Jim,
   I'm happy you're taking the time to air out frustrations. I have some
of my own. I take your post in good faith and respond in kind.
   In pretty much every one of those posts, Bob is the one who challenges
new ideas. He seems, quite frankly, to be threatened by them. I don't
start these conversations. I don't write posts criticizing generative
grammar. In fact, as evidenced by his post on the physics question, I
usually regret my conversations with Bob very quickly. I would be happy
to ignore his posts, but he often pounces on mine. I would like to have
different views layed side by side instead of being asked to defend so
often. I would like friendly clarification questions, not "I don't see
how this can possibly be true" or "If Craig thought hard about
cognitive linguistics he would see" sort of statements. He seems to
want to hold me up as the pillar of these positions, so he can
discredit them by discrediting me. He seems to want to derail
productive talk about positions different from his own. In short, I
find his responses very hostile and not at all helpful.
   This current thread started because I said I don't think it is a given
that all children learn language in preordained sequence of stages. If
we look at it from a cognitive perspective, it's easy to call that
assumption into question. I'm not sure it's productive to believe that
all children come to school knowing the same language. If we were more
attentive to this, perhaps we could be more effective in mentoring
children into the language of school.
   Cognitive positions are very different from generative positions, and
the literature presents it that way. I'm not making this stuff up. If I
prefer one over the other, I don't mean that personally. Quite frankly,
if I don't bring it up, many people on list won't know this stuff is
out there. I get posts, by the way, thanking me for it. If I start
getting complaints, I'll stop.
   Is this welcome on the list? I hope so. I will be followng these ideas
out somewhere. I am passionate about it and will find people to talk
to.
   If you have a program on how generative grammar will help us solve the
crisis in grammar in the schools, why not present it? I'm not going to
say it's not possible, but I haven't seen it yet. Why are you holding
back?
   I'm sorry I missed your comment on innateness. It seems to contradict
what Bob has been saying. He seems to reject the idea that there can be
"a grammar of advanced literacy." Would that include physics? Is it
possible that advanced literacy differs in the technical disciplines?
Do your views on this differ from Bob's?
   Bob seems to dismiss the possibility.

Craig




Craig,
>    I suspect that some of the exacerbation/frustration that crept into
> Bob's responses to your posts are not very different from mine.
>
>     First - and foremost for me - is your insistence in these discussions
> that generative-inspired notions of grammar have NOTHING to say that
> is useful to the goal of promoting the teaching of grammar.  In fact,
> you over and over again maintain that generative grammar is even
> responsible for this situation because you believe that generative
> grammar claims that grammar is learned naturally from very ordinary
> exposure to input/verbal interaction . . . whatever.
>     Over a period of several years now, this claim of yours has been
> responded to many times. However, you continue to present to the list
> the same gross misrepresentations of generative grammar, and then go
> on to appeal to this parody as reason for dismissing the assumptions
> of generative grammar as potentially relevant to this list's concerns,
> and you repeatedly position generative grammar as a clear negative.
>
>    This rhetorical strategy of yours is "tiresome" and "frustrating."
> What is the point of it?
>
>     Just two days ago, on Friday, February 06, 2009 1:26 PM, you presented
> the latest example of this rhetorical strategy, one I consider
> uncollegial and irresponsible, and which I hope we would try to avoid
> on this list.
>
>      "If you think grammar is innate and meaningfully neutral, just a
> system of forms, then don't teach it. It just happens. If you see it
> as learned and deeply connected to cognition and discourse, then you
> ought to attend to it and not just expect it to happen.
>
>    There are views of language which support the teaching of grammar and
> views of language that support our current status quo. Bob and I are on
> opposite poles of that argument."
>
>   This claim is both ridiculous and insulting. No one who reads this list
> can believe that Bob Yates, active here for more than a decade and
> involved with ATEG since 1991, supports the "status quo."  Nor can
> anyone who reads this list believe that Bob Yates believes that grammar
> knowledge of the type this list is most interested in - i.e., the
> grammar of more advanced literacy - "just happens."
>
>     Two months ago on this list there was a discussion about "innateness."
