Scott, Jean, et al.:

 

I’ve been engaged for several years in looking at modern and 19^th-century grammar texts. One conclusion I arrived at quite early was that K-12 grammar texts are weird. Deeply, extensively, fascinatingly weird. Thou was still showing up in pronoun charts in 1850 as if it were current (it dropped out of use by around 1700 except among certain religious groups and in specialized contexts). Lily’s system of verb labels, designed to teach Latin, is still being used for English. Most texts never manage to mention that we regularly use the simple present to refer to the future. It is not entirely inaccurate (how’s that for a hedge?) to describe the evolution of grammar texts not as ongoing revision of what is written to conform to what is known, but as a revision of Lindley Murray to conform to what is expected (Murray was one of the, if not THE, most influential late eighteenth-century English grammarians).

 

Even weirder (wierderer? More wierdalicious?) is the resistance of both the publishing and teaching establishments to change anything. It seems to go hand-in-hand with a kind of public double-standard. If a chemist says something about molecular structure that is new or surprising and contradicts what was thought earlier, most people either yawn and say “o.k.” or blink rapidly and say “wow.” If a linguist says something similar about language, many people say, “you’re obviously wrong, and your evidence is meaningless because it led you to the wrong conclusion” (I’ve gotten this reaction when making such solidly-supported claims as, “there is a system to African-American Vernacular English – otherwise no one could learn it”).  Granted, some of the claims linguists make are about highly abstract subjects that are hard to approach empirically, but that doesn’t account for the reactions when they do have tons of evidence.

 

I can’t really blame the K-12 text publishers – they’re in the business to make money, and there’s no reason to change anything if you’re getting a nice profit from what you’re doing.  I do think we ought to whinge at them more, though. I still want to put up a list of “stupid textbook tricks” in front of the textbook display at NCTE.

 

Bill Spruiell

Dept. of English

Central Michigan University

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: [log in to unmask]">Scott Woods

To: [log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]

Sent: Friday, February 15, 2008 7:19 AM

Subject: Re: Exclamatory sentences

 

Thanks. I appreciate the generous help available on this list.

 

Regarding the various grammar textbooks available in K-12, it seems that they mostly just recirculate the same ideas.  I found a passage in a grammar textbook from 1900 which claimed that there is no exclamatory form.  The current view on this in every English language website I found backed up that claim in its example set.  (I did find a website about the German language which explained the exclamatory sentence to be defined by its change of word order.) 

 

It seems hardly surprising that grammar instruction which does not present an accurate view of the structure of a language will not be very successful in teaching students to see that language accurately. 

 

Scott Woods

"STAHLKE, HERBERT F" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Bill points out rightly that the form/function distinction that we’ve discussed with respect to words and their parts of speech also applies at the level of sentence.  Linguistically, just as we define a part of speech by its morphosyntactic behavior supplemented by meaning when needed, we also define the sentence types by their structural characteristics.  Picking up on Bill’s reference to the use of interrogative structure to express requests, there is a reasonable argument that this subset of interrogatives actually do form a sentence type, one that Georgia Green, back in the 60s, aptly called “whimperative.”  What makes these distinct from yes/no questions is that they must take second person singular subjects, they begin with modals, and they can include “please” in several different syntactic positions.  And, of course, their function is to request that something be done.  Depending on the relative positions of the speaker and hearer this may or may not constitute a command. 

 

And just as we can use nouns to modify, we can use statements to query, to request, and to order.

 

Declarative as question:

 

A:  The kids are supposed to be outside playing.

B:  And it’s raining.

 

B can say this with or without rising interpretation and be understood to be asking if it’s raining, not asserting it.

 

Declarative as request:

 

A (on the phone to B):  Are you fixing pancakes for breakfast?

B:  We’re out of flour, but the grocery store’s on your way over.

 

Declarative as order:

 

Hey, you left the door open!

 

(or is that one exclamatory?)

 

Herb

From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Spruiell, William C
Sent: 2008-02-14 16:51
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Exclamatory sentences

 

I’ve encountered the same thing. “Exclamatory” usually means a specific construction, but texts don’t distinguish well between the construction itself and its use (and of course, modern American English-speakers don’t use the exclamatory much anyway). We’d be a lot better off, I think, if K-12 textbooks simply acknowledge that the form of a sentence and how we use it don’t always match up in the same way – we don’t need to hit students with the fancy terms from pragmatics (locutionary vs. illocutionary force), but we do need deal with the fact that the two lists below are separate:

 

                Form                     vs.          Uses

 

                Declarative                         statement

                Interrogative                     question

                Imperative                          command

                                                                Request

                Exclamatory                       express surprise

 

English-speakers usually phrase commands and requests as interrogatives (“Could you pass me the salt”) not imperatives, and quite a number of questions are expressed as declaratives (“I wonder what time it is.”). Warriner’s original grammar book can hardly be faulted for not making the distinction clear (almost no texts did at the time), but it’s a shame that the current publishers (and other textbook authors) don’t.

 

Bill Spruiell

Dept. of English

Central Michigan University.

 

From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Scott Woods
Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2008 1:18 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Exclamatory sentences

 

The grammar text I am using with my class (Warriner's 2nd Course) defines exclamatory sentences as showing strong feeling or excitement and ending with an exclamation point.  As examples, it gives

What a sight the sunset is! (This seems to me to be an exclamatory sentence.)

They're off!  (This seems to me to be an exclamation of a declarative sentence.)

Sarah won the videotape player! (Ditto.)

 

This definition and example set seems to be both confusing and useless.  I have found similar definitions elsewhere. This definition seems pervasive in K-12 education.  Isn't an exclamatory sentence defined by its structure?  Aren't sentences such as

<How nice you look today!>, <What an ugly puppy that is!>, and <How seldom you come to visit!> exclamatory sentences?  Isn't their sentence structure what defines them as exclamatory sentences and not their purpose, the level of excitement or feeling expressed, or the use of an exclamation point?  Am I wrong on this?  Can't we make declarative sentences into exclamations (or questions, for that matter) without changing their nature as declarative sentences?  Does anyone have any knowledge about how this turns up on the kinds of standardized tests students take to test their grammar knowledge? Are there any suggestions on how to deal with this and similar situations?  (I told my students that I disagreed with the definition given thenI showed them the structural differences between sentence types and how to restructure them to change the type.)

 

Scott Woods

 

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