Craig,
I agree, and we have to distinguish between written sentences in several registers and spoken sentences, also in several registers. Ceritanly sentence structure varies with genre, and, in writing in particular, what's perceived as a good sentence has changed over time.
You missed an opportunity for a great compound noun: text messaging creep-over. Just think what the author of that Washington Post article could have done with the notion.
Herb
Herbert F. W. Stahlke, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor of English
Ball State University
Muncie, IN 47306
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________________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: June 19, 2008 8:37 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: The Death of the Sentence?
Herb,
A corrolary to this--I'm not sure if you would agree--is that the
sentence EVOLVES over time, and it is something we all contribute to.
It isn't invented at the top and then imposed downward against the
unruly riffraff.
The best standards have everything to do with what works, what helps us
accomplish our communally evolving goals.
Text messaging is something we should delight in and admire. I have yet
to see any serious encroachment into the academic world. I have just
read 43 freshmen placement essays without a single instance of
text-messaging creeping over.
Craig>
Forty or so years ago I used to argue with transformational-generative
> grammarians, and they were that then, that the sentence, in particular the
> symbol S, was not a logical primitive but a methodological choice. It
> represented a unit within which certain relationships, structures, and
> constraints could be discussed without the inconvenience of answering
> questions about discourse. This usually got us into an argument about
> competence and performance, which I held, and hold, to be a corollary of
> the methodological choice of S as the domain of analysis and description.
> In informal speech, in contrast to formal lectures, addresses, sermons,
> etc., sentences tend to correspond to the breath group, so that the spoken
> sentence tends to be what one can say in one breath. In the early 70s I
> was teaching a linguistic field methods course with a linguistics grad
> student as native speaker. His language was Pashto, and as we got into
> the syntax of Pashto, we explored a variety of canonical sentence types
> and then started working on complex sentences, looking into subordinate
> clauses and the constraints that apply to complex sentence structures.
> The Pashto speaker paused at one point and said, "You can put together a
> sentence like that in Pashto, but no one every would. When people tell
> stories, argue with each other, talk about affairs of their families and
> communities, they use simple sentences." That just drove home further for
> me the observation that what a sentence can be depends very much on
> medium, genre, discourse pragmatics, and social setting, among other
> things.
>
> Herb
>
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Carol Morrison
> Sent: 2008-06-18 20:45
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: The Death of the Sentence?
>
>
> I found this on leithart.com under the subheading: The History of the
> Sentence
>
> Ian Robinson's The Establishment of Modern English Prose in the
> Reformation and the Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1998) is a fascinating
> discussion of the history of the sentence and of English punctuation, and,
> despite its heavy-handed title, is a delight to read.
>
> Does the sentence have a history? Robinson shows that it does. Even in our
> day, when the well-formed sentence is described as the key to prose
> writing, there are many intelligible uses of language that do not employ
> well-formed sentences - lists, lecture notes, football broadcasts.
> (Robinson is not an opponent of the well-formed sentence; his are
> wonderful; but he recognizes that it is not the only possible unit of
> sense.)
>
> Prior to the modern period, Robinson argues, the sentence was not
> recognized as a syntactical unit at all: "Medieval grammar, following the
> classical tradition, was of course highly developed, but there never
> emerged in the medieval period any conception of the sentence as
> syntactical unit." The word "sentence" is used in the Middle Ages, but
> means something like "sense" or "gist." "Thou speakest sentences" says a
> character in Ben Jonson's Poetaster, and he does not mean that someone "is
> speaking dramatically but that he is speaking sense and, in particular,
> uttering weighty, authoritative dicta."
>
> --- On Wed, 6/18/08, Spruiell, William C <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> From: Spruiell, William C <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: The Death of the Sentence?
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Date: Wednesday, June 18, 2008, 4:42 PM
>
> Anyone who thinks that abbreviations and "squiggle" notations like
>
> ":-)" are a problem in current writing should be forced to try to
>
> read medieval manuscripts. Start with really expensive writing materials
>
> (vellum anyone?), make the writing process laborious (sharpen quill, grind
>
> stuff for ink, blot the vellum...) and throw in a bunch of insular monks
> (well,
>
> insular even for monks), and you get pages of squigglefest. At least the
>
> computer environment prevents some of the excesses of calligraphy that
> would
>
> otherwise occur.
