Bill,
Thanks! As I read through the whole text, I notice exactly the lack of form
and function explanation that you point out. I've always considered that
crucial for any grammar course I teach since it changed the way I look at
grammar. Lester says this on page 3 of his text:
"A word of caution: part of speech resides in the way that a word is used;
it is not inherent in the word itself. For example, the names of concrete,
everyday objects such as *table, chair,* and *book* would seem to be
inherently nouns, but in the following sentences they are used as verbs.
The committee tabled the motion.
Mr. Smith chaired the meeting.
A travel agent booked the ticket for me.
Consequently, we must be careful to discuss a word's part of speech in terms
of the context in which it is used. Beware of talking about the part of
speech of a word used in isolation."
That allows him to allude to the form/function distinction throughout
without discussing at length how we can examine morphological form and
prototypical word categories as distinct from syntactic and discourse
function. Sly on his part and perhaps not a bad approach for his audience,
but I'd probably supplement the text with some of Martha Kolln's work just
to enhance that perspective.
John Alexander
On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 11:52 AM, Spruiell, William C <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
> John,
>
>
>
> I’ve used Lester’s book a number of times in a course here for future
> English teachers. Overall, I’d say there’s one major problem with it, but
> otherwise it’s extremely good. The problem is that he doesn’t make a clear
> form/function distinction. I’m not sure *why* he doesn’t – it could be
> that he’s trying to stick to the K-12 school grammar tradition, which is
> understandable, but the lack of that distinction is one of the things that
> constantly causes problems for anyone trying to teach the material (“You
> said only nouns could be plural, but in ‘accounts receivable,’ the adjective
> is”).
>
>
>
> The book is so good in other respects that I’ve continued to use it, using
> handouts to deal with the form/function distinction. But, of course, then
> the students get annoyed because I’m disagreeing with the textbook, and I
> get annoyed with them because the last thing future teachers should do is
> view a textbook (or their instructor’s comments!) as Holy Writ.
>
>
>
> Sincerely,
>
>
>
> Bill Spruiell
>
>
>
> *From:* Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:
> [log in to unmask]] *On Behalf Of *John Dews-Alexander
> *Sent:* Monday, March 23, 2009 8:00 PM
> *To:* [log in to unmask]
> *Subject:* Phrasal Verb Overview
>
>
>
> Greetings, ATEGers!
>
>
>
> Someone (I believe it was Herb) recently suggested a book to me: Mark
> Lester's (1990) *Grammar in the Classroom*. I'm not sure why I haven't
> discovered this book before, but I quite like it and would suggest it to
> anyone reviewing grammar texts. Even if you can't use it in your classroom,
> you and/or your students might enjoy knowing about it as a reference text.
> I find Lester's writing to be straightforward and uncluttered. Has anyone
> actually used this as a classroom text for teachers-in-training? If so, I'd
> be interested to hear about your experiences.
>
>
>
> I went to the text specifically to find some more information on phrasal
> verbs, information that wasn't overly technical for non-linguistic students
> but also not overly simplified so as to ignore descriptive facts. I thought
> I'd share here a few of the main points about phrasal verbs that Lester
> includes.
>
>
>
> - Lester suggests that phrasal verbs are part of Latin and Germanic
> languages' process of creating new words by adding prepositions (functional
> words) to verb stems. Latin languages tended to add the preposition to the
> beginning of the verb stem with Germanic languages adding them to the end.
> (example, "devour" from "de-" (down) and "voro" (swollow) in Latin)
> - When English forms a new word by adding a preposition to the
> beginning of a verb stem (example, "bypass" "offset"), it is more quickly
> and easily recognized as a new word; people forget that it used to be a
> phrasal verb/verb +preposition combination because, orthographically, it is
> written without a space. However, English tends to leave the space when the
> preposition is added to the end of the verb stem. (example, "give up")
> - While a sentence like "I give up" may look like a pronoun, a tensed
> verb, and an adverbial preposition, it is in fact a pronoun and a phrasal
> verb (note: I always learned to call the preposition that has become
> attached to a verb in such a way a "particle," but Lester continues to call
> it a preposition, which doesn't bother me at all). Lester points out a fun
> test for phrasal verbs -- can you replace the unit with a single word
> (almost always of Latin origin) and retain the meaning? In this case, "I
> give up" becomes "I surrender." (Lester points out the irony in the fact
> that "surrender" was once itself a phrasal verb in Latin!)
> - Phrasal verbs can be transitive; this can mark the difference between
> a phrasal verb and a verb+preposition combo even more. For example,
>
> John turned out the light. (Noun subject+phrasal verb+noun
> phrase object)
>
> John turned at the light. (Noun subject+verb+adverbial
> prepositional phrase)
>
>
>
> Say the sentences out loud and notice the stress. In phrasal
> verbs the preposition is stressed while it is not in the PP.
>
> - Phrasal verbs can have more than one preposition/particle: look down
> on, talk back to, walk out on, etc.
> - Lester points out that phrasal verbs were dumped from traditional
> school grammars because the word "preposition" in Latin literally means "to
> place before," and it was reasoned that prepositions couldn't be connected
> to verbs if they came after them. Sometimes phrasal verbs were treated as
> idioms.
> - Structural linguists have noted the difference between separable and
> inseparable phrasal verbs.Separable phrasal verbs have prepositions that can
> be moved to a position after the object noun phrase (example, "I gave up the
> game" vs "I gave the game up" or "I gave it up"). Inseparable phrasal verbs
> have prepositions that cannot be moved (example, "I depend on the income" vs
> *"I depend the income on" or *"I depend it on").
> - As you can see from the above examples, when the object of a
> separable transitive phrasal verb is a pronoun, the movement of the
> preposition is obligatory. You would always say "I gave it up" and never *"I
> gave up it." (I think I would cringe if I heard this avoided with some
> clunky construction like, "Up it is that I gave it.") In this sense, it is
> actually *ungrammatical* to NOT end a sentence with a preposition.
>
> Hope all the grammar nerds enjoy this as much as I did!
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
>
>
> John Alexander
>
> Austin, Texas
>
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