Craig,
Thanks for a typically lucid and thoughtful posting. I didn't take up Baron's equating transformational grammar, even indirectly, with the theory of evolution, although there is much that we do know that is every but that sound. We just don't have clear mechanisms we can expound on like natural selection. The problem with all linguistic theories to date is that they are vastly more underdetermined by the data than evolution was when Darwin spelled it out a century and a half ago. There have been moves in the direction of "evidence-based linguistics," I see corpus-based studies moving in that direction as well, but we're still a long ways off from an evidence-based, empirically testable, highly predictive theory of language. What our existing theories do that is of value, and this is of considerable value, is provide us with a framework for analyzing data, even though what constitutes data is itself somewhat theory-dependent.
For linguists who study language with scientific rigor and are more concerned with description and theory than with pedagogy, it's not particularly a problem that theories fail. We expect them to. In fact, that's what we have them for, to make them fail so we can learn more and devise stronger theories. But that is the work of science, and it doesn't make for effective pedagogy, as Paul Roberts demonstrated so clearly for us four decades ago. Even Chomsky, in an early interview, recommended traditional grammar (Jespersen, et al.) as a much better basis for pedagogy than syntactic theory. I suppose I feel a bit like a Tea Partier must feel: I know better what I'm against than what I'm for. And I'm against pedagogy based either on prescriptivism or on any specific theory of language. I am for pedagogy that draws carefully on the findings of linguistic theories as well as on research into pedagogy and into rhetoric.
Herb
Herbert F. W. Stahlke, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor of English
Ball State University
Muncie, IN 47306
[log in to unmask]
________________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: December 5, 2009 3:03 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Dennis Baron's article
Herb,
I should have started my post with a summary of what I think Baron has
gotten right. With all we know about language (all we have learned in
the last 250 years), the way grammar is taught in the schools is
shameful. We certainly shouldn't be passing on prescriptive rules as if
they are divinely given. I like the idea of a flexible standard and a
healthy appreciation for the varieties of language we find in various
genres and registers.
I think prospective teachers are being taught that flexibility is a
value, but that doesn't do a whole lot if they haven't explored those
differing patterns in differing contexts. That would be the case if
they studied the new corpus grammars, but my sense is that's not
happening. When I ordered a teacher's copy of the Longman Student
Grammar of Spoken and Written Language (Biber et. al.), I was
redirected to the ESL division and got a follow-up call from an editor
who was startled (suspicious?)that I was thinking of ordering it for
something other than ESL. Biber says, too, that working in the corpus
grammars leads you to believe very quickly that there is no sharp break
between the lexicon and the grammar and you begin working on the
assumption that these patterns are functionally driven, not simply a
different kind of "correctness". If the primary grammar a teacher is
introduced to is transformational grammar (Baron's claim), then they
have not been led to expect either of those perspectives. They may not
have had any detailed attention to the way grammar changes in different
discourse contexts. They may have been oriented to the rules for
passive transformation, but not to the ways in which passives might be
motivated or to the reasons why passives are eight times more likely to
show up in academic registers. Prescriptive grammars and formal
grammars are not discourse oriented.
Baron implies that linguistic theory is as solid as the theory of
evolution, but the most dominant theory in American linguistics for
the last few decades is now being called seriously into question. (I
don't want to restart that debate, just to say that there is no clear
consensus to draw on for something as basic as language acquisition.)
It has been an unfortunate commonplace for some time that we don't need
to teach language to native speakers. And it may be good advice to "at
least do no harm" and back off from enforcing rules that have no
relationship to the way language is used in the real world. I
personally feel that if we believe that our primary goal is
"correctness" (as Baron also implies, although more flexibly), we will
be stuck with a high level of ignorance among teachers, students, and
policy makers alike. Corpus (and other discourse oriented approaches)
might give us a way to accomplish that without seeming irrelevant or
being prescriptive.
I know you and I are singing in the same choir. It has to be
frustrating to see a continuation of these old patterns of
misunderstanding when we know so much more.
