Janet,

 

Those are classic definitional problems – in the sense that to the extent there’s a “right” answer, it’s based primarily on whether there’s any consensus at all, rather than on something more measurable. Because I try to mesh with traditional American K-12 grammar terminology in my classes for cases in which it’s not too inaccurate, I tend to go with calling those participial phrases modifying nouns, and I’d call “Joe” an object of the verb “name” (I have trouble calling it an indirect object if there’s no direct object there, but that’s just me; I’d be much happier just talking about one-object and two-object patterns).

 

The issue with high-stakes testing you bring up is an enormous one, and I suspect it’s made even more serious by the fact that the test-makers’ choice of terminology may not be made explicit in many cases. Some of my state’s standards seem to read roughly as, “Children at the end of year Y should know the grammar terminology that children at the end of year Y should know.” I get the feeling that some of the vagueness may be an attempt to dodge debates that wouldn’t ever end, but if the kids are getting tested on specifics, all that’s happened is that a de facto terminology system has been imposed without anyone discussing it. I don’t particularly mind the idea of widescale tests for assessment; I loathe the idea of widespread *bad* tests for assessment, and that seems to be what we’re frequently stuck with.

 

The phrase/clause thing  is messy. Since I’m teaching college classes, I go ahead and bring it up *as* an example of a labeling problem. As far as I can tell, there’s a split between British and American terminology that dates to about the last third of the nineteenth century. Before that, people weren’t talking in a very organized way about word groups; the Latinate model of focusing on individual words, and of viewing all grammar as relations between (not among!) individual words, was still in play. In the U.S., consensus developed around the notion that a clause had to have a finite verb, and since subject/verb agreement is one of the markers of finiteness, the clause therefore has to have a subject (nominative, not just “agenty”) as well. The British seem to have focused more on whether or not the unit had an event-like structure, with a process and things that filled roles in the process, so “non-finite clause” isn’t oxymoronic in British practice (some of the British work also calls NPs, VPs, etc. “groups” and reserves “phrase” for (arguably) exocentric units like PPs).  Quirk et al. appear to have one foot solidly in the British tradition, but take care not to get stuck in it.

 

Bill Spruiell

Dept. of English

Central Michigan University

 

 

How would you analyze this:  Once upon a time, there was a prince named Joe.

 

Do you analyze a prince named Joe as a noun phrase with a participle phrase modifying the noun head, or as a participle clause?  I’ve always called these non-finite constructions reduced clauses or participle clauses, but I have run into a problem.  In my grammar class for pre-service teachers, I start with noun phrases.  When I teach noun modification, I want to teach students about post-modification, but they really don’t know anything about finite and non-finite verbs yet, nor do they know much about clauses.  So this semester, I decided I would just call them participle phrases which modify nouns.  But then I was in trouble when we got to clauses because I wanted to call then reduced or non-finite clauses.  By that time, the students knew enough to say “Hey wait a minute!  Didn’t you just tell us those were phrases?”  At least I know they were listening in October.

 

Also, do you call ‘Joe’ a retained object complement, or is there a better way to label this?

 

How about this:  Joe baked a cake for me.  Can I just go ahead and call ‘Joe’ an indirect object? It means exactly the same this as Joe baked me a cake.

 

This is an on-going problem for me, because, even though I try to teach them a pretty straight forward descriptive-structural-functional view of syntax (Quirk et al is my bible), with a little discussion of prescriptivism thrown in so they’ll know what to expect when they get into the schools, I find that frequently there is more than one way to analyze a given structure.  This disturbs my students.  They want to know the ‘right’ way, and it better be the way that it is gong to show up on the subject area test they have to take.  Do you think there is any consensus on the ‘best’ grammar approach to teach pre-service teachers?  This is not a trivial issue, since they have high-stakes tests (for themselves and their students) principals and parents in their futures.

 

Comments?

 

Janet Castilleja

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