> I made a small contribution to that discussion on Dec 9 and argued
> that no "generativist" would claim that the grammar of advanced
> literacy would be learned without some kind of focused
> attention/instruction. At the time, you did not quarrel with what was
> written, but apparently it had no effect on your thinking. Instead of
> ignoring what are at least intended to be substantive comments, it
> would be better to explain why they are problematic.
>
>          There was also an appeal to move away from the disparaging
> rhetoric - an appeal which obviously has been disregarded.
>
>
>
>                   We can do better than this.
>
>
>                                  Jim Kenkel
>                                  Eastern Ky Univ
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________________
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock [[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Saturday, February 07, 2009 11:06 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Developmental phases of grammar knowledge
>
> Bob,
>    It's hard to read this without getting frustrated. First of all, you
> seem to present yourself as an expert on what I'm trying to say.
> Secondly, you seem much more interested in putting me down than you are
> in discussing the very rich and interesting views of language that are
> now being developed (and showing great promise.) I said it before and
> I'll say it again: this is silly. If I am such a foolish person, then
> don't rely on my explanations. Read Langacker. Read Halliday. Read them
> with an open mind, not with a defensive one.
>    It is hard to react to this in part because you make three or four
> mischaracterizations in a row, sometimes using one to set up another.
>
>  In wanting to deny that students have to be "mentored" or "instructed" on
>> grammar, Craig feels the need to reject any observations that EVERY
>> native
>> speaker knows a lot about the language and this knowledge is not the
>> product of mentoring or instructing or whatever.
>
>     First of all, do I want to deny that students need to be mentored? Do
> I reject the notion that every native speaker knows a great deal about
> language?  No to both. (Is the first claim a typo?) And certainly any
> theory about language needs to come up with an understanding of the
> human cognitive apparatus. Children wouldn't learn language if they
> weren't able to learn language. We can't teach a stone to talk.
>
>    Here's another confusing summary of my views that I would object to:
>    "If that is the case, then there is  a problem with his view of
> language
> that what a child knows about language comes ONLY from interaction (and we
> know there is great variation on what that interaction) grammar needs to
> be more prominent in the curriculum)."
>
>    Again, I don't ever remember saying that interaction alone accounts for
> language. It is a critical component in any theory, including
> generative. The rest of the sentence just confuses me.
>
> Here's a nice friendly statement:
>
> If Craig thought about cognitive grammar a little harder, he would realize
>> that this knowledge might be the result of the fact that humans all have
>> the same cognitive capacities.  As a consequence, proposing a special
>> language facility is not necessary.  However, he doesn't want to
>> acknowledge that possibility because he believes that claim keeps
>> grammar
>> an insignificant part of the curriculum.  To my knowledge, cognitive
>> grammar is interested in accounting for knowledge we all have about
>> language without the need to cite some kind of special language
>> facility.
>
> I certainly do want to think about cognitive grammar a little harder. I do
> that most every day. I have realized A LONG TIME AGO that it posits that
> all human beings have the same cognitive capacities. Where in the world
> does that come from except from personal hostility? Why in the world would
> that make grammar an insignificant part of the curriculum? Am I missing
> something? The last part of it is telling: cognitive grammar accounts for
> knowledge about language as "usage based"; it doesn't assume that we all
> have the same knowledge about language and then try to account for that.
> It is much more adept at describing differences among languages.
>    I have gone easy on the count/non-count challenge. It seems to me that
> generative grammar should be on the defensive when it comes down to
> recognizing that languages differ greatly across the world. If this
> grammar is given us "for free", why don't all humans share it? If it's
> innate,why do some languages have it and others not? The explanation
> requires innate capacities that are not used, switches that are or are
> not turned on, and so on. It gets cumbersome.
>    We also have count/non-count distinctions that are item specific. We
> might readily say "He showed us three woods that would work", but I
> don't think we readily say the same with "lumber." "He showed us three
> lumbers that would work" seems awkward. We somehow have to account for
> layers of uniqueness, sub-categories. We learn words, certainly, from
> interaction. It's not a stretch to believe we learn the grammar along
> with it.
