I'm interested in John's reference to "a 'real' English grammar," and the difference between textbook grammars and professional reference grammars. Could you point me to titles/authors of each? (Remember, I'm fairly new to the list and neither a linguist nor a grammarian--"just" a creative writing prof with lit background who's a little obsessed w/good sentence-making. Speaking of which, in the "Great Courses" catalog (audio/video lecture series not associated with any one university), there's a "Building Great Sentences" series of lectures taught by Brooks Landing of the U of Iowa. Looks rich. Anybody know anything about it?)
Best,
Julie
Julie J. Nichols, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of English and Literature
Utah Valley University MS 153
800 West University Parkway
Orem UT 84058
801-863-6795
>>> "John Dews-Alexander" <[log in to unmask]> 07/28/10 2:43 PM >>>
I agree with Dan that this is a feature of English that seems to be acquired
by all native speakers without explicit instruction. ...
For the budding language nerds in the class though (I remember being one!),
it may not satisfy. They might be more delighted with an introduction to a
"real" English grammar (I don't mean to be disparaging, but I think we can
mostly agree that there is a big difference between textbook grammars and
professional reference grammars).
...
John
On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 3:17 PM, Dan Roth <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Anthony:
>
> You are dealing with the issue of subject-auxiliary inversion. From a
> purely empirical perspective, it is grammatical to invert the subject
> and the leftmost auxiliary verb to form certain types of question
> constructions, but I believe it is ungrammatical to invert the subject
> with anything else. This explains why you cannot invert the subject
> with the string "do not" (your second example)--it is more than just
> an auxiliary verb. If you treat an the contraction of auxiliary plus
> negation as a sub-type of auxiliary, then that predicts that you
> should be able to do inversion, which is the right prediction.
>
> The above describes the empirical facts, but it doesn't give a deeper
> rationale for "why". I'm not in a position to give a good reason why,
> beyond observing that it's just how English is. A lot of how the
> language functions is idiosyncratic. Why does the earth rotate one
> direction and not the other? That's just how it is, and it could
> easily have been otherwise.
>
> I'm not sure how much of what I've said will help your student. I
> think it might just overwhelm them--but I hope it at least helps you.
>
> I'm not sure how much you even need to explain though. I doubt it's
> common that any students make the error of inverting "do not" with a
> subject. I suspect that the principle that you can only invert a
> subject with a single auxiliary is principle of the English that is
> mastered very early by children.
>
> --Dan Roth
> Contra Costa College
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 12:53 PM, Anthony DeFazio <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > Can someone explain, please, why we can say "Why don't you like her?" but
> > not "Why do not you like her?" A student asked and I was at a loss for an
> > explanation. Thank you, Tony DeFazio, LIU
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