Thanks for your questions.  I am trying to formulate some thoughts and
such feedback is helpful.  I think that people do make conscious choices
in speaking and writing in addition to obeying grammatical rules that they
know intuitively or unconsciously.  A person who has been schooled in
grammar has conscious mastery over a set of rules that help him
create entirely new statements and such people do, I believe, employ their
conscious understanding of grammar for this purpose.  They understand that
gerunds with direct objects can be subjects of linking sentences, to pick
a random example, and can use knowledge like this in crafting  statements.
People without this mastery have to rely to a much greater extent on
imitation.  They do not have conscious access to abstract syntactic
structures.  In putting together their thoughts, they are more likely to
try to remember how somebody else put something similar because they do
not have conscious control of the rules that make statements grammatical.
I notice the tendency towards undigested quotations in student writing and
feel that it is a symptom of a lack of grammatical understanding.  I refer
to sentences like this:  "There are many reasons for the stereotype Jocks
are stupid," a real example. To me, this collage language is clearly
epitomized by the "He/she was all like .... " construction, which enables
a speaker to convey any attitude by direct quotation rather than
description.


When you are trained as a classicist, you take a course in Latin
composition.  Since your command of Latin grammar is tenuous at best, you
consult classical authors for passages in which they expressed thoughts
similar to the ones that you are supposed to be putting into classical
Latin and you imitate them pretty slavishly.  When you gain better command
of Latin grammar, you are much more independent in how you express
yourself in Latin.  I'm just saying that the same situation probably
applies mutatis mutandis to people writing English.  You don't either know
grammar or not know it.  You know it better or worse and more or less
consciously. The better and more consciously you know it, the less you
rely on models.


On Wed, 14 Feb 2001, William J. McCleary wrote:

> >I have been trying to make a point on this list that no one has commented
> >on,  even to disagree with.  I don't mean to whine.  I've had plenty of
> >stupid ideas.  But here is one more try.  It seems to me that the neglect
> >of the discipline of grammar tends to reduce speech and writing to a
> >collage of direct quotations, as in "He was all like 'Think 'different,'"'
> >instead of, "He suggested that I think in an unconventional manner.'
> >Grammar is the study of the rules by which we generate new statements of
> >our own.  In this connection, I am struck by the epigram on the Emails of
> >Nancy Patterson, who is outspoken in her skepticism about the value
> >of traditional school grammar, viz., "The text is a tissue of quotations
> >drawn from the innumerable centers of culture."  It seems to me that this
> >is true only of texts created without a mastery of grammar.
> >
>
> Perhaps the rest of us are having trouble understanding your argument.
> Everyone except very small children already has a mastery of grammar, so I
> can't see that  a "collage of direct quotations" could be caused by any
> lack of such mastery.
>
> It seems to me that constructions such as "He was all like 'Think
> different'" are simply part of an oral in-group language of teenagers, plus
> a few people who have a hard time leaving teenagehood behind. Even
> teenagers don't write that way, nor do they speak that way to their
> grandparents, though they may try to irritate their parents with it. (I
> used to irritate my father by using language from Mad Magazine.)
>
> Furthermore, I would say that we learn speech patterns (and some patterns
> of writing) by imitating the people around us, not by learning any rules of
> grammar. That's how teenagers learn to speak like teenagers, and that's how
> adults learn to talk of "growing the business" or to throw around
> abbreviations: "So I dumped by ISP because it gave me only TCP/IP to access
> the URLs that interest me."
>
> Now, if I've misunderstood your point, or your argument, maybe you can take
> another stab at explaining either one. Then perhaps someone will take
> another stab at a reply.
>
> Bill
>
> William J. McCleary
> 3247 Bronson Hill Road
> Livonia, NY 14487
> 716-346-6859
>
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