Craig and Scott,

     That Hunt and Loban were in the generative tradition does not mean that their work is not relevant. The cognitivists, especially Vygotsky and Piaget, definitely recognized stages of development, and Hunt and Loban may well have laid out the basic framework of natural syntactic development. As a simple example embedding of clauses, especially subordinate clauses within subordinate clauses, almost has to follow the initial development of subordinate clauses. Appositives and gerundives are probably developed as reductions of subordinate clauses. Such development is complex and is certainly affected by what O'Donnell referred to as "formulas"--constructions picked up by the child as a string. Subordinate clauses probably originate as formulas. The young child hears "When ___ get home, ....." I don't have the time to develop all of this here, but I will note that one of my projects is to collect writing samples from state assessment documents, put them on the web, and analyze them, in part for questions related to natural syntactic development. See, for example, http://home.pct.edu/~evavra/kiss/wb/State_Standards.htm

And
http://home.pct.edu/~evavra/ED498/R/StateStand/G08/G08Stats_TOC.htm

It takes forever to get these samples, transcribe them, analyze the syntax, and then analyze the statistics. It takes even longer to put the results on the web. I do have someone helping me by transcribing a ninth grade set, but still, it will take forever. I'd suggest that just obtaining and transcribing such samples might be an interesting and important project for someone in ATEG. Most of the studies, including those by Hunt, O'Donnell, and Loban, are highly flawed in that the originals are not available. If you read the studies you will find major differences in how they handled transcription, etc. In addition, in most studies, the writing was edited before being analyzed. Then too, there are the major problems of definition. What is, and what is not, a "T-unit"?
Ed



-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
Sent: Tuesday, February 03, 2009 9:15 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Developmental phases of grammar knowledge

    Hunt and Loban were working within the generative tradition, which
means they were predisposed to think of language as evolving in a
somewhat biologically pre-determined way. In other words, we would be
likely to pick up a construction in the same way a woman grows
breasts, because it is time. Interaction, of course, is part of that
(just as proper nutrition would be for biological development.)
   Very different sorts of approaches are being developed from the
cognitive side. I don't want to claim to be an expert, but the sense I
get is that a child learns the language appropriate to the world into
which he/she is being socialized. The child does so using normal
cognitive processes, not processes special to language.
   Children learn very complicated grammar early on for the concepts that
matter most to their world. "He made me." (causative). "Give me that
one." (di-transitive)>The theory now is that these start out as "island
constructions", that the child learns the grammar that goes with
"giving" and "making" and only later does that become more generalized
(schematic).
    Absolutes are very rare outside of writing and probably not within the
repertoire of most writers. You can certainly make a case that
exposure, for most children, is limited.
   Cognitive models emphasize that language is learned and that learning
the grammar is not different/separate from learning the vocabulary and
that all this is mentored in some way. They actually reinforce some
aspects of our older "common sense" view of language. It doesn't just
happen.
   I would recommend Michael Tomasello's "Constructing a Language: A
Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition" (2003). For an argument
that the "arguments" of grammar are built from bottom up, see the work
of Adele Goldberg, including "Constructions at Work: the Nature of
Generalizations in Language" (2006).


Craig



Scott,
> See my bibliography on natural language development at:
> http://home.pct.edu/~evavra/Bib/DevLang.htm
> The work by Hunt is particularly important. If students do not develop
> gerundives (participles that function as adjectives) until late middle or
> high school, it is unlikely that they will cognitively master noun
> absolutes. That does not mean that such phrases do not show up in any
> students writing. I haven't had as much time as I would like to devote to
> this research, but it would not surprise me to see noun absolutes in the
> writing of fifth or sixth graders. But it would almost certainly be in the
> writing of students who are habitual readers.
> It's an interesting question, and I hope you enjoy exploring it.
> Best wishes,
> Ed
>
>
>
>
> Dear List,
>
> I have read that some constructions do not appear in student writing until
> they are at the right age.  I do not recall where I read this, but it
> seems to go against my experience, specifically, as I recall, the claim
> that absolute phrases do not show up until students are around 16.   Has
> anyone else read anything like this?  Does anyone have any references for
> this? Is this a widespread idea?
>
> Scott Woods
>

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