Herb,
    In a long line of excellent posts, this is one of the best, and I 
want to thank you for it. It clarified for me the difference between a 
scholarly interest and a pedagogical one with your own work as a 
revealing example.  
    It should be pointed out that nominalization is an important 
functional aspect of our language.  The history of these processes may 
be beyond what we would teach at an introductory level, but that doesn't 
mean it's an esoteric concern.  What beginning teachers should teach, I 
think, is that nouns are not persons places and things, but quite often 
ideas and processes. The forms of our language are very fluid, vey 
flexible, and this flexibility allows us to talk about far more than the 
mere objects of the world.  An idea like that can be introduced very 
playfully.  
    Since ETS continues to draw in money, maybe they should hire us as 
consultants.
     Anyone who wants to join the New Public Grammar listserv should let 
me know (off list, so as not to overburden this one.)  I'll be happy to 
add you or answer questions about it.  We are tyring to bring together 
people from different disciplines for a transdisciplinary approach to 
these problems.  By its nature, that involves trying to understand and 
meet a deep public need. We would like to formulate clear concepts that 
can be an entry point to a deepening understanding of language.  
    We have a panel presentation scheduled at the 4 C's conference in 
San Antonio later this month.  Perhaps some of you will hook up with us 
there.

Craig


   
Stahlke, Herbert F.W. wrote:

>Dear Elizabeth,
>
> 
>
>I just reread my brief post and realized that it was one of the ruder things I’ve put on the various lists I’m on, and ATEG is definitely one of the more polite of them.  I apologize for my curtness and for giving you the impression that I don’t respect graphical attempts to represent grammatical information.  As I said, I would like to see examples of what you’re doing, partly because I’m interested in the pedagogical question of what information you decide to represent for the grade level you teach—and how you tailor the representation to that age-group.  I’m grateful that you responded in as much detail as you did because it gives me a chance to respond to some things that need clarification.
>
> 
>
>You wrote:
>
>“I was finding it hard to understand that attitude until a recent e-mail discussion in which the writer made clear that the investigations of a working linguist must not be distracted by pedagogy.”
>
> 
>
>I’m the one who posted that, and I was trying to explain why more linguists aren’t interested in grammar pedagogy.  So let me expand a bit.  I’m a linguist.  I’m more of a descriptivist than a theoretician, and I lean more towards pragmatic-functional approaches than formal theory.  My last major piece of research, to appear this year in a linguistics journal, dealt with the phonetics and phonology of English obstruents, the sounds /p, t, k, b, d, g, f, th, s, sh, v, dh, z, zh/.  I was interested in that because the standard descriptions, in nearly all studies of English sounds, just don’t work.  I’m also using the material in a grad phonetics class taken, in part, by future ESL teachers, so there is some pedagogical yield, but that's an added benefit, not the reason for doing the work in the first place.  My current research is the structure and historical development of English nouns ending in –s that aren’t plurals or genitives, including words like news, physics, and dependence (ends in an /s/ sound—spelling doesn’t count in linguistic analysis).  I’m arguing that this final –s is a nominalizing morpheme, not a plural suffix.  The history is interesting, and I think I can trace the origin of this –s as a nominalizer to the early 16th c. I don’t see any pedagogical yield at this point, but that’s not the point of the research. It’s an interesting problem that will shed fresh light on the structure and history of English, which is why linguists work on these things.  I also happen to be a linguist in an English department where I teach an undergrad grammar course taken, largely, by English Ed. Students.  My concerns for what they are learning and how they can use it makes pedagogy important to me.  But as a linguist I also have to keep linguistics and pedagogy apart.  I don’t care if –s nominalizations have pedagogical application.  That’s not why I’m working on them.  I do care about how grammar can be represented clearly for students learning grammar, and that’s why I’m interested in trees, RK diagrams, your color-coding system, and other such systems of representation, and the current discussion has almost convinced me that my next paper, after -s nominalizations, should be a critique and extension of RK diagramming aimed at teachers who use them, in other words, a pedagogical paper.  
>
> 
>
>You wrote:
>
>“Still if, as one recent e-mailer stated, it is possible to go through a linguistic course today and come out with no idea of how a sentence is put together, is that really what you want?”
>
> 
>
>As a matter of fact, it depends on why I’m teaching the linguistics course.  I teach a grad intro for our MA students in ESL and linguistics.  Syntax occupies about three weeks of the course, and we look at problems in Arabic, Yoruba, Spanish, German, Hixkaryana, Japanese, Samoan, and English, and sometimes other languages.  The purpose of the three weeks is not to explain sentences in English but to survey the fundamentals of constituent structure, word order, speech acts, etc.  The students take other courses that deal with English grammar and my job is to prepare them to work on grammar at the level those courses require.  When I teach our undergrad English Linguistics course, understanding English sentence structure is one of the primary goals, but I also include the sound system and the morphology.
>
> 
>
>You wrote:
>
>“ I am sorry to report that the principal lesson I am taking away is that there is no unified position; the most basic concepts are up for grabs; whatever terminology I choose to include will make someone unhappy; whatever approach I take will be dismissed along with those tests.”
>
> 
>
>A lot of us on this list share that concern and frustration, even while we are the same ones who don’t agree on what the principles, concepts, and terminology should be.  I think one reason why we’re arguing about these things is because we’re trying to sort out what works and what doesn’t, what's relevant to pedagogy and what isn't.  I enjoy these discussions on this list precisely because people like John, Karl, Craig, Martha, Jim, Bob, and others bring concerns and experience to the table that aren’t mine, and that enlightens and modifies my perspective.  There is, of course, a related group, New Public Grammar, that a number of us are involved with whose interest is very much to define and defend a pedagogical grammar that has strong application to K-16 and that is also scientifically sound.  That’s far to narrow a characterization of the group’s goals, but we recognize that while traditional school grammar, with its strongly prescriptivist content, fails miserably in equipping students to think about language and language-related issues, there is no broadly supported alternative, and it’s that alternative we are working to develop.  The concerns some of us have about the SAT arise in part from the fact that what is accepted almost universally as the content of grammar pedagogy has all the scientific and pedagogical soundness of medieval alchemy.  As I tell my undergrad grammar students, most of what most people know about language isn’t so, and we are setting out to change that, something of a daunting task. 
>
> 
>
>You wrote:
>
>“These realizations stopped me for a while, but those tests are still coming, and so time is of the essence.  Of course a single year's course cannot do justice to modern theories.  Please be certain that neither I nor, I suspect, any one else who is trying to "fix the situation" presumes that our answers will be more than stopgaps until something better comes along. But meanwhile your lack of guidelines leaves me free from the possibility of conforming to any one theory. You have turned this peaceful, law-abiding. retired old educator into a radical. For my course, I have chosen functional terminology while telling teachers they might want to warn students that there are more sets of labels under  consideration.”
>
> 
>
>The grammarians on the ATEG and New Public Grammar lists share your concerns.  In fact, I hope you’ll get involved with NPG because you express precisely the interests and concerns that motivate the group.  Your choice of functional terminology sounds like it’s going in the same direction many, though not all, of us are heading.  You bring not only common interests but a sense of urgency that the effort needs.
>
> 
>
>You wrote:
>
>“One e-mailer worried that we might be out here teaching "something wrong." Define that for us, and you can be sure we will pay respectful attention. One year I acquired a class from middle school who had been taught the past perfect tense and thought it was the only one worth using. That attitude produced some remarkably "wrong" sentences. I know enough grammar not to lead anyone that seriously astray.”
>
> 
>
>There’s a lot in traditional school grammar that’s not supported by what we know of how language works, and specifically how English works.  Just a few of these items are
>
> 
>
>Prohibition against split infinitives
>
>Prohibition against ending sentences with prepositions
>
>Prohibition against possessive pronouns as antecedents
>
>Prohibition against starting sentences with “and”, “but”, or “because”
>
>The idea that there are eight parts of speech in English
>
>The idea that English has eight (?) tenses and the confusion of tense, aspect, and modality
>
>The idea that two negatives always make a positive
>
>The idea that language that violates traditional school grammar does so because it lacks rules
>
> 
>
>I’m sure you could add to this list, but even the few items I’ve listed represent serious content problems.  I hope health teachers are more careful than that in teaching sex education.  But these false notions continue to be taught because they’re part of the only set that our culture recognizes.  The fact that they are wrong is no match for the fact that they have the status of myth.  I don’t blame teachers for teaching them because that’s what they’re expected to teach, that’s what’s in the textbooks, and that’s what most of them have been taught.  I do blame test designers for testing these things because outfits like ETS are supposed to base their tests on research as well as practice, and in this case the research and practice are very much in conflict.  ETS and other testing companies could provide some strong leadership if they decided to.
>
> 
>
>You haven’t offended me; rather, the offense was mine.  Your suggestion that ATEG review the new SAT is a good one, and I’d very much like to see that taken on as a project.  And I’m interested your color-coding scheme.  It might be something my undergrads who are going to be teachers could use.  If you’ll post it on your web site and send us your URL, I’ll take a look, and I suspect others will as well.
>
> 
>
>Herb
>
>To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" 
>
>Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
>  
>

To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"

Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/