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: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: question about negative contractions
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> Ask the students to explain "Why do you not like her?"
> Most students could grasp that explanation: subject splits the auxiliary and
> verb in a question. That's a primary rule.
> Contractions would be a secondary rule. Primary rules takes precedent.
>
> Claudia
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: John Dews-Alexander <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Sent: Thursday, July 29, 2010 1:47:07
> Subject: Re: question about negative contractions
>
> Certainly so! The distinction between lexical units of meaning (morphemes)
> and grammatical morphemes seems to be integral to language acquisition. But
> there is also something syntactic going on with "Why don't you like her?"
> and "*Why do not you like her"? Perhaps even morpho-syntactical (yikes, gray
> area!). What puts "not" in its place? I assume the verb (always blame it on
> the verb), but someone with more syntax experience than I would have to
> explain more thoroughly.
>
> John
>
> On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 4:22 PM, Dan Roth <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> John:
>
> I think the relevant distinction here is between open-class lexical
> categories and closed-class lexical categories. The former includes
> most nouns and verbs. The latter includes more "functional" parts of
> speech--articles, negation, auxiliaries, conjunctions, etc. A key
> difference is that speakers can freely coin new open-class items, but
> it is just about impossible to coin new closed-class items.
> Closed-class items are almost always one or two syllables, while
> open-class items can be much longer.
>
> Generally speaking, the usage of most closed-class items tends to be
> learned very early in the language acquisition process of native
> speakers, whereas it the open-class items take a lot longer, in part
> because there are so many of them. I don't know a ton about language
> acquisition, and it goes beyond my expertise to say why this is so.
> Some people have suggested it's because closed-class items just appear
> so frequently in speech. Other people have suggested that there's
> something more cognitively "basic" about closed class items.
>
> --Dan Roth
> Contra Costa College
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 1:39 PM, John Dews-Alexander
> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> I agree with Dan that this is a feature of English that seems to be
>> acquired
>> by all native speakers without explicit instruction. With lots of high
>> school students, generalities are OK if they are honest; in this case, I
>> might just talk about the construction being an aspect of the language
>> buried pretty deeply - not subject to much fluctuation or change at this
>> time, not feeling pressure from natural language change, not prone to
>> variety across dialects, etc. This is unlike some structures, which are
>> "closer to the surface" and more prone to flux.
>>
>> Of course this is highly colored with metaphor and not a very scientific
>> explanation; it touches on issues of fixed structures and language change
>> though, which might be more beneficial and convincing than skimming over
>> it.
>> 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).
>>
>> Some of members of this list are very familiar with English syntax. I'm
>> sure
>> they will be able to give you the linguistic science behind the
>> structure's
>> rigidity. Often these things make more sense when viewed in their larger
>> context of language, not specifically English. I'd be interested in how
>> common this bond between negative particle (not) and the conjugated verb
>> is
>> in world languages.
>>
>> 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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