Johanna's suggestion that syntax is not independent from social context
identifies an important distinction in linguistics.  A decision on whether
is true or not has important consequences for how grammar should be taught.

Johanna Rubba wrote:

>
>Decontextualizing syntactic structures makes perfect sense if one
>believes that that part of language processing is sequestered in
>specialized parts of the brain operating according to their own
>particular algorithms. Hence the desire to explain syntax on its own
>terms. But that's not the school of linguistics I subscribe to.
>
I think in this case what makes "perfectly good sense" is, in fact,
perfectly good sense.

The following are some English structures (I am not talking about USE)
which have the same properties
regardless of social context:

Properties of various types of pronouns to their antecedents;
The property of count and non-count nouns;
The syntactic properties of the tense - aspect system of the English (I
recognize that some dialects of American English have a more elaborate
tense-aspect system but the basic properites of this more eleborate
system are strikingly similar to those dialects without such elaboration);
Verbal negation (the placement of not);
The structure of noun phrase, prepositional phrases, adjective phrases,
etc.;
The syntactic properties of co-ordinating and subordinating conjunctions
and conjunctive adverbs;
The grammatical properties of modals;
The grammatical structure of the passive;
The grammatical properties of dependent and main clauses.

       I am confident others can add more.

Bob Yates, Central Missouri State University

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