Craig Hancock's latest response to Johanna demonstrates a problem with
comparing student writing from the perspective of traditional grammar
categories.  

My background is in second language acquisition.  That perspective is
crucially interested in understanding development.  About 20 years ago,
Robert Bley-Vroman had a paper titled "The Comparative Fallacy."
Bley-Vroman pointed out that comparing what second language learners do
in relation to the target language structures will miss the second
language learners own principles.  
 
I agreed with Johanna that the following structures are very common.  I
think they are topic-comment constructions.  

1) In Deborah Tannen's book 'You Just Don't Understand', she claims that
... "     or, even worse,

2) In the book 'You Just Don't Understand', it states that ..."

Craig offers the following observation about Johanna's examples.

 The topic comment structure under consideration was in fact adverbial. 
Like Bill Spruiell, I was taken aback by your implication that anything
like this would be wrong because it is more typical of speech or because
it's overused. 

Craig's first sentence commits "the comparative fallacy."  From a mature
writing perspective, the prepositional phrases appear to be adverbials,
but I suggest (and I believe Johanna and Herb) these are topic comment
constructions.
Here is my reason for this analysis.

Adverbials can "move" in sentences.  In fact, Craig correctly notes such
moved constructions are very important for maintaining topic flow in a
text.  However, the constructions in 1 and 2 certainly can't be moved.

3) *She claims in Deborah Tannen's book 'You Just Don't Understand'that
. . .

4) *It states in the book 'You Just Don't Understand', that ..."

If (1) were like (5), then movement (6) would not be a problem.

5) In 'You Just Don't Understand,' Deborah Tannen claims . . 
6) Deborah Tannen claims in  'You Just Don't Understand' that . . . 

I can't come up with a rewrite of (2).

Because in (1) and (2) the prepositional phrases don't really behave
like adverbials, I think it is misleading to label them that way.  They
look to me like they are announcing a topic and what follows is the
comment about that topic.

They are just like the prefaces identified in Biber et al.'s Grammar of
Written and Spoken English.  My mother is a preface.  Prefaces are only
found in the oral language.

7) My mother, she is a good cook.

One final point needs to be addressed. I have NEVER seen Johanna's
examples in any  edited writing I have ever read.  Perhaps, my reading
is too narrow.  Those who have access to a decent database can find
numerous examples of these structures in edited writing and share them
with us.

Johanna's observation has NOTHING to do with sanctioning all preposed
adverbials. And, it is an uncharitable reading of her post to draw that
conclusion. In fact, from the topic-comment perspective, those
structures aren't adverbials at all. Because I don't see these
structures in the edited writing I read, I consider them inappropriate
in the kind of writing I have my students do and I mark them "wrong." 

Bob Yates, Central Missouri State University

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