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
>