Craig - Get us started! Geoff
Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2013 14:15:30 +0000
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: rhetorical grammar: was grammar question/adverb or adjective
To: [log in to unmask]
David,
Nothing would please me more than robust conversation about rhetorical grammar on the list. I think it is difficult to do for a number of reasons.
One is that most people on the list have a view of grammar that is largely prescriptive or formal or both. In other words, we have questions about how to classify incidents of language and questions about whether something is correct or incorrect,
often in combination. I give as case in point the conversation about subject/verb agreement going on concurrently with this one. For someone with an interest in using language "correctly," which we probably all have in varying degree, this is useful, but it
does tend to dominate our talk. It is the predominant frame of reference on list.
Another reason for the difficulty would be that rhetorical effect is hard to talk about one sentence at a time. In fact, isolating examination of the sentence from examination of whole text is deeply entrenched in our history (and a serious reason
why studying grammar doesn't have the positive application it ought to have.) Sentences don't exist in isolation from other sentences and don't exist in isolation from rhetorical context. Sentences are not well understood as complete thoughts. When we pull
sentences out of context, our usual mode of operation, rhetorical conversation seems minor or irrelevant. Issues of coherence, for example, arise from examination of whole text and are hard to talk about without a shared text to discuss.
The third reason is that talk about rhetorical (or functional or cognitive) approaches in theory has elicited angry reaction from people on the list who believe those approaches are just downright wrong. It's hard to have a robust conversation when
you have to spend so much energy responding to hostile statements.
Perhaps the time is right. If there's talk on list about rhetorically focused grammar, I would be happy to join in.
Craig
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of MARLOW, DAVID [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, January 18, 2013 7:27 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: grammar question/adverb or adjective
I'm interested in the sub group but wonder if the whole group might not have enough peripheral interest to put up with us as a part of the whole... Focus on the rhetorical is a recurring element on the list, I think, and surely concepts from undergrad
also apply to other ages...
Plus, until this week, traffic on the list had been down so much I feared I had been cut off...
Best,
D
< Written using speech recognition software &/or an iPad keyboard w/my fat fingers... Please forgive spelling and punctuation errors >
On Jan 18, 2013, at 12:22 PM, "Hancock, Craig G" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Gwen,
I am very much interested in the syllabus. If you can send it to me ([log in to unmask]) I would be willing to reciprocate. I teach a 300 level 'writing intensive' course for the Linguistics
department (Writing, Reading, and Language) focused on how knowledge about language can help us as readers and writers. I also use genre as an important variable. some students groan about the amount of writing required, but all seem to conclude that conscious
attention to language is very useful.
If other people are working in this area, maybe we can create a small interest group.
The course is not limited to majors, but I have found that linguistics majors, as a group, seem to be very strong writers. Knowledge about language seems to help, rather than harm them.
I also think we need to push the idea that grammar is not a remedial subject. For some reason, there has been resistance to offering it as a credit bearing elective, perhaps because of the twofold notion that grammatical behavior is something that
genetically unfolds with only occasional need for correction when it differs from the standard and that conscious awareness of how language works that isn't focused on correctness is helpful only to specialists.
Grammar is a difficult (challenging) subject, very useful to explore, and should at least be available to those students who have an interest in it. It can and should be taught in ways that are amenable to practical application. Even usage issues are
difficult to address without a wide base of understanding. Even in our currently polarized world, it's hard to imagine how or why anyone would challenge that. We can widen knowledge about language while sidestepping the more polarizing question about whether
that should be required of everyone.
Craig
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Schwartz,
Gwen G [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2013 1:20 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: grammar question/adverb or adjective
Craig,
Your argument seems very reasonable to me, a rhetorician who teaches an undergraduate course in rhetorical grammar. It’s focused on using language more effectively,
by studying rhetorical situations and genres people use to communicate. If anyone’s interested, I’m happy to share my syllabus and assignments. It’s not a new concept, by any means, but there aren’t many people teaching this type of course.
Gwen
Gwen Gray Schwartz
Director of Written and Oral Communication
Associate Professor of English-Writing
University of Mount Union
Alliance, OH 44601
330-823-3188
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Hancock, Craig G
Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2013 10:59 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: grammar question/adverb or adjective
Herb,
Is that the same Langacker (Ronald) tied into Cognitive Grammar? I’m curious about how much of that found its way into an intro text forty years ago.
I’m re-reading some of the articles in the grammar wars and feeling sad at all the lost opportunities. If formal grammar doesn’t measurably improve writing
in the short term, why not question the grammar and not just assume that formal grammar is the only possibility? If linguists have not given us a view of language that helps us in reading and writing, why don’t we develop a view that does? Someone could say
that formal biology doesn’t help us improve human health—one group studies the human body as a mechanical structure and the other group works on diet and exercise—but to conclude from that that the worlds cannot intersect in useful ways would seem comic to
us today. If biology doesn’t help us cure polio, then change the biology. (I don’t mean to imply that we don’t have heroic exceptions.)
If we wanted to commit to it, it would happen. Too many people are vested into positions that make it very difficult.
