As I've said in previous posts, I think it's important for a proposed
curriculum to have a set of terms and a glossary. I really believe we
won't be able to sell a specific curriculum if there isn't terminology.
What will we call the different topics we suggest at different grade
levels, etc.? If we want to float a less-finished product, we might
have a set of alternative terms, but I think that will not be
well-received by our audience.

The audience we're addressing -- public-school stakeholders -- is not
likely to consult works like QUIGLS and the big Cambridge grammar. Many
of them are, however, going to be familiar with -- and some comfortable
with -- the terminology currently in the teaching materials. I think we
can work with that, supplementing and refining it. Publishers cater to
three states: NY, TX, and CA. The books they produce for those are
going to be as uniform as they can get away with. I don't know what
they have produced for other states. For CA, they have correlated all
of the grammar material with the state standards, to the point of
quoting the relevant standard in the grammar lesson and providing
"standards maps" that show which lessons satisfy which standards.

I was looking at two school grammars I have here at home last night,
one for 7th grade and one for high school (9th gr., I think). Most of
the terminology overlaps with American linguistic usage (of which the
Cambridge grammar cannot be said to be representative, as they have
purposefully reduced the membership of various classes by broadening a
term's meaning). I'm familiar with American linguistics usage from
reading many, many articles and books. QUIGLS (the Quirk and Greenbaum
and its various offspring) are British, and they are also informed by
Systemic Functional Grammar, so their terminology is not always the
same as in the USA.

The K-12 books do conflate form and function. But they also say that a
word is "functioning as" an adjective or noun, at least the books I
have here. From there, it isn't a big step to formally introducing a
form-function distinction. Of course, there are inaccuracies in the
definitions, and many are partial (so nouns and verbs are defined
mainly in terms of meaning), but I think many of the definitions are
fine as starting points.

Below this message is a list of the terms in the glossary of Prentice
Hall's Gold Level "Writing and Grammar" (a 900-p. textbook intended to
be used together with an equally large lit. book). I find most of the
terms here quite acceptable. As to their definitions, many would have
to be extended, refined, or corrected (for instance, I would campaign
against calling articles "adjectives"). Terms would have to be added,
and this would be a little sticky for us, I think, although there is a
set of pretty-well-accepted linguistic terms, such as "determiner" and
"quantifier", that could be considered and discussed. (Some terms I've
included may not seem relevant to some readers; I can explain my
rationale if anyone wants me to).

In general, I think we're making terminology out to be a bigger bugaboo
than it really is. What we're trying to do here is set a standard,
right? And we are a finite group. The materials in use now were all
written and reviewed by finite groups who managed to agree on things.
Each of us may have to make compromises, but that's the nature of the
business. Ed complains that people on the list define "main clause" a
variety of different ways. What we have to do is decide, in
professional discussion, on whether we want to use that term or not
and, if so, how we will define it. I don't see this as impossible at
all. I think we will find more agreement on a large number of the basic
terms. I also think it is perfectly fine to introduce alternative terms
as the grades progress, and include them up front in teacher training.
I do the latter in my book.

Dr. Johanna Rubba, Associate Professor, Linguistics
Linguistics Minor Advisor
English Department
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Tel.: 805.756.2184
Dept. Ofc. Tel.: 805.756.2596
Dept. Fax: 805.756.6374
URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba

List of grammar-related words from glossary of “Writing and Grammar:
Communication in Action”, Gold Level. Prentice Hall, 2001.
This text is part of a larger set with a separate literature book. The
glossary doesn’t cover all of the terms used in the book. In a cursory
glance at the index, I find “agreement”, “predicate” and “superlative”,
so a thorough look at every lesson will yield a fuller list. But this
is a start.

1. accent (on a syllable)
2. action verb
3. adjective
4. “ clause
5. “ phrase
6. adverb
7. “ clause
8. “ phrase
9. apostrophe
10. appositive
11. “ phrase
12. article
13. case
14. clause
15. colon
16. comma
17. complement
18. compound sentence
19. conjugation
20. conjunction
21. contraction
22. coordinating conjunction
23. correlative conjunctions
24. declarative sentence
25. demonstrative pronouns
26. dialect
27. diction
28. direct object
29. etymology
30. exclamation mark
31. fragment
32. gerund
33. “ phrase
34. grammar
35. helping verb
36. homophones
37. hyphen
38. imperative sentence
39. indefinite pronoun
40. independent clause
41. indirect quotation
42. infinitive
43. “ phrase
44. interjection
45. interrogative pronoun
46. “ sentence
47. intransitive verb
48. jargon
49. linking verb
50. main clause
51. nominative case
52. noun
53. “ clause
54. objective case
55. paragraph
56. parentheses
57. participial phrase
58. participle
59. passive voice
60. period
61. personal pronoun
62. phrase
63. plural
64. possessive case
65. prefix
66. preposition
67. “-al phrase
68. pronoun
69. punctuation
70. question mark
71. quotation mark
72. reflexive pronoun
73. relative pronoun
74. root (of word)
75. run-on sentence
76. semicolon
77. sentence
78. subject
79. subordinate clause
80. subordinating conjunction
81. suffix
82. transitive verb
83. verb
84. verbal

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