>    I believe systemic functional linguistics and cognitive linguistics are
> compatible, though you are right to say they tend to focus on different
> things. SFL is oriented toward discourse, CG toward cognition. But I
> think that's a matter of a different focus of attention; one doesn't
> negate or contradict the other. By having a usage-based and functional
> orientation, they are distinct from generative approaches and see
> themselves that way.
>    Langacker, for example, points out that discourse functions are built
> into the grammar. "One aspect of an expression's import, often a
> crucial one, is how it relates to previous or following expressions.
> And being abstracted from usage events in discourse, conventional
> linguistic units also have this property. The discourse connections
> they specify are inherited by the expressions that incorporate them"
> (2008, 460). Like SFL, these elements (and he includes information
> structuring) are thought of as woven into the grammar, not a separate
> (pragmatic) layer.
>
>    Again, I don't think we serve the list well with hostile discourse. I'm
> sure I didn't respond to all your objections.
>    People may in fact be able to learn some language from observation
> alone. A child in a hostile or indifferent environment will no doubt
> pick up language as a matter of survival as he/she overhears the
> language around and tries to make sense of it. It is hard for me to
> imagine that this is ideal. We still need to posit "communicative
> intent" and "pattern finding" cognition. I suppose a "usage
> environment" is the necessary element, along with whatever cognitive
> apparatus we all bring by virtue of being human. But I don't think any
> of us would want to trust our children's fate to this sort of test.
> Mentoring would mean we take responsibility for orienting a child in
> new language worlds.
>    Reducing my position to "grammar must be formally taught" isn't
> helpful.
>
> Craig
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Let's understand what the debate about theories of language and teaching
>> grammar is about.
>>
>> Craig and I agree that the teaching grammar in the curriculum is being
>> neglected.  He is trying to find a way to make it more important.
>>
>> He believes, incorrectly I think, that claims that students already know
>> grammar before they get to school is responsible for this sad set of
>> affairs.  (People who cite claims that language is part of our
>> biological
>> endowment so grammar is already in place seriously misunderstand those
>> claims and why formal knowledge of grammar is important in writing and
>> reading.)
>>
>> In his belief that claims that grammar is innate have lead to the sad
>> state of grammar in the curriculum, Craig is looking for a theory of
>> language which validates his view that grammar must be formally taught.
>> He finds such views in "cognitive grammar" and ties that into the
>> systemic
>> functional linguistics which is not interested in what people know about
>> language but what are the range of grammatical choices in specific
>> contexts.
>>
>> In wanting to deny that students have to be "mentored" or "instructed"
>> on
>> grammar, Craig feels the need to reject any observations that EVERY
>> native
>> speaker knows a lot about the language and this knowledge is not the
>> product of mentoring or instructing or whatever.
>>
>> As a consequence, he is not even away that sometimes his evidence, such
>> as
>> it is, doesn't support what he wants it to support.
>>
>> I cited the count/noncount distinction because it has never been, to my
>> knowledge, part of the K-12 curriculum.  Despite Craig's claim that
>> children are exposed to "radically different" language, every native
>> speaker seems to get this distinction.
>>
>> If that is the case, then there is  a problem with his view of language
>> that what a child knows about language comes ONLY from interaction (and
>> we
>> know there is great variation on what that interaction) grammar needs to
>> be more prominent in the curriculum).  Here is Craig's belief how
>> "cognitive linguistics" can explain the count/noncount distinction.
>>
>>    I think Langacker does a wonderful job handling count and non-count
>> (mass nouns) as cognitive categories. There are some very interesting
>> ways in which nouns shift from one category to another. "Yellow", for
>> example, is not normally a count noun, but we can say "I like the
>> yellow" or "I tried several yellows." "I don't like many wines."  "He
>> had too many beers." "I love diamond." (non-count). "She wore several
>> diamonds." (count.)  I suspect that these are learned as we pick up
>> vocabulary. There's no reason to believe the count/non-count
>> distinction is a purely formal system, separate from our interaction
>> with the world and our ways of talking about it and conceptualizing it.
>> Is "wood" count or mass?  "They broke through the plaster to wood." "He
>> tried several woods before he found one that looked right." The
>> question came up in my class just the other day about "trouble."  "He
>> got into trouble." "Nobody knows the troubles I've seen." These are
>> fairly dynamic categories.
