Central to this debate is the question of what traditional grammar is. There is no single unified description of English that is widely accepted as traditional grammar. Because of this gap in the literature, traditional grammar is rather more a body of beliefs about English that varies from teacher to teacher and from grammarian to grammarian. There is a considerable literature on how much variation and even contradiction there is in how writing teachers deal with grammar in their students' writing. The term "traditional grammar" has a sort of mythic status. It is one of those memes that we think with rather than about. We assume we all know what the term means and agree on it, but we don't contest the meme, which is what grammarians need to be doing.
Herb
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Spruiell, William C
Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2011 11:44 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Traditional vs. Transformational grammar question
Scott,
To add to Karl's points, I think the "parts of speech vs. word classes" is also a false dichotomy, in that the eight-part-of-speech system *is* a word-class taxonomy. If the traditionalists want to view anything that uses a "non-8" word-class system as Chomskyan, they'll have trouble explaining a whole host of grammars that were written before Chomsky was born. He may have the power to ignore counterarguments until fifteen years after they're made, but he doesn't have a time machine.
The funny (or sad, or both) side of this is that there are many linguists who have spent decades strenuously arguing against Chomsky's positions on things, and who would be horrified to know that they're being categorized as "Chomskyan" simply because they don't do the equivalent of insisting that whales have to be fish because whales and fish both live in the ocean.
If the argument is, instead, that we should put off emphasizing the whale/fish distinction to fourth grade or later, that's a different issue -- but that doesn't sound like what your traditionalists are doing here.
---- Bill Spruiell
________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Karl Hagen [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2011 8:00 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Traditional vs. Transformational grammar question
Scott,
Your traditionalists are confusing pedagogy with accuracy, and they're further butchering things by engaging in a false dichotomy.
Issue 1: There were, as I understand it, some attempts decades ago to incorporate some transformational grammar into some classroom curriculum, and those attempts did not prove successful. But that's primarily a commentary on the pedagogical appropriateness of teaching transformational grammar to school children. You cannot infer from a pedagogical failure anything about the accuracy of the theory. If we tried and failed to teach 8th-grade students quantum mechanics we would not therefore assume that quantum mechanics was refuted and that we should go back to nineteenth-century physics. (I'm not, BTW, suggesting that Chomsky is right--I just mean that it's an illogical inference.)
Issue 2: These traditionalists seem to be wholly ignorant of anything that's happened in linguistics over the last 40 years if they assume that the choices are Chomskian transformational grammar or traditional grammar a la Warriners and nothing in between. Perhaps you could educate them a bit on the status of contemporary linguistics. Further, the major reference grammars (both abbreviated CGEL) make few references to transformational grammar, and certainly don't depend on it.
It's definitely possible to update the flawed analyses of traditional grammar without touching on a single transformation.
My take on traditional grammar is that it has a superficial appeal (apart from familiarity) because it makes some intuitively appealing assumptions, but that many of those assumptions are flawed and lead to incorrect thinking about grammar down the line and any number of confusions. The concept of part of speech is high on that list of flawed constructs.
Karl
On May 11, 2011, at 2:30 PM, Scott Woods wrote:
Dear List,
My English department places fairly heavy emphasis on grammar instructions, but we do not have a unified or coherent vision of what grammar instruction should look like, what its purposes should be, what students need to know, how we should analyze language, or how we should measure success. Unfortunately, our department seems to be settling into camps based on how closely we want to follow traditional grammar or a more modern analysis. When a colleague of mine opened this discussion with a suggestions, among others, that we should look at whether we want to use parts of speech or word classes in our analysis, the reaction from the traditionalists was to immediately characterize the others as Chomskyites, followers of a failed doctrine and practice. The issue, according to the traditionalists, was settled long ago. Any analysis other than the traditional is worthless.
Does anyone have any experience with this? Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Scott Woods
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