Dear friends,
   Now that the semester is over, we know you are thinking ahead to
conference opportunities for the summer. We are pleased to announce that
the 23rd Annual Conference of the Association for the Teaching of
English Grammar (ATEG) will be held at Prince George's Community College
again this year on July 27-28, 2012. The location will be Community Room
A, Largo Student Center, 301 Largo Rd. Largo MD20774.
The ATEG website has proposal submission guidelines, conference hotel
info, and online registration. 
   The conference theme is Occupy Grammar: Taking our Rightful Place.
Amy Benjamin, our keynote speaker, offers the following introduction to
the theme:

Occupy Grammar!  Beginning in September, 2011, a ragtag band of American
citizens began to rattle their cages. Although Occupiers are not
cohesive, nor are their goals explicitly stated, what they've done has
certainly ignited new conversations, raised new questions, albeit
without answers right now. We at ATEG also want to be heard, also want
to challenge the status quo, also are amorphous, and certainly ragtag.
So join us at our 23rd Conference, to be held entirely indoors, as we
again proclaim that teaching grammar is necessary, interesting, and not
dreary, smug, or pedantic. Let's see what we can do to change the world
of grammar education while the other revolution marches on.

             Please let us know of your interest in attending and also
any questions you may have. I look forward to seeing you again!
                                             Sherry Saylors, conference
host

 

>>> [log in to unmask] 05/19/12 11:43 PM >>>
It's well known that the Present Day English progressive passive as in

My house is being painted

did not come into wide use till the mid-19th c.   Until then, one would
have said-or written

My house is painting.

The progressive was probably the last form of the passive construction
to develop in English.  Here is an example of the older construction
from George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss (1860, Penguin Classics 1979),
p. 549:

"It is true, she was looking very charming herself, and Stephen was
paying her the utmost attention on this public occasion - jealously
buying up the articles he had seen under her fingers in the process of
making, and gaily helping her to cajole the male customers into the
purchase of the most effeminate futilities."

The phrase "the articles he had seen under her fingers in the process of
making" is the construction in question, where "making" in PDE would be
"being made."  Parsing the phrase as a late instance of the Early Modern
English -ing form as a progressive passive makes sense in its historical
context and Eliot's linguistic conservatism.  What sparked my curiosity
was how my fellow grammarians might parse the construction, not treating
it as a slightly archaic form for 1860s English.  The analysis must
account for both meaning and grammatical form.

Herb



Herbert F. W. Stahlke, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor of English
Ball State University
Muncie, IN  47306
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