Dan,
Consider the notion that our experience programs our brains for
language and that language employs metaphors that help structure our
perceptions and our conceptualization. I would not be doing Lakoff
and Johnson justice to present my own examples instead of theirs.
But, English uses extended verbs to a degree that most other
languages do not. Consider the basic directions up, down, in, and
out. Now consider such basic actions as hold or shut. Hold up, hold
down, hold in, hold out and shut up, shut down, shut in, shut out--
all of these create images that correspond with meaning. Lakoff and
Johnson use such metaphors as "Up is more," following from the
experience of piling one thing on top of another (in Spanish, one is
uno and unos is some, or sum, suggesting that English is not the only
language providing us with metaphors). Lakoff and Johnson are
claiming that our bodies program our brains so that our minds can
negotiate meaning in ambiguous expressions and in the spaces between
words. These phrases are idioms that suggest that language may be
more idiomatic than we, as grammarians, might view with comfort. You
might think that this stretches metaphor quite thin, but it is no
thinner than the air we breathe or than a line that connects
experience to meaning, as sentences do.
Like Craig Hancock, I am impressed by the attention given and the
directions taken by people writing on this issue. I hope to see more.
Best regards,
Gregg Heacock
On Jul 29, 2010, at 12:07 PM, Dan Roth wrote:
> Geoff's idea is interesting, but I think it's focused on the most
> prototypical usages of prepositions: when they are optional modifiers
> of either nouns or clauses. When you look at the wider distribution of
> prepositions, things are more of a mess.
>
> I was just looking through Merriam Webster's Dictionary. Many of the
> prepositions are wildly ambiguous/polysemous in terms of their
> meaning. The best example is "of", but most are similar. They have
> multiple senses and sub-senses, and it's all highly idiosyncratic and
> chaotic.
>
> More importantly, it's often the case that a given preposition is
> present in a sentence not because of it's meaning, but because it is
> required by some other preceding word ("dine on", "come on", "example
> of" "eat up"). Imagine trying to explain the "meaning" of the
> prepositions in these three examples. I don't see a way. I don't think
> a Lakoff-style metaphorical analysis sheds any light on these
> patterns., because there's no metaphor in these examples. Or if you
> think there is a metaphor, then your definition of metaphor is getting
> stretched quite thin.
>
> --Dan Roth
> Contra Costa College
>
> On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 10:06 AM, STAHLKE, HERBERT F
> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> Geoff,
>>
>>
>>
>> You got it.
>>
>>
>>
>> Herb
>>
>>
>>
>> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Geoffrey Layton
>> Sent: Thursday, July 29, 2010 11:56 AM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: question about negative contractions - AND PREPOSITIONS
>> (SEALING WAX-MAYBE)
>>
>>
>>
>> Herb -
>>
>> I'm a little lost in the lingo, but if I'm translating your message
>> propertly, you're saying that some of the same prepositions can
>> also create
>> "when" meaning. Here is my list of prepositions used to create
>> "when"
>> meaning: before, after, during, in the middle of, past, prior to,
>> until,
>> since, as, at, upon, for,on, about. I never really took the time
>> to see
>> which ones are duplicates, but let's take an obvious one like
>> "in." If I
>> ask a student to create "when" meaning using "in," I would expect
>> something
>> like the following, "We'll be leaving in an hour." A sentence
>> creating
>> "where" meaning would look something like this: "I left my keys in
>> the car."
>>
>>
>> Geoff Layton
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ________________________________
>>
>> Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2010 11:28:11 -0400
>> From: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: question about negative contractions - AND PREPOSITIONS
>> (SEALING WAX-MAYBE)
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>
>> Geoff,
>>
>>
>>
>> I’m being a little pedantic, but of the approximately 50 spatial
>> prepositions you list, about 30 can be used temporally. In your
>> teaching do
>> you ever deal with the similarities in how English treats spatial and
>> temporal states and relationships? This is another way grammar
>> and the
>> creation of meaning are related.
>>
>>
>>
>> Herb
>>
>>
>>
>> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Geoffrey Layton
>> Sent: Thursday, July 29, 2010 10:50 AM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: question about negative contractions - AND PREPOSITIONS
>> (SEALING WAX-MAYBE)
>>
>>
>>
>> Whether the list consists of seven or seventy, the issue is not
>> the number
>> of prepositions or the frequency with which they're used but how
>> they're
>> used in a sentence to create meaning. For example, here are (most
>> of?) the
>> prepositions that communicate "where" meaning: in(to), out (of),
>> above,
>> below, across (from), next to, through, throughout, far (from) on
>> top of,
>> at, inside (of), outside (of), along (with, side of), by, between,
>> upon,
>> under, over, underneath, beneath, about, before, after, ahead of,
>> behind,
>> near(by/to),around, in back of, in front, beside, beyond, among/
>> amid, apart
>> (from), against, away (from), up (from), down (from), to, from, with,
>> within, on(to), off (of), with, without, within, toward, at, opposite
>> (from).
>>
>> Identifying prepositions by how they create meaning (there are far
>> fewer
>> prepositions, for example, that create "when" or "why" meaning) is
>> far more
>> helpful to students than just providing a "list of favs" or even
>> worse
>> having them memorize a definition. Picking any one of the "where"
>> prepositions will lead to the creation of a unique piece of
>> "where" meaning
>> - the obvious examples being the opposites - creating a sentence
>> using
>> "under" to create WHERE meaning will produce a sentence with totally
>> different meaning than one using "over." The obviousness of this
>> should not
>> obscure the fact that grammar is being used to create meaning -
>> writing in
>> the context of grammar.