Craig
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Stahlke, Herbert
Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2013 9:01 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: grammar question/adverb or adjective
Craig,
You've diagnosed the problem well. Every once in a while I remember the statement Jerry Saddock made in his review of Langacker's intro to linguistics text in IJAL about 40 years ago. He said something to the effect that (I can't quote it directly anymore)
it's too bad linguists, unlike physicists, don't have an agreed upon set of lies to tell beginning students. His point was that they teach intro students Newtonian physics, knowing that it's fundamentally wrong but that by the time students understand why
it's wrong they'll also understand why they were taught it first. Linguistics isn't yet enough of a science to have reached that point, with the consequence that what linguists regard as hypotheses to be tested and falsified language arts teachers read as
established truth, and when the truth continues to change under their feet they blame the linguists for never making up their minds. I've become much less picky about what terminology is taught as long as some grammatical content and analysis is being taught
with it.
Herb
Herbert F. W. Stahlke, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor of English
Ball State University
Muncie, IN 47306
[log in to unmask]
From: Assembly for the Teaching of
English Grammar [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Hancock, Craig G [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2013 10:00 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: grammar question/adverb or adjective
Herb,
Even if we could embrace and support each other, the task is daunting. But it becomes even more difficult when we see ourselves as members of enemy camps.
Traditional grammar has been criticized for decades within the field of English largely on the basis of the contention that it has not been proven to improve
reading and writing, to the point where knowledge about grammar is undervalued and deeply limited. It has been under attack from linguists for not being an accurate description of the language, and many educators have used that to support anti-grammar positions.
Linguistics itself is a highly contentious field, something it has often hidden from the rest of the world by presenting one perspective or another as the right one.
The result? Very little knowledge about language is taught in the schools. And linguistics, a field that studies, arguably, what is most fundamental to making
us human, what is a fundamentally important part of all human enterprise and interaction, doesn't have anywhere near the importance it should have in the academy.
We have much to gain by working together.
Craig
From: Assembly for the Teaching of
English Grammar [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Stahlke, Herbert [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2013 10:32 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: grammar question/adverb or adjective
Craig,
You've put your finger unerringly on the reason why all attempts at agreeing on common grammatical nomenclature fail, as they have consistently on this list.
Herb
Herbert F. W. Stahlke, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor of English
Ball State University
Muncie, IN 47306
[log in to unmask]
From: Assembly for the Teaching of
English Grammar [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Hancock, Craig G [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2013 3:46 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: grammar question/adverb or adjective
Herb,
You describe the complexity very well. I think the way i was taught this stuff probably influences my thinking about it. "Present participle" and "past participle"
were described as principal parts of the verb. In those days, of course, we also learned to describe some forms as complex "tenses" (like present progressive or present perfect) that are now thought of as a combination of tense and aspect. Past participle
gives us passive voice as well. And somehow those verb related forms can find their way into other contexts and have evolved meanings that connect to their roots in the verb system, but are not limited to that.
We have the irony that present participle (-ing form) is a single form that can be used in a number of different ways. Past participle (-en forms, including
all the variants) includes a range of forms with a smaller range of use.
You need a way to describe it that pays respect to the complexity that's already there and also respects the rtange of ways to talk about it. I find when
I'm teaching grammar as a system, I have to include the competing terms as part of the description. We need to produce students who can enter into a wide range of conversations.
Craig
From: Assembly for the Teaching of
English Grammar [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Stahlke, Herbert [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2013 3:16 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: grammar question/adverb or adjective
Craig,
There is, however,. a tradition in English linguistics and English grammar to use the term -en form. It certainly links the modern strong and weak forms with their Old English and Proto-Germanic reflexes. Of course, the past participle forms remain messy.
Weak verbs, that is, verbs using the dental preterit, like "want/wanted" or "think/thought" have only two principal parts, since the preterit (past) and the participle are identical. Weak verbs, as "think/thought" shows, are not the same as regular verbs.
Strong verbs, those verbs that do not use the dental preterit but rather change vowels, add -en, etc., frequently have three principal parts, as with "give/gave/given" or "swim/swam/swum," but may also have just two, usually collapsing the preterit and participle,
as in "sit/sat/sat." Historically, strong verbs have been undergoing two broad sorts of change. "Help" has become a weak verb, but we all know the KJV line from the Magnificat "He hath holpen his servant Israel," showing that strong forms still persisted
in Early Modern English.
I think we're stuck with -en form and a certain amount of complexity because the English verb systems still displays that complexity.
Herb
Herbert F. W. Stahlke, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor of English
Ball State University
Muncie, IN 47306
[log in to unmask]
From: Assembly for the Teaching of
English Grammar [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Hancock, Craig G [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2013 1:54 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: grammar question/adverb or adjective
Herb,
I like very much the idea of using "-ing form" as a term, in part because it clearly designates a form and then leaves separate the description of its functions.
The argument for "present participle" might be that it is (was?) in widespread use, but you immediately have to explain that it is independent of tense and present time.
What would you do with what has historically been called "past participle?" In most cases, it's formally identical to past tense form, in some cases not.
It's hard to call it an -ed or -en form in the same simple way.
Craig
From: Assembly for the Teaching of
English Grammar [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Stahlke, Herbert [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2013 1:01 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: grammar question/adverb or adjective
Why not just "-ing form" then, since the varied uses are functionally defined.
Herb
Herbert F. W. Stahlke, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor of English
Ball State University
Muncie, IN 47306
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