Bob,
    Within the context of the statement (To Cynthia), what I was intending
to say is that we have no history within public education of thinking
of grammar in relation to meaning.  You are right in pointing out, as
Martha does so well in her "English Teaching: Practice and Critique"
article, that there was a huge interest in linguistically informed
grammars in the fifties. She does cite generative grammar as one of
the forces that helped derail it. Her description of the auxiliary
system may have been influenced by Chomsky, but I don't think Chomsky
advocated teaching it in the schools. The sense I get is that anything
naturally acquired can remain unconscious. We have to learn Standard
English precisely because it is UNNATURAL, which makes it less like a
range of rhetorical options than like a selection of approved forms. I
know you have told me (as have other members on the list who may or
may not be in that camp) that we have no need to teach native speakers
about determiners precisely because they don't make errors with them.
This seems to me the central position of minimalist approaches and
"grammar in context", which advocates ignoring grammar unless there
are "errors" and using as little metalanguage as possible. Martha's
position (I hope I can presume) and my own is that knowledge about
language helps us deeply in our dealings with the world, including
reading and writing, and that we should teach directly even those
aspects that have no direct bearing on avoiding typical errors.
  I apologize if I have given misleading views on generative grammar. "We
have no history" is an unfortunate phrasing.  "We have no recent
history" would have been much better.

Craig



 With the recent discussion on linguistic grammar, I find the following
> statement by Craig strange.
>
>> (We have no history of talking about grammar in that way. Even
> generative grammar largely sees itself as irrelevant.)
>
> Actually, in the States in the 1950s, major journals in the US (English
> Journal and CCC) had numerous articles on how linguistic insights can
> inform teaching about grammar.
>
> Martha's post on linguistic grammar make assumptions by "generative
> grammarians."  For example, the syntactic description of the English
> auxilauxiliarystem in her text really comes from Chomsky.
>
> The notion that most of our grammatical knowledge is innate is a
> fundamental assumption of generative grammar.  This innate assumption is
> NOT fundamental to systemic functional linguistics.
>
> Bob Yates
> Central Missouri State University
>
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