Hi Bruce,
Thanks for this assessment. I hadn't read the article myself--I just stumbled across the cite while looking up something else and thought it might fit what Craig was looking for. It's too bad that so many people try to teach "grammar free" editing rather than using grammar as a tool to understand how sentences can work. OTOH, many students have trouble even with basic concepts like "subject" and "predicate," not to mention constituency (why "near the dog" is a phrase but "bone near the" is not) , so maybe teaching grammar seems too overwhelming to even try . . . .
Anyway, it's at least another example of the problem Craig will solve. :)
Beth
>>> Bruce Despain <[log in to unmask]> 11/16/09 10:23 AM >>>
Beth, Craig, et. al.,
After reading Sloan's paper, I sense that it is a very practical approach to editing. The title seems to claim that a sentence is not a complete thought! This may get the reader curious, but it is very misleading. The author is not successful in denying the claim, only in supporting its inadequacy as an introduction into the syntax of the sentence. He gives examples of utterances that are not sentences, which he fails to describe syntactically. He quickly limits his approach to declarative sentences, about which their status as complete thoughts he says nothing. The basis of his approach is to use the ability of the student to transform declarative sentences into yes-no interrogative sentences as the test of grammaticality. The transformation is kept, as far as is possible, within the one dimension of a lineal string of words and morphemes. (To keep the set of X-words at 20, the 18 additional words derived by adding "-n't" are treated as if that morpheme were a separate word.) By calling the key category the "X-word" he is able to avoid the problems that their subsumption into a single syntactic category brings with it. He also avoids as much as possible the problem of "discontinuous constituents," "structural head," and any other syntactic structure that requires analysis into a second dimension. The use of "subject" as a syntactic term requires the further use of "topic" as syntactic. This kind of abrogation of semantic terms into the syntax could become contagious.
The point in these comments is not to say that the approach does not have a lot to commend it. My concern is that the over-simplification of grammar to its use in the task of editing seems to be presented as support for a particular theory of syntax (tagmemics). It seems that many other inadequate theories of syntax might be applied profitably to the teaching of student editing. This ought to be admitted. The claim that a sentence is a complete thought cannot be refuted on syntactic grounds (even X-words), unless it is claimed as a statement about syntax. Perhaps what is meant by this rule is that the utterance of a sentence is intended by an author to bring up in the mind of the reader a concept that may be represented by a syntactic structure that is characterized in a certain way as complete. The fact that Mr. Sloane uses the word "generate" in the sense of create suggests that the generative approach, explicitly developed to characterize two dimensional structures, has been rejected from the start. These are just two reasons why a rule that relates the semantics of a sentence to its syntax should probably not be used as an introduction to a study of the syntax of that sentence.
Bruce
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
Sent: Saturday, November 14, 2009 8:40 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: A Sentence Is Not a Complete Thought
Beth,
I haven't seen it, so thanks for the heads-up. From the brief summary,
it still seems they are more interested in formal "tricks" for writing
sentences correctly than they are in looking at the way sentences work
in harmony with each other. I'll try to keep an open mind and check it
out.
Craig>
Hi Craig,
>
> I feel certain you must have found this already, but just to be on the
> safe side:
>
> Sloane,, David E.. A Sentence Is Not a Complete Thought: X-Word Grammar
> in English language teaching.
> Year: 2009 Volume: 2 Issue: 2 Page: 3
> ISSN: 1916-4742
>
> Abstract
>
> X-Word Grammar provides an editing technique for students that is more
> reliable than trying to identify sentences as complete thoughts. A
> sentence is redefined as "a group of words that can be turned into a
> yes-no question with no words left over; starts with a capital letter, and
> ends with a terminal punctuation mark." Twenty auxiliary verbs play a key
> role by moving around the subject of a sentence to identify the correct
> structure of a sentence using both visual and oral means. Stressing
> editing skills, teachers can use X-Word Grammar as a means to simplify
> sentence punctuation, address verb endings, carry out other tasks in
> editing and evaluating writing.
>
> Available online here:
> http://ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/elt/article/view/2354
>
> Beth
>
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