Craig, I'm not dismissing your alternative view out of hand. I'm trying to figure out how it applies to REAL problems I confront as a writing teacher. I don't understand how this view provides any insights into what my students do, and more importantly, what I do. I provided you with a REAL example of a mixed construction from a REAL student text. (1) By taking time out of your day to get something for someone else just really shows that you really care about them. Why don't you want to share with the listserv how your perspective accounts for such a sentence? Because you haven't done that yet, I will try to figure out what it means. Consider the Langacker quote as a way to account for sentence (1). “The thrust of the content requirement is that the linguistic knowledge we ascribe to speakers should be limited to elements of form and meaning found in actually occurring expressions, or which derive from such elements via the basic psychological phenomena listed in 1.31: association, automatization, schematization, and categorization. By keeping our feet on the ground, this restriction assures both naturalness and theoretical austerity.” It seems to me that Langacker is saying the writer of (1) must have encountered such a construction in other contexts. Is that correct? The obvious implication is that we as teachers much find out what those contexts are and figure out ways for students to ignore such examples. Is that correct? Of course, as teachers, how do WE know there is something inappropriate with (1) if "the linguistic knowledge we ascribe to speakers [is] limited to elements of form and meaning found in actually occurring expressions"? I know I don't read texts that contain mixed constructions, except for my own student texts. So, where did my knowledge come from that these structures that I have only encountered in student writing are inappropriate if my knowledge is based on actually occurring expressions? Craig, you want teachers on the list to take an alternative theory of language that is based on actual language we are exposed to. From a teaching perspective, I'm trying to do that and I don't like the answer I come up with for students and the kinds of "innovative" sentences they write and my own judgments about those sentences. I must be wrong because you are an experienced writing teacher and you find the perspective useful. Please explain why it is useful for you. Bob Yates, University of Central Missouri To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/