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> There's a lot to be said for a set of terms that gets away from the
> prescriptivism, arbitrariness, and boredom that Judy Diamondstone points
> out have come to be associated with traditional grammar terminology in the
> minds of many students.  On the other hand, the traditional terms have
> undergone a lot of examination, refinement, and sub-classification that is
> not mere hairsplitting, and I wonder about starting off on a new set of
> terms that will presumably need to go through a similar process of
> extended examination before they can begin to account for the different
> and complex ways in which words are used.  In the sentence, "Love is
> blind," callling "love" the "actor" -- not to mention "actant" -- isn't
> going to make mu ch more sense to my students than calling it a noun or a
> subject.

> On Tue, 2 Feb 1999, Judy Diamondstone wrote:

> > Edward, Johanna, and others on the list,
> >
> > I am not qualified to propose terms from linguistics because
> > I've not been trained as a linguist.
> >
> > On the other hand, I AM qualified to say which terms have
> > helped me to understand language, which have helped me to
> > "open up" language for prospective teachers, and which hold
> > promise from my perspective for learning language across
> > grades and curricula.
> >
> > As these negotiations proceed, I hope you will consider
> > a language of function terms as well as class terms. Although
> > everyone including myself despairs at the idea of
> > teaching systemic functional grammar -- a huge
> > apparatus, admittedly -- the more I learn about language
> > the more a meta-language of referential functions (Halliday's "ideational
> > grammar") make sense to me, as a "way in" to how language works.
> >
> > For those who might know less even than I about SFG,
> > the grammar I am referring to names grammatical functions
> > like "actor"**  and "process" instead of class terms like "noun" and "verb"
> > (** I actually prefer the term "actant" following Bruno Latour)
> >
> > One advantage of such terms for breaking up clause constructions
> > is that most people have an intuitive grasp of the distinction
> > "actor/process" which can be built on to develop a more elaborate
> > and less intuitive sense of grammar. Another advantage, from my point
> > of view, is that it DISRUPTS traditional grammar terms, which come
> > with a load of prescriptivism, arbitrariness, boredom, in the
> > experience of most non-linguists, and opens up the possibility
> > for a different experience of language analysis.
> >
> > If anyone has  interest in pursuing this line of conversation,
> > I hope you will contact me via my personal email. It's hard to
> > know what others in the ATEG community, which is new to me,
> > want or expect from the discussion.
> >
> > Judy
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Judith Diamondstone  (732) 932-7496  Ext. 352
> > Graduate School of Education
> > Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
> > 10 Seminary Place
> > New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1183
> >
> > Eternity is in love with the productions of time - Wm Blake
> >