I've always found it SOMEWHAT helpful to distinguish Traditional
SCHOOL Grammar from Traditional SCHOLARLY Grammar, since they are
widely divergent. The former might then be defined as the grammar
one finds in the textbooks that dominate the market, and that in turn
(through a good part of many lives) would be the "grammar" found in
books like Hodges' Harbrace Handbook (college) and Warriner's English
Grammar and Composition (high school), both of which dominated their
markets for decades, beginning practically from their inception---1941
and 1946, respectively---till, say, the late 70's?
But as Herb suggests (I think it was Herb; I've lost the posting)
there is also a "traditional grammar" independent of Traditional
School Grammar. In that tradition, for example, one is not supposed to
start a sentence with a conjunction---to cite just one "rule." I
cannot find this rule in Warriner, and Hodges explicitly RECOMMENDS
beginning sentences with conjunctions as a way of varying sentence
openings. How does one define THIS Traditional Grammar?
Ed S
On May 11, 2011, at 11:43 PM, Spruiell, William C wrote:
> Scott,
>
> To add to Karl's points, I think the "parts of speech vs. word
> classes" is also a false dichotomy, in that the eight-part-of-speech
> system *is* a word-class taxonomy. If the traditionalists want to
> view anything that uses a "non-8" word-class system as Chomskyan,
> they'll have trouble explaining a whole host of grammars that were
> written before Chomsky was born. He may have the power to ignore
> counterarguments until fifteen years after they're made, but he
> doesn't have a time machine.
>
> The funny (or sad, or both) side of this is that there are many
> linguists who have spent decades strenuously arguing against
> Chomsky's positions on things, and who would be horrified to know
> that they're being categorized as "Chomskyan" simply because they
> don't do the equivalent of insisting that whales have to be fish
> because whales and fish both live in the ocean.
>
> If the argument is, instead, that we should put off emphasizing the
> whale/fish distinction to fourth grade or later, that's a different
> issue -- but that doesn't sound like what your traditionalists are
> doing here.
>
> ---- Bill Spruiell
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [[log in to unmask]
> ] on behalf of Karl Hagen [[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2011 8:00 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Traditional vs. Transformational grammar question
>
> Scott,
>
> Your traditionalists are confusing pedagogy with accuracy, and
> they're further butchering things by engaging in a false dichotomy.
>
> Issue 1: There were, as I understand it, some attempts decades ago
> to incorporate some transformational grammar into some classroom
> curriculum, and those attempts did not prove successful. But that's
> primarily a commentary on the pedagogical appropriateness of
> teaching transformational grammar to school children. You cannot
> infer from a pedagogical failure anything about the accuracy of the
> theory. If we tried and failed to teach 8th-grade students quantum
> mechanics we would not therefore assume that quantum mechanics was
> refuted and that we should go back to nineteenth-century physics.
> (I'm not, BTW, suggesting that Chomsky is right--I just mean that
> it's an illogical inference.)
>
> Issue 2: These traditionalists seem to be wholly ignorant of
> anything that's happened in linguistics over the last 40 years if
> they assume that the choices are Chomskian transformational grammar
> or traditional grammar a la Warriners and nothing in between.
> Perhaps you could educate them a bit on the status of contemporary
> linguistics. Further, the major reference grammars (both abbreviated
> CGEL) make few references to transformational grammar, and certainly
> don't depend on it.
>
> It's definitely possible to update the flawed analyses of
> traditional grammar without touching on a single transformation.
>
> My take on traditional grammar is that it has a superficial appeal
> (apart from familiarity) because it makes some intuitively appealing
> assumptions, but that many of those assumptions are flawed and lead
> to incorrect thinking about grammar down the line and any number of
> confusions. The concept of part of speech is high on that list of
> flawed constructs.
>
> Karl
>
> On May 11, 2011, at 2:30 PM, Scott Woods wrote:
>
> Dear List,
>
> My English department places fairly heavy emphasis on grammar
> instructions, but we do not have a unified or coherent vision of
> what grammar instruction should look like, what its purposes should
> be, what students need to know, how we should analyze language, or
> how we should measure success. Unfortunately, our department seems
> to be settling into camps based on how closely we want to follow
> traditional grammar or a more modern analysis. When a colleague of
> mine opened this discussion with a suggestions, among others, that
> we should look at whether we want to use parts of speech or word
> classes in our analysis, the reaction from the traditionalists was
> to immediately characterize the others as Chomskyites, followers of
> a failed doctrine and practice. The issue, according to the
> traditionalists, was settled long ago. Any analysis other than the
> traditional is worthless.
>
> Does anyone have any experience with this? Any suggestions?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Scott Woods
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