>
>
>
> I suspect that the comments about sentences in that piece were actually
>
> comments about punctuation. If so, I'm not really sure how to maintain the
>
> claim that clearly demarcated sentences are necessary for clear thought,
> given
>
> that -- in all probability -- Plato, Aristotle, etc. didn't mark sentence
>
> boundaries in writing at all. Languages always have clause complexes;
> writing
>
> systems may or may not orthographically mark these in various ways.
>
>
>
> All that having been said (I don't usually adopt absolute positions, but
>
> I'll certainly use absolutes), I *do* tend to notice a link between
>
> orthographically-unstructured writing, etc. and bad argumentation in my
>
> students -- but I don't think the first causes the second. Instead,
>
> it's simply that students who don't read much good argumentation tend
>
> not to argue well, and if they're reading mainly text messages from other
>
> students, they're not reading much good argumentation. Other studies
>
> (including something from NCTE that I may be able to dig out later) have
> shown
>
> that students *are* reading a good bit -- but I suspect what they're
>
> reading is the kind of texts that are produced by others in their age
> group,
>
> and that emphasize easy social interaction over critical thinking. "U R
>
> teh uber-newb, d00d!" is fascinating in its own right, but if that's
>
> the kind of thing you're used to, you'll find academic or business
>
> writing quite alien.
>
>
>
> 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 Craig Hancock
>
> Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2008 1:35 PM
>
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> Subject: Re: The Death of the Sentence?
>
>
>
>>
>
> Carol,
>
> I read the article in part because the inbox announced that Martha
>
> Kolln had been consulted. Martha's comments are about the only
>
> thoughtful part of it. It left me thinking that it's not the death of
>
> the sentence that's a problem, but the general shallowness of
>
> conversation about it, including those (Martha the main exception) in
>
> our "discipline" of English who weighed in. I suspect they thought
>
> any
>
> working journalist could handle the topic, but the results in this case
>
> are comic.
>
> The idea that the sentence was "invented several centuries" ago
>
> and
>
> "brought order to chaos" is the sort of silliness that fills the bulk
>
> of the article.
>
> It's high tine for NCTE to begin advocating at least some direct
>
> teaching about language.
>
>
>
> Craig >
>
>
>
> Hi everyone. This was in my NCTE inbox this morning, so some of you may
>
>> have read it. (This is only part of the article). I bolded the second to
>
>> last line because it interests me: Does anyone know who
>
> "invented" the
>
>> sentence?
>
>>
>
>> The Fate of The Sentence: Is the Writing On the Wall?
>
>> By Linton Weeks
>
>> Washington Post Staff Writer
>
>> Sunday, June 15, 2008; Page M01
>
>>
>
>> The demise of orderly writing: signs everywhere.
>
>> One recent report, young Americans don't write well.
>
>> In a survey, Internet language -- abbreviated wds, :) and txt msging --
>
>> seeping into academic writing.
>
>> But above all, what really scares a lot of scholars: the impending death
>
>> of the English sentence.
>
>> Librarian of Congress James Billington, for one. "I see creeping
>
>> inarticulateness," he says, and the demise of the basic component of
>
> human
>
>> communication: the sentence.
>
>> This assault on the lowly -- and mighty -- sentence, he says, is
>
>> symptomatic of a disease potentially fatal to civilization. If the
>
>> sentence croaks, so will critical thought. The chronicling of history.
>
>> Storytelling itself.
>
>> He has a point. The sentence itself is a story, with a beginning, a
>> middle
>
>> and an end. Something happens in a sentence. Without subjects, there are
>
>> no heroes or villains. Without verbs, there is no action. Without
>> objects,
>
>> nothing is moved, changed, destroyed or created.
>
>> Plus, simple sentences clarify complex situations. ("Jesus
>
> wept.")
>
>> Since its invention centuries ago, the sentence has brought order to
>
>> chaos. It's the handle on the pitcher, a tonic chord in music, a stair
>
>> step chiseled in a mountainside.
>
>>
>
>>
>
>>
>
>>
>
>>
>
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