>>
>> Geoff Layton
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ________________________________
>>
>> Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2010 10:16:42 -0400
>> From: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: question about negative contractions - AND PREPOSITIONS
>> (SEALING WAX-MAYBE)
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>
>> Most lists of prepositions I've seen have some 70 words in them.
>> How about
>> this list: at, by, for, from, in, to, of, on, and with? As I
>> recall,
>> Charles Fries discovered that those nine account for over 93% of all
>> prepositional phrases. (The fact that several of them can also
>> function as
>> other parts of speech is another (sticky) matter.)
>>
>>
>>
>> Ed Schuster
>>
>>
>>
>> On Jul 29, 2010, at 9:38 AM, Geoffrey Layton wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> Dan - Just got your message and want to give a thorough reply -
>> but right
>> now, I just want to comment on your reference to Joseph Williams'
>> definition
>> of a prepositon as being "easier to list than define." This is
>> exactly the
>> same solution proposed by Colomb et al in their revision of
>> Turabian's
>> "Student's Guide to Writing College Papers." If so critical a
>> grammatical
>> construction is so difficult to define other than through its
>> usage, then it
>> seems to me that this solutions should apply to other issues of
>> terminology
>> as well - define them through usage, and usage is writing, or as I
>> like to
>> call it, "Writing in the Context of Grammar."
>>
>> Geoff Layton
>>
>>
>>
>>> Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2010 20:45:59 -0700
>>> From: [log in to unmask]
>>> Subject: Re: question about negative contractions - AND PREPOSITIONS
>>> (SEALING WAX-MAYBE)
>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>>
>>> Geoff:
>>>
>>> These are really excellent questions. I think that more teachers
>>> need
>>> to first consider what their overall objectives are before they
>>> decide
>>> what and how much to say about grammar. It's unproductive to debate
>>> the place of grammar in the teaching of writing if you haven't first
>>> decided on the larger pedagogical goals of your writing class.
>>>
>>> By default, I try and say as little about grammatical details as
>>> possible in my class (freshman composition), because it quickly gets
>>> complicated, many students quickly get bored, and I tend to digress.
>>> But there are times I find it necessary to discuss the details of
>>> grammar, and it's impossible to do that without defining terms and
>>> laying out a common meta-language for the class.
>>>
>>> One alternative strategy for defining terms would be this:
>>> Instead of
>>> defining what a preposition or an auxiliary verb "means" or "does,"
>>> you just list the words that are the prototypical members of that
>>> category, and allow students to rely on their innate grammatical
>>> competence to figure out the rest.
>>>
>>> If you try to do the latter, you can easily get mired in talking
>>> about
>>> semantics (prepositions do this..., or prepositions mean this...
>>> in a
>>> sentence). In my experience, these discussions can get very messy
>>> once
>>> students start asking questions and you start looking at the gory
>>> details of actual sentences. Students also get very confused when
>>> you
>>> try to explain syntactic items based on their semantic properties,
>>> which is the traditional way, because the match between syntax and
>>> semantics is chaotic.
>>>
>>> If you do the former, you skip all these pitfalls, save some
>>> class-time potentially, and allow students to rely on their
>>> grammatical intuitions. It may be less satisfying, but I think it's
>>> pedagogically sounder in most cases. I find it very parsimonious.
>>>
>>> Does my alternative strategy make sense? It's something I have been
>>> toying with in my classroom. It's what Joseph Williams does in his
>>> glossary of grammatical terms at the back of Style: Lessons in
>>> Clarity
>>> & Grace. I'm curious what people think.
>>>
>>> --Dan
>>>
>>> On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 8:12 PM, Geoffrey Layton
>>> <[log in to unmask]>
>>> wrote:
>>>> "The time has come," the Walrus said,/ "To talk of many things:/ Of
>>>> shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--/ Of cabbages--and kings--/
>>>> And why
>>>> the
>>>> sea is boiling hot--/ And whether pigs have wings --/ And when
>>>> you can
>>>> split
>>>> the auxiliary and the verb."
>>>>
>>>> How might teaching what students already know (i.e., negative
>>>> contractions
>>>> and rules about splitting things) be of any use in teaching
>>>> writing? In
>>>> other words, if no native speaker would say, "Why do not you
>>>> like her?"
>>>> why
>>>> bother to teach that "Why do you not like her?" is the correct
>>>> uncontracted
>>>> negative and "Why don't you like her?" is the correct negative
>>>> contraction?
>>>> I bring this up because I have the same problem with teaching
>>>> things
>>>> like
>>>> prepositions and their objects. For example, if no native
>>>> speaker would
>>>> say,
>>>> "I put the pen the table" or "I put the pen on," then why bother to
>>>> teach
>>>> prepositions or their objects? Similarly with other grammatical
>>>> terminology
>>>> - I sort of get the "we need to know what to call things"
>>>> argument, but
>>>> I
>>>> find that teaching students what to call things frequently seems
>>>> to take
>>>> precedent over teaching them what to do with something that they're
>>>> already
>>>> familiar with but by no means have achieved any kind of control
>>>> over.
>>>> That's
>>>> the point when I become more receptive to the "teach no formal
>>>> grammar"
>>>> position and start quoting "The Walrus and the Carpenter."
>>>>
>>>> Geoff Layton
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ________________________________
>>>> Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2010 19:46:55 -0700
>>>> From: Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
>>
>>
>>
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