Janet,
Craig and Bill both comment insightfully on the difference between
linguistic theory and writing/language arts pedagogy. Linguistic theory
is about describing the natural phenomenon that we call language. (I'm
intentionally ignoring, for the moment, what goes on in sociolinguistic
and psycholinguistic research or in first and second language research.)
Linguistic theory is not about how students learn to write or about what
makes for effective speaking and writing. You're absolutely right that
your interest should be in how different structures affect and reflect
meaning, and you can talk quite explicitly about active and passive
sentences without taking on the formal overhead demanded by a syntactic
theory of how these sentences might or might not be related to each
other. Bruce's four sentences
1) John put the books on the shelf.
2) John shelved the books.
3) The books are on the shelf.
4) The shelf has the books on it.
are a wonderful illustration of the problems syntactic theory faces, and
different theories of language deal with this sort of variation in very
different ways, none of which is of much interest to the teacher who's
trying to lead students to understand such a range of choices.
My position on linguistic theory versus psychological reality may be
towards one of the extremes, but I have yet to see an experiment that
purports to demonstrate the psychological reality of some linguistic
construct that isn't seriously flawed. I fear psychological reality is
the favorite rabbit hole of even some of the best of linguistic
theorists. I remember even Jim McCawley taking a dive down that hole a
few years ago, and he told me afterwards he knew better, and Jim was one
of the best of us. We all want our theories to do more than account for
data, and what could be better than a model of what speakers and hearers
do, not simply what they know. Unfortunately, even the latter remains a
serious challenge to linguistics.
You have an impressive facility with grammar and writing pedagogy, and I
trust your judgment in those areas much more than that of theoretical
linguists who think that their theory is about such things.
Herb
Hi
We have found at our school that the usefulness of sentence combining is
directly tied to what the teacher does with it. If it is used as a dry,
dusty sent of work sheets, it doesn't help. When teachers engage the
students in discussions of options and the way things can work, it can
be helpful, or at least interesting.
I guess I'm not tied to the idea that transformations must happen, or
even that they always happen in a certain way, although some patterns
seem pretty clear (passives). I want students to be able to see passive
sentences, but I'm really more interested in how passives, for example,
affect meaning. I'm not a big fan of teaching grammar in writing classes
if 'grammar' means endless drills and sentence diagramming. But I am
also not sure how to teach a writing class without talking about
language, and I don't know how to talk about language without using some
grammatical terms. Although I think the best way for students to become
better readers and writers is to do a lot of reading and writing, I also
think there is value in talking about language itself.
Janet
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2007 10:55 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Instruction versus learning
Janet,
I think the disagreement might be with how you are using the term
"transformation." If you are using it to mean something like "options"
or "variations", then I think you are right. A writer has various
options in the way something can be presented, and finite or non-finite
clauses are certainly part of that. I think it helps bring the concept
home if we can make these "transformations" and then talk about the
differences, both in terms of form and meaning. This is different from
what was intended by the term "transformation" within generative theory
(as Herb pointed out well.)
Deb Rossen-Knill has a fine article in manuscript that speaks to
these issues well. The literature does show a benefit to sentence
combining, and the biggest benefit seems to come when there is
conversation between teacher and student, a shared metalanguage about
the effectiveness of various choices.
Some of the original argument for sentence combining seemed to come
from those who thought of it as an alternative to a knowledge based
approach. (See, for example, Constance Weaver, who seems to say that
students don't need to know grammar because they can acquire language
fluency without it, sentence combining being one "proven" path.)
Students could gain fluency making these changes and didn't have to be
burdened with knowledge about what they are doing. I like your own
approach if I am reading you correctly; it seems to be a way to deepen
understanding, not avoid it.
Craig
Castilleja, Janet wrote:
> I am not really a big fan of generative grammar, but I do think some
> useful ideas came out of it.
>
> One reason that I asked how other people analyze that sort of
structure
> is that I find that in my grammar for teachers class, students often
> have trouble differentiating between finite and non-finite forms. I
> find it useful to show students how the transformation (I think there
> really is a transformation) takes place, from independent clause to
> dependent clause(usually relative) to reduced clauses. It seems to
help
> them see that what we are left with after the transformations is the
> participle, not a similar looking finite form. Of course, we also
have
> other ways of deciding whether a verb is finite or not. So my
analysis
> of 'developed last summer' is that it is a reduced clause with an
> adverbial modifier.
>
> While I know a number of people on the list are skeptical about this,
I
> have found research that indicates that sentence combining can have a
> positive effect on student writing convincing. We use sentence
> combining in the developmental English classes at my school, but there
> is really no sentence combining without transformations.
>
> Janet
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
> Sent: Monday, November 19, 2007 9:28 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Instruction versus learning
>
> Janet,
> The word group "developed last summer" is headed by the past
> participle of the verb and includes a noun phrase ("last summer") that
> modifies "developed" adverbially. I think traditional grammar would
call
>
> it a participial phrase, acting as adjectival modifier (restrictive)
of
>
> "the plan." The idea would be that a structure (like relative
clause)
> can act adjectivally and not BE an adjective phrase.
