There is no vote here.  And I doubt that there are more than one or two who have their hackles up on this rather trivial issue.  And even if there were one-hundred to one, the arguments I am providing are lucid and effective what is coming back is not.   Paul's solution to use "parts of speech" with "word class" as an appositive is intelligent and would likely give the movement a little more staying power.  But it cannot be said clearly enough -- thinking you can eliminate or replace the term "Parts of Speech" is delusional.   

Phil Bralich

-----Original Message-----
>From: Craig Hancock <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Jul 28, 2006 1:30 PM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Proposed grammar terms
>
>Phil,
>   If you're being outvoted by twenty to one (I haven't counted, but the
>margin is large), I'm not sure it's helpful to call everyone else
>foolish. I'm not as concerned about the issue as I am about the way we
>should proceed. I don't think a single person can or should have veto
>power over the group.
>   The consensus seems to be that we'll mention "parts of speech" but use
>"word classes." That's a compromise position to many people in the
>group. Why don't we leave it like that and move on.
>
>Craig
>  These anecdotal reports don't change the fact that English books going
>> back hundreds of years use the term and there is no reason to change
>> it.  If it has been taught and they trouble with the term, you may want
>> to check the thickness of their tongues.  There are terms in typing and
>> home economics classes that are a bigger challenge.     Phil Bralich
>>
>>
>>  -----Original Message-----
>> From: "Paul E. Doniger"
>> Sent: Jul 27, 2006 9:18 PM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: Proposed grammar terms
>>
>>     For the record, when I ask my (usually very bright) high school
>> students to identify the part of speech of a given word, I invariably
>> get a large number of blank stares and "what's a part of speech?"
>> responses from them. Apparently, the term is not comfortable enough
>> for them to remember it well from year to year -- or perhaps they
>> never learned it at all, and now it sounds odd to them.   Paul D.
>>
>>  ----- Original Message ----
>> From: Phil Bralich
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Sent: Thursday, July 27, 2006 6:14:38 PM
>> Subject: Re: Proposed grammar terms
>>
>>
>> I am not convinced. The term Parts of Speech is ubiquitous and people are
>> more likely to wonder why it is being avoided or what it different about
>> word classes than think the same set of terms is being presented.   You
>> certainly do not want to give newbies the impression that Parts of Speech
>> and Word Classes are something different as happens when you have other
>> duplications of terminology such as predicate nominate and noun complement
>>   It just makes students think the job is bigger than it is.  And you
>> certainly don't want our need for entertainment to be the cause of
>> students thinking there is something different between the word classes of
>> ATEG and Parts of Speech of history and the rest of the world.     Phil
>> Bralich
>>
>>  -----Original Message-----
>> From: Bruce Despain
>> Sent: Jul 27, 2006 5:09 PM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: Proposed grammar terms
>>
>>  The following from Johanna Rubba:   The phrase "word classes" sounds odd
>> to Phil, and probably to many who
>> are steeped in the "traditional" approaches to grammar. But "parts of
>> speech" sounds much stranger to people who have little to no background
>> in that tradition. I think it is safe to say that the vast majority of
>> people working in the schools today, meaning schoolchildren and younger
>> teachers, and probably most parents as well, have no deeply-ingrained
>> associations with the phrase "parts of speech". I'm sure they've heard
>> it, just like they have heard "direct object" and "verb", but everyone
>> is attesting to their students' inability to find either of these in a
>> sentence.   We'll have a battle with the _powers_ that currently dictate
>> content
>> for grammar-teaching materials. "Word classes" will no doubt be much
>> more understandable to newbies, since it means exactly what is says.
>> "Parts of speech" could be phonemes, syllables, words, affixes, clauses
>> ... basically anything which is used in building language. "Part" is a
>> very vague term.   Writing is also not just "speech written down". It
>> started out that way
>> in some cultures (writing down speech was apparently not its original
>> motivation in the Near East civilizations where our alphabet's
>> ancestors were invented; commerce was). But writing has been with us
>> for so long, now, that it has had time to develop its own structural
>> and lexical characteristics. The difference in _mode_ is crucial:
>> speech puts severe memory and time limits on planning, production, and
>> comprehension which are not present in the read/write mode. Also, the
>> association of writing with "high" pursuits such as religion, law, and
>> scholarship has encouraged a higher formality level and richer and more
>> varied word choice. Written language has greater syntactic complexity,
>> longer sentences, more-varied vocabulary, and controlled ways of
>> handling repetition, such as use of synonyms and careful attention to
>> pronoun-antecedent relations. If ! we actually wrote as we spoke
>> (especially ordinary, everyday talk as opposed to intellectual
>> commentary), the writing would be nearly incomprehensible most of the
>> time.   Various medical theories, e.g. of humors and so on, were also
>> accepted
>> for thousands of years. That doesn't mean they were accurate.   Phil has
>> yet to respond to any of my posts on either grammar terms or
>> on my statements regarding the definition of prescriptivism and the
>> harm current practices do to large segments of the school population.
>> He has, however, spent plenty of words telling us that we're "not
>> playing with a full deck". Is it his wish to engage in an open,
>> scientifically-informed discussion, or to play the naysayer, and not
>> back up his claims with anything more than "it has been an accepted
>> tradition for over a thousand years"? He is certainly altogether
>> correct in saying that grammarians didn't invent the structure of
>> language -- they discovered it. But discoveries about much of the
>> natural world, ourselves included, have taken thousands of years to get
>> anywhere near predictive accuracy. Past scholars of language have come
>> up with only partially correct descriptions of it. Perhaps the most
>> accomplished ancient grammarian was Panini, whose! work on Sanskrit
>> matched the sophistication of modern linguistics. The medieval Arab
>> grammarians also had significant insights. I don't believe Europeans
>> came up with anything that matches Panini until the late 19th-,
>> early-20th centuries.   Dr. Johanna Rubba, Associate Professor,
>> Linguistics
>> Linguistics Minor Advisor
>> English Department
>> California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
>> E-mail: [log in to unmask]
>> Tel.: 805.756.2184
>> Dept. Ofc. Tel.: 805.756.2596
>> Dept. Fax: 805.756.6374
>> URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
>>
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