These messages of mine are long, so I thought I would add more response
to Gretchen's posting in a separate message.
I have tried to find material on when certain constructions appear
naturally in children's speech or writing during the school years,
without a lot of success. Ed does have the best bibliography on this
that I know of, but frankly, I think this is a very neglected area of
linguistics research. Linguists were so charmed and amazed by how much
children learn before age 5 that they thought there wasn't much
happening after that that was of interest. And, of course, linguists
have been notoriously uninterested in applying linguistics successfully
in the school curriculum (part of the reason we are where we are today).
We DO need a list of grammatical construction types and when they
emerge; whether they emerge naturally or need instructional
encouragement; to what degree mastery is dependent on being exposed to
such constructions in reading, etc.
As to responding to or critiquing state standards -- as part of a
project undertaken by members of the Linguistic Society of America's
Language in the School Curriculum committee, I am (actually, my student
assistant is) compiling a comprehensive overview of state standards (all
50 states) regarding grammar. Once we have this, it will be possible to
address the failings and strengths of such standards. It can be done for
individual states, too, of course. The letter I wrote to our local ed.
board had something like that. I'll see if I can translate it out of the
ancient word processor it was created in and, if there is interest, post
it to the list or send it to interested individuals.
***************************************************
Johanna Rubba, Associate Professor, Linguistics
English Department, Cal Poly State University
San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
Tel. 805-756-2184 ~ Dept. phone 805-756-2596
Dept. fax: 805-756-6374 ~ E-mail: [log in to unmask]
URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
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