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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