In response to Ed's post -- whatever I said about eighth graders, I did
not mean to suggest that they are completely incapable of identifying
clauses. I believe I said that they will have a lot of trouble doing so
if they haven't already had a grounding in grammar in previous school
years. From evidence I saw presented at NCTE in San Francisco, it may
well be that first-graders can identify clauses. It was a videotape of
first-graders in Australia analyzing sentences using systemic-functional
notions. They were quite good at finding various sentence consituents
based on meaning. I don't know whether the identification clauses was a
specific goal of the program.

As to terminology, _Grammar Alive_ has a 10-page glossary of grammatical
terms that was included by consensus among the members of ATEG who
worked on the document. The rest of us might look at that and have a
discussion about the relative merits of various terms. A start is there
for anyone wanting to take it up. Schoolteachers can certainly
contribute by giving us their wisdom on which terms students might be
able to handle at which levels.

I have said before that there is a great deal of overlap between
traditional grammar terms and linguistic terms. If there is a small 
number of terms that are defined differently by different groups, I do
not think that is an insurmountable obstacle, as long as the number
remains relatively small. I find it entirely appropriate to expand the
traditional list of, for example, parts of speech, to account for the
actual # in the language, and to add detail to the four basic sentence
types by treating, at the appropriate level, different types of
questions and statements. I can't make suggestions for which types to
treat at which grade levels because I just don't know what sorts of
metalinguistic skills children possess at different ages.

If the USA were ever to adopt a nationwide grammar curriculum, then
decisions would obviously have to be made about terminology. We are far
from that point, and some may wish it never comes.
 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Johanna Rubba   Associate Professor, Linguistics 
English Department, California Polytechnic State University
One Grand Avenue  • San Luis Obispo, CA 93407 
Tel. (805)-756-2184  •  Fax: (805)-756-6374 • Dept. Phone.  756-2596
• E-mail: [log in to unmask] •      Home page: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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