> I think it can be very useful to students to point out various
> options that a writer might have available, relative clause being one,
> without having to postulate that one was transformed from the other.
You
>
> can then open up conversations about the nuances of meaning (often
> emphasis) that result. Insight into the closeness of these options is
> valuable.
>
> Craig
>
> Castilleja, Janet wrote:
>
>> Hi
>>
>> What about a sentence like 'the plan developed last summer should
>> alleviate the problem'? Would you also analyze 'developed last
>> summer'as an adjective phrase?
>>
>> Janet
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of STAHLKE, HERBERT F
>> Sent: Sunday, November 18, 2007 8:39 PM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: Instruction versus learning
>>
>> I think the Reduced Relative Clause analysis is a relic of early
>> Transformational Grammar, when linguists were enamored of the power
of
>> transformations and hadn't het become sufficiently suspicious of such
>> formal power. Transformations can, in fact, do anything you want
them
>> do to, regardless of whether or not that thing is well supported by
>>
> how
>
>> language works. The delightfully named transformation Wh-is deletion
>> made it easy to posit a relative clause underlying any adjectival
noun
>> modifier. Combine that with adjective-shift to move a single word
>> adjective from post-nominal to pre-nominal position, and you had
>> tremendous power tied up in two simple transformations. Of course,
>> transformations couldn't account for restrictions on order of
>> pre-nominal adjectives. Nor could they account for the fact that
>>
> there
>
>> were restrictions on the order of post-nominal modifiers as well, as
>>
> in
>
>> "a student of linguistics from Chicago" vs. "a student from Chicago
of
>> linguistics", while you could say either "a car parked by the side of
>> the road with red tires" or "a car with red tires parked by the side
>>
> of
>
>> the road." And then, of course, there were adjectives like "late"
>>
> that
>
>> couldn't occur in the predicate of a relative clause, as in "the late
>> President Reagan" vs. "*President Reagan who was late." The second
>> sentence works only with a temporal meaning, not the meaning that
he's
>> dead.
>>
>> What Chomsky's work starting around 1968, followed by his own and
>>
> other
>
>> work by his students, demonstrated was that for transformations to
>>
> make
>
>> linguistically useful generalizations they had to be very tightly
>> constrained, and you couldn't create a transformation just because a
>> derivation made sense, like reducing all single-word and phrasal noun
>> modifiers from relative clauses. Relative clause reduction was one
of
>> these things that was justified only by simplicity, that it provided
a
>> common source for nominal modifiers and so simplified the Phrase
>> Structure Rules. That was a purely formal justification, something
>>
> the
>
>> model could do and therefore did. It was not motivated by actual
>> linguistic data. The relative clause reduction analysis fell under
>>
> its
>
>> own weight, since it could be motivated only formally and ran into
>> intractable problems with conflicting data.
>>
>> Herb
>>
>>
>> Now, Janet and Kathleen, what are we to make of this? Each of you
>> asserts your view quite confidently. I'm wondering if there is some
>> test, some definition, that can lead one to recognize a "reduced
>> relative clause" when one sees one. Alternatively, what is to
>> prevent us from simply declaring all post position adjectives as
>> reduced relative clauses? What do we gain by calling such
>> constructions reduced relative clauses" What do we lose if we, as I
>> am inclined to do, simply call them adjectives?
>>
>> Peter Adams
>>
>> On Nov 18, 2007, at 5:31 PM, Castilleja, Janet wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> Hi
>>>
>>> It is a reduced relative clause. The pre-reduction sentence is
>>> 'A healthy meal which is available at many fast-food restaurants is
>>> a salad with low-fat dressing.' Reduced clauses of various types
>>> are quite common.
>>>
>>> Janet Castilleja
>>> Heritage University
>>>
>>> ________________________________
>>>
>>> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of
>>> Peter Adams
>>> Sent: Sat 11/17/2007 7:00 AM
>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>> Subject: Re: Instruction versus learning
>>>
>>>
>>> I agree with Kathleen, but some of my colleagues are arguing that
>>> it is a reduced relative clause. Does anyone agree with them?
>>>
>>> Peter
>>>
>>> On Nov 17, 2007, at 12:03 AM, Kathleen M. Ward wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> I think that it's just an adjective phrase, modified with a
>>> prepositional phrase. Adjective phrases that are postmodified
>>> follow the noun rather than preceding it. There are lots of
>>>
> examples.
>
>>> Kathleen Ward
>>> UC Davis
>>>
>>> On Nov 16, 2007, at 8:52 PM, Peter Adams wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> Could someone help me analyze this sentence:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> A healthy meal available at many fast-food restaurants is a
>>> salad with low-fat dressing.
>>>
>>>
>>> What is the underlined phrase?
>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks.
>>>
>>>
>>> Peter Adams
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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