very well be the case that Bill is right when he writes the
following:
*******
I have trouble accepting "sentenceness" as something that pre-exists our
definitions as a kind of fundamental category, at least in the way we've
traditionally defined sentences.
*******
If the definition of a sentence depends on whether we can begin the string
with a capital letter and end it with a period,
then Bill is definitely right.
I say:
Here's where I start feeling a bit murky, myself. Maybe if I provide an
example of what I am talking about on my end, it will help...
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, manuscript A:
63. Her Marcus se godspellere forþferde (http://asc.jebbo.co.uk/a/a-L.html)
Translates to modern English as:
A.D. 63. This year Mark the evangelist departed this life.
(http://omacl.org/Anglo/part1.html)
Now, leaving aside the historical complications for the sake of argument
(the Chronicle was compiled over a lengthy period of time, by multiple
authors, etc), my question is this:
How is the entry above NOT a sentence?
This is why I keep challenging what the phrase "traditionally defined
sentence" means. My "personal headspace" suggests that the line above (and
other forms of writing like it) pre-date what we're now using as
"traditional definitions for the sentence." Yet, the entry cited above
meets all the definitions of a sentence that I can think of.
Or am I the one over-thinking this? (It's certainly possible!)
-patty
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