>>
>> All of the examples are known to all NATIVE speakers.  (I don't remember
>> Langacker saying anything about the kinds of interaction children need
>> to
>> get all of these structures and Langacker identifies no speech community
>> that does not have the full range of structures because certain kinds of
>> interactions never take place.) Has ANYONE noticed a native speaker who
>> is
>> completely befuddled by "I tried several yellows"?
>>
>> The point is that all native speakers know almost all of English
>> grammar,
>> and they especially know about the count/noncount distinction in English
>> nouns. NO one has to mentor them.  And, the best evidence I have for
>> this
>> is that dictionaries for native speakers say nothing about this
>> distinction, nor do dictionaries consider the examples Craig has. I
>> point
>> out that this lack of description for native speakers means everyone
>> seems
>> to have the same knowledge.
>>
>> If Craig thought about cognitive grammar a little harder, he would
>> realize
>> that this knowledge might be the result of the fact that humans all have
>> the same cognitive capacities.  As a consequence, proposing a special
>> language facility is not necessary.  However, he doesn't want to
>> acknowledge that possibility because he believes that claim keeps
>> grammar
>> an insignificant part of the curriculum.  To my knowledge, cognitive
>> grammar is interested in accounting for knowledge we all have about
>> language without the need to cite some kind of special language
>> facility.
>>
>> His commitment to systemic functional linguistics, a view of language
>> that
>> is only interested in characterizing the possible range of choices a
>> language user has in a given context, means in citing Langacker and all
>> of
>> the variation in the count/noncount distinction, Craig is able to say:
>> "Because language is the result of interaction and not everyone has the
>> same kind of interaction, some speakers won't get all the variations.
>> It
>> is just those speakers that need to be mentored to get those
>> variations."
>>
>> Craig's commitment to systemic functional linguistics means he is only
>> interested in what is possible in a language.  Remember he likes to cite
>> corpus data to account for what we know.  Because I really believe we
>> need
>> a competence (what is possible in a language) and performance (what we
>> actually do) distinction, grammaticality judgments are one way to
>> discover
>> what are underlying competence is.
>>
>> In this discussion, it is unfair for me to use grammaticality judgments.
>> This is so because Craig has no theory of language that accounts for
>> them.
>>  Remember he claims our knowledge of language comes in interaction.  So,
>> he writes this response which completely ignores the examples I used.
>>
>> There can be a number of different reasons why certain structures may
>> strike us as "not possible" in the language. "Bob likes ice cream
>> and..." may very well come up in the right kind of context. "I like ice
>> cream and fudge. Sally likes ice cream and nuts. Bob likes ice cream
>> and...?" With the right inflection, it would be treated like a sensible
>> question. An utterance needs motivation, and new utterances need to pay
>> off before they will be accepted.
>>
>> I noted (1) and (2) are possible, but only (3) is a possible wh-question
>> and not (4).  Craig did not explain why EVERY native speaker knows the
>> normal wh-question is not possible for (4).  The problem that a strictly
>> interaction account has when it comes to grammaticality judgments is
>> that
>> we have to notice structures we have never heard. Can anyone report what
>> structures they have never heard and therefore they KNOW such structures
>> are not possible in English?
>>
>> 1) Bob likes ice cream with what?
>> 2) Bob likes ice cream and what?
>>
>> 3) What does Bob like ice cream with?
>> 4) *What does Bob like ice cream and?
>>
>> (Our judgments about 1-4 can be explained by the fact that in 1 and 3
>> "what" is the object of preposition and in 2 and 4 "what" is part of a
>> coordinating construction.  However, that observation does not help a
>> theory of language that claims there is no special knowledge that we
>> have
>> about language.  From that point of view, there is no such thing as a
>> preposition or a conjunction. I have no idea how "interaction" makes it
>> possible for a person to figure out the constraints on movement that
>> exists for one and not the other.)
>>
>> The following statement is an empirical question.
>>
>>    Cognitive and functional approaches are not naive. They give very
>> robust explanations for all the phenomena you bring up as "proof"
>> against them.
>>
>> However, to the degree that such approaches are robust explanations,
>> those
>> explanations are robust for EVERY native speaker.
>>
>> Bob Yates, University of Central Missouri
>>
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