TJ,
I'm confused about your definition of a clause. Are you saying that to
be a clause you must be able to hoist out the string of words and have
it stand alone as a sentence? How do you treat a subordinate clause like
"before he went to the party"? Are you saying that the subordinator
"before" is not part of the subordinate clause? And even if you bite the
structural bullet there, how do you deal with relative clauses (e.g.,
"which he found at the party")? The "core" here clearly cannot stand on
its own unless you rewrite it to become a different kind of clause. And
if stands-on-its-own is not a sufficient definition, why is finiteness
necessary?
I'm completely with you in believing that showing students how to make
sense of language is a primary goal in our teaching, but I don't see the
finite requirement as pedagogically helpful (or theoretically motivated).
I've taught clauses to students from pretty much all grade levels from
8th grade through college, and for the middle and high school students,
I simply use the basic definition that a clause has a subject and a verb
(no requirement for finiteness). The older the students are, the more
likely I am to introduce the idea of a covert subject, starting with the
implied "you" of the imperative and (for college students at least)
moving on to the subjects of infinitives, but I've never found any
pedagogical benefit to stipulating that students look for a finite verb
to label something a clause.
Other than the fact that traditional grammar books often include
finiteness as part of their definition, I'd be curious to know what you
think the advantages to this view are.
Regards,
Karl
On 05/31/11 19:39, T. J. Ray wrote:
> Bill,
> Please allow me to intersperse some comments in what you kindly sent me.
> Perhaps I should
> be open (if clumsy) about the terms I used in grammar classes. A clause
> requires a finite verb.
> The non-finite verb forms may take all the attributes of finite verbs
> but the group of words they
> are the core of cannot stand alone as a sentence. Hence, participles
> and infinitives may have
> subjects, objects, complements, and adverbial modifiers just as finite
> verbs may.
>
> The primary difference between the two sample sentences you offer in
> your third paragraph is that
> the first infinitive does not have a subject because the subject of the
> main verb is taken to also be
> the subject of the infinitive. In the second example "kids" is the
> subject of the infinitive phrase. The
> explanation you offer is quite baffling to me. The phrase "a clause at
> some level of representation"
> buzzed past me.
>
> Your fourth paragraph begs a question. If you give a student the first
> example you offer and then
> asked who is to eat the vegetables, my bet is that without hesitation he
> will point at "I." Ask the
> same question of the second example, and the answer will be "kids."
>
> This talk of reduced clauses and small clauses muddies the grammatical
> waters. If the core of the
> group of words is a finite verb, that cluster is a clause. If it has no
> finite verb, it is not a clause. You
> may well think me a martinet in trying to apply simplistic terms, but
> for more decades than I like to
> recall my concern was to given students sufficient tools to figure out
> the meaning of a sentence.
> That still strikes me as the purposing of teaching grammar to kids as
> opposed to graduate students
> in linguistics classes.
>
> Please pardon my ranting.
>
> tj
>
>
> On Monday 05/30/2011 at 11:23 am, "Spruiell, William C" wrote:
>> TJ:
>>
>> You wrote,
>>
>>> I am also puzzled by responses that refer to them as clauses. Infinitive
>>> phrases have functioned in this manner since A-S days. What is the
>>> purpose of trying to stretch them into clauses?
>>
>> The problem is just that they're a lot clausier than the usual phrase,
>> and the definition of "clause" varies more than one might expect. The
>> U.S. school grammar tradition focused on finiteness as the essential
>> ingredient for clausehood, and if you take that as a starting point
>> these can't be clauses. That definition of clause, as well as the use
>> of "phrase" for all multi-word units that aren't clauses, is by no
>> means universal.
>>
>> Other approaches tend to focus on the fact that infinitives can
>> include verbs with what look exactly like objects, etc., and that you
>> can usually infer a subject-y element (being deliberately vague here
>> b/c the specifics vary per approach). From a teaching standpoint, it's
>> a lot easier getting students to recognize that a given NP is the
>> direct object of the verb in the infinitive if they're thinking of the
>> infinitive as at least being like a predicate.
>>
>> The "clausy" view starts looking more tempting when you try to deal
>> with the difference between "I want to eat some vegetables" and "I
>> want the kids to eat some vegetables." If you think both of those
>> sentences have a main clause that's just "I want X," then it follows
>> that you need to talk about the presence or absence of "the kids" in
>> relation to the infinitive. One of the ways to deal with that is to
>> say that infinitive really is a clause at some level of representation
>> -- that it has a full clause structure, but with zero-elements in some
>> spots. The grammar (with "grammar" here in the sense of a kind of
>> widget) can then deal with the structure the same basic way it deals
>> with a normal clause, with maybe some minor changes around the edges.
>> I *think* this is Bruce's approach (but correct me if I'm wrong, Bruce!).
>>
>> An alternate approach is to deal with "X wants to Y" and "X wants Z to
>> Y" as different constructions that hearers recognize and process
>> according to construction-specific rules. This is what's used by
>> construction grammars (unsurprisingly).
>>
>> Either of these approaches can use the label "reduced clause" for
>> infinitives, gerunds, and participials. The term "small clause"
>> usually goes with the first approach, and is most common among
>> linguists working in a set of theories descended from the 1970s-era
>> version of generative grammar. Systemic-Functional grammar use
>> "non-finite clause," a term that initially struck me as an oxymoron,
>> since I learned U.S. terminology first. Traditional school grammars,
>> of course, sometimes use "verbals."
>>
>> --- Bill Spruiell
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ________________________________
>> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
>> [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of T. J. Ray [[log in to unmask]]
>> Sent: Monday, May 30, 2011 9:52 AM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: Adjective or adverb?
>>
>> Stephen,
>> I don't see them as possible adverbials. A reading of both sentences sans
>> the infinitive phrases almost makes them incomplete sentences, at least in
>> terms of full meaning.
>>
>> I am also puzzled by responses that refer to them as clauses. Infinitive
>> phrases have functioned in this manner since A-S days. What is the
>> purpose of trying to stretch them into clauses?
>>
>> tj
>>
>>
>> On Friday 05/27/2011 at 8:01 pm, Stephen King wrote:
>> An embarrassing question: Are the infinitive phrases in the following
>> sentences adjectival or
>> adverbial?
>>
>> A. We were looking for a good reason to sell the house.
>>
>> B. Sparrow needed something to distract the guards.
>>
>> In A, the inf. phrase answers the question "why?", which would seem to
>> make it adverbial. However, it
>> also answers the question "What kind of reason?", which would seem to
>> make it adjectival. I find B
>> similar.
>>
>> Gentle enlightenment is requested.
>>
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