Johanna and all, As a newmember to ATEG, I am very grateful to
find a community of similar concerns. I understand that ATEG
members hold divergent views of grammar and grammar insruction;
however, the umbrella apparently includes those that are dear
to me, that have proved useful in my (limited) experience teaching
teachers. I would be very interested in helping in any way
with the SSS committee projects. I hope that Johanna and other
SSS committee members on email will continue to use the list
to brainstorm. And in the meantime, I thank Johanna for the
numbered position statements, all of which seem fine to me.
I especially like that the list begins with a concern for the
_purpose_ of teaching grammar, that sentence level forms are connected
up with text level meanings, and that objectivity prevails over
standards for standards' sake. I would be happy to help with
the information gathering task on the issue of state standards
documents.
Judy
At 05:16 PM 1/27/99 -0800, you wrote:
>I have two things to comment on in this message, so forgive its length.
>
>#1 Participle/adjective 'chains'
>This is a case where I really wish I had a copy of QUIGLS** on my shelf. I
>have a feeling they must address this issue.
>
>**Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech and Svartvik Comprehensive Grammar of English.
>
>There seems to be some interesting stuff going on with placement after the
>verb -- it seems to depend somewhat on what kind of verb you've got:
>
>-My friends returned to camp bleeding and limping.
>-My friends returned to camp exhausted and sleepy.
>-*The campers devoured the meal hungry and thirsty.
>-The campers devoured the meal, slurping and smacking their lips.
>
>I don't feel good about the last sentence without the comma.
>
>Why do participles seem 'verbier' than other single-word noun modifiers?
>In Cognitive Grammar (a fancy newish theory of grammar), the reason would
>be something called 'scanning'. A participle's meaning consists of a
>'frame-by-frame' scan of the process the verb portrays (even 'smiling' has
>a hint of duration about it -- for me at least). This is not true of
>adjectives or past participles, which designate states, whether or not
>they are the result of a process. (Consider not only words like 'insulted'
>but also words like 'long-legged', 'bearded' or 'red-headed', which are
>not derived from verbs at all). States don't involve frame-by-frame
>scanning.
>
>As to Burkhard Leuschner's analysis of a participle as a 'very short
>sentence', he seems to be appealing to a transformationalist analysis
>under which participles have to be viewed as the product of some kind of
>ellipsis operation which deletes the rest of the sentence. This isn't the
>only view of grammar that is out there. Transformationalist views have
>varied widely, going as far as saying that even pre-noun adjectives are
>derived from clauses. There are also now theories which argue that there
>are no 'deep structures', and that, whatever the history of a construction
>like 'bleeding and limping' might be, it is no more or less than it is 'on
>the surface'. The fact that they can be paraphrased as clauses doesn't
>distinguish them from adjectives within noun phrases, which can be
>paraphrased with relative clauses or separate sentences, for that matter.
>
>As to these having nothing to do with modifying, I have to dispute that
>on its face. After all, we know which noun phrase in the sentence to
>relate the participles to, that is, we know which ones they modify. Maybe
>Burkhard has a different definition of modification.
>
>#2-----------On grammar teaching--------------------
>Don't worry, Ed; the games may begin. You wrote:
>
>" In order to develop some suggestions about grammar in the curriculum (scope
>and sequence), what questions do we want to ask, and how is the best way
>to get the answers?"
>
>Here are some questions and position statements:
>#1 What is the purpose of teaching grammar?
>#2 To what extent can we teach grammar in context, and is that the best
>way to teach it; what does 'teaching grammar in context' mean? My opinion
>is that this means that the discourse or text-level functions of the
>various elements of English have to be included in grammar instruction, so
>that students understand what grammar is good for in our language.
>#3 As for scope and sequence, these have to be based on valid research
>about children's productive as well as passive knowledge through the
>school years. The reason I haven't said much about this yet is that I
>haven't read some of the literature Ed cites. I am trying to find his web
>address so that I can copy his bibliography and get going on reading it.
>I did propose in a recent e-mail that we not start explicit grammar
>instruction before grade 4. I haven't had a response to that proposal. As
>far as how we get the info we need to formulate 'psychologically correct'
>scope and sequence, we have to read what has been done, and perhaps do
>more research such as Ed and others have done. A great deal is already
>known about birth-age 5; this can already inform teaching. For instance,
>native speakers of standard English have already learned all inflectional
>morphology before school age, but there is still a lot of derivational
>morphology to learn. It makes sense to work with derivational morphology
>in school. But lessons on items such as 'forms of 'be'' or plurals in
>nouns only need to be taught to students of other dialect/language
>backgrounds. So perhaps another bit of info we need is: How many native
>speakers of nonstandard dialects are in the 'typical' school classroom?
>#4 The correctness issue and language attiudes: I also firmly believe that
>we have to take a more objective stance on 'correctness', emphasizing that
>it is relative to the social situation; that the grammar of spoken English
>or of the various nonstandard dialects of English isn't 'bad grammar', but
>'different grammar'. This is not only true, but adopting this frame of
>mind seems to _increase_ student interest in grammar and motivation to
>learn formal standard grammar, not the opposite. Another way to look at
>this is to say that I see grammar teaching as part of a larger 'language
>awareness' curriculum that doesn't compartmentalize or neglect social
>issues as they relate to language. So I would recommend framing
>instruction, not in terms of 'errors' like double negatives and how to
>correct them, but in comparative terms: what are the ways
>various forms of English negate? Which is used most widely in academic and
>business contexts?
>#5 We need to do some information-gathering on what is out there
>now in the way of scope, sequence, and standards in major textbook
>packages and state standards documents. That way we have something to
>respond to.
>
>I'm sure I could go on, but I have probably already lost half of the ATEG
>list. Anyway, this should be something to start on. Especially for SSS
>people (ATEG's scope/sequence/standards committee).
>
>We of SSS should also begin thinking about how to go about our business:
>setting questions, as Ed says; perhaps divvying them up among subgroups
>within SSS; setting timelines for gathering results of subgroup work; etc.
>I know Martha is the facilitator for the group, but I don't think that
>precludes SSS members from starting to brainstorm on the list, do you?
>Martha does read the list, and can include what happens on it in her
>mailings to SSS members who might not use e-mail.
>
>I hereby issue a call to develop a list of questions we have to answer as
>we cogitate upon a scope/sequence/standards document. SSS people, you're
>responsible for helping come up with this list. I'm sure SSS people would
>welcome ideas from non-SSS people.
>
>Thanks for hanging in through the long message. We should probably
>separate the 'teaching grammar' topic from now on, give it its own thread.
>
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>Johanna Rubba Assistant Professor, Linguistics ~
>English Department, California Polytechnic State University ~
>San Luis Obispo, CA 93407 ~
>Tel. (805)-756-2184 Fax: (805)-756-6374 ~
>E-mail: [log in to unmask] ~
>Office hours Winter 1999: Mon/Wed 10:10-11am Thurs 2:10-3pm ~
>Home page: http://www.calpoly.edu/~jrubba ~
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
Judith Diamondstone (732) 932-7496 Ext. 352
Graduate School of Education
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
10 Seminary Place
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1183
Eternity is in love with the productions of time - Wm Blake
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