I've been following recent postings with great interest. I'd like to
weigh in on one or two things.
Most importantly, I'd like to welcome Gretchen to the list and THANK her
for her input. Gretchen, you and others like you are the people we need
to hear from. I know that the theory-squabbles among many of us probably
aren't exactly of immediate help to you, but don't worry about that.
There's no reason we can't have several kinds of discussion going on at
once on the list. Above all, don't let the content _or_ divisiveness of
some threads discourage you from posting. I hope you have found some of
the suggestions passed your way useful. I have only a promissory note
for you. I will (I hope) be working next year with a middle school
teacher on a one-year grammar program for a mixed 6-7-8 classroom. I'm
sure something concrete and shareable will come out of that, and I hope
we'll be able to share it as it emerges. The school has a project-based
curriculum with writing taught across subjects; we plan to integrate
creative as well as analytical activities into the program, and keep
grammar in context as much as possible.
Does your state have standards for grammar or 'conventions' or whatever?
If so, is your school district working to coordinate curriculum with
them? What do your teaching materials offer in the way of grammar
content and method? Knowing a little about these things could help us
try to help you. I think most subscribers to this list don't like the
standards and testing movement (at least not as they are being
implemented), but many states are STUCK WITH IT and it might be a good
starting point to use it as a springboard. Perhaps we can make silk
purses out of sows' ears (isn't that a slur on sows? ;-) )
On publishers: I've been pondering a recent change that HAS gotten into
teaching materials, at least in CA: Multiculturalism. It is present to
varying degrees in varying materials packages, but it is there. How did
it get there? How did publishers become convinced that, despite the
strong anti-multiculturalism segment of American society, it would be
'safe' to put it into materials; that those materials would be approved
by state boards and that they would sell? How did they come to the
decision to include, not just the classics by 'dead white males', but
also pieces by women, people of color, pieces that reflect
'non-mainstream' cultural experiences, etc.? Perhaps we can learn an
important lesson or some strategy here. Many of us see the diversity
issue within grammar teaching as an important angle; could it be a lever
for reforming the traditional grammar curriculum? Could it be a chink
that we could widen and shove a reformed curriculum through?
On metalanguage: I was very surprised to read the 'Syntax in the
schools' article about starting with babies, as the linguistics sources
I have consulted state that children aren't ready to talk about language
as an object -- focusing on form rather than the message -- until
sometime around age 9. We can't assume that they are cognitively ready
for metalanguage about language earlier than that. The understandings a
few people have observed need to be examined closely: Are they really
understandings of the terms? I'm not trying to be hostile, just
healthily skeptical. The above-mentioned teacher, who is very
experienced, also doubts the efficacy of teaching grammar terms and
analysis much before 4th-5th grade. I think the jury is still out on
this and it would be interesting to hunt down more research, if there is
any. If there isn't, it should be done somehow. We may only be able to
do anecdotal stuff as we experiment with 'forced' curricula (e.g.,
preparing 2nd-graders for standardized tests that contain 'conventions' items).
On SFG vs. 'formal' grammar (the Yates/Diamondstone debate): I was
perusing a SFG text yesterday. Very large portions of it are extremely
similar to what most modern theories of language cover -- word
categories, phrases and phrase structure, sentence types. Of course
there are important things that SFG has that formal theories have less
of -- the relation of grammar to text, for one thing, and the inclusion
of meaning-based categories, not only form-based ones. SFG looks to me
like a slightly tweaked version of cognitive and functional theories I
have been educated in, with of course its own special flavor. The
terminology is quite different, but if you look past that, there are
strong similarities. I think the theory has some shortcomings, but I
think these can be resolved by appeal to cognitive and functional theories.
People who know my postings aren't going to be surprised to read that I
believe very strongly in connections between meaning, function, and
form. I believe a lot of form is motivated by function and/or meaning.
There is now a huge body of research out there, not only in SFG, but in
Cognitive Grammar (grammar based on meaning) (have you read any yet,
Bob?) and in American Functional Grammar (grammar based on discourse
function). This body of research has found too much consistency in its
results to be disregarded. A tiny example from Bob's own challenges: the
difference in agreement between singular and plural for words such as
'data' and in dialect differences between England and America for
'government, team'. 'Data' can be conceived of as a mass or collective
noun, designating a group/mass of individual pieces of information, just
like 'gravel', 'group'. Same with 'team' or 'government' -- the focus
can be on the 'plurality' aspect -- that the concept includes more than
one individual -- or on the collective aspect -- that the individuals
together form a unit or type concept that is distinct from other
units/types. 'Gravel' and 'group' are singular; one is a mass noun, one
is a count noun. 'Data' is perhaps a mass noun in the minds of those who
use it as a singular, like 'milk', 'sand', 'gravel', 'money'. There is
no reason why a noun cannot change its mass/count status over time or
across groups of language users. Given the irregular plural (and current
speakers seem to resist plurals in '-a', witness the death of
'phenomenon' with 'phenomena' a singular for many educated speakers**),
it isn't surprising that the word would undergo reclassification. Note
that the grammatical reclassification is meaning-based: the
meaning-focus has shifted from conceiving of 'data' as a plural
collection of many 'datums' to a mass of same. It is a Gestalt-shift of
sorts. This changes the word's grammatical property of control of verb agreement.
**I bave also observed that the LA Times has dropped 'milennia' from its
usage and adopted 'milenniums'.
I'll stop here and put other thoughts into other messages.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Johanna Rubba Assistant 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. 756-259
• E-mail: [log in to unmask] • Home page: http://www.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
**
"Understanding is a lot like sex; it's got a practical purpose,
but that's not why people do it normally" - Frank Oppenheimer
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