Craig
All of the topics Baron would like to see taught are specified in the
> Indiana Language Arts Standards, but teachers still are not taught them,
> and for all the reasons we're familiar with: teacher training curriculum
> that leaves no room to teach them, English Education programs that accept
> the common wisdom that knowledge about language and how it works is
> irrelevant and perhaps harmful, arrogant irrelevance on the part of
> linguists who teach the few language-related courses teacher prep students
> take, political pressures in school corporations to maintain prescriptive
> shibboleths, the absence in the schools of role models for teachers who
> would like to do something with language, and I'm sure many on the list
> could add other factors. The fact that our state standards require
> considerable linguistic content in the language arts curriculum and in the
> training of language arts teachers strikes me, somewhat cynically, as a
> nod to what the authors knew should be done, hoped would be done, but had
> no power to bring about.
>
> The problem isn't that we've had thirty million theories of language, all
> of them, as scientific theories must be, inadequate. The problem is that
> there is much that we know that should be taught: sentence and discourse
> level structures, dialect variation, register and appropriateness, as well
> as all of the skills or literacy and orality including the love of using
> language well.
>
> This group has never, in spite of serious efforts, agreed on an approach
> to teaching grammar, but we for the most part agree that it needs to be
> done. There are plenty of ways to do it well and also a fair number of
> ways to do it badly, and insisting on teaching as fact propositions that
> we know to be false, which is what Baron inveighs against, is probably the
> most common of the ways of doing it badly.
>
> Herb
>
> Herbert F. W. Stahlke, Ph.D.
> Emeritus Professor of English
> Ball State University
> Muncie, IN 47306
> [log in to unmask]
> ________________________________________
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bruce Despain
> [[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: December 4, 2009 3:53 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Dennis Baron's article
>
> My take is that he muddied the waters so badly that it is much easier to
> throw it all out. I hope I didn't throw any baby out with it. I have
> entered a subscription and plan to look at some of his other essays. My
> jury is still out. Society has done quite well with whatever standard was
> set up whether it was a foot or a meter. He seems to think that language
> itself is the measure, but it is the linguistic theory that measures
> language. I don't think the issue is with there being a single standard.
> As of 1979 linguists had proposed over 30 major theoretical frameworks
> (models) for grammar (syntax). I think the point can be made that all of
> them eventually led to contradictions, not really much better than
> traditional grammar. The models have become 20th century prescriptions
> based on what linguists took as important in language study.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
> Sent: Friday, December 04, 2009 10:20 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Dennis Baron's article
>
> Herb,
> This is a very rich and interesting article, though it seems a bit
> disingenuous to me that he characterizes linguists as doing everything
> right and English teachers as getting it all wrong. I'm not saying he's
> wrong, just that he fails to look sympathetically at the other side or
> second guess his own certainty.
> Here are two key paragraphs that set up that contrast.
>
> "It's not that English teachers don't know that linguistic knowledge has
> progressed over the past 250 years. Prospective teachers get a healthy
> dose of sociolinguistics, transformational grammar, and the history of
> English. They study the emergence of dialects and the social contexts
> from which language standards grow. And they learn that unlike the
> standard meter or kilogram, which can be measured with scientific
> precision, there is no single, objective standard language which
> everybody speaks. They study language contact, assimilation, and
> heritage language loss, and they learn that when schools abandon
> bilingual education and leave non-English-speaking students to sink or
> swim in English-only classes, most sink. And last but not least, they're
> taught to regard their students' language not as something to be
> constantly graded and corrected, but as an energetic, highly-competent,
> continually-evolving form of language, complete with its own standards
> and variants.
>
> But when they get their own classrooms, many of these same teachers
> reject such knowledge in favor of the simplistic language model they
> absorbed when they were in school, a model that ignores the complexities
> of the language people use every day in favor of a few prescriptive
> rules that can be memorized and tested, but that have little connection
> with what really happens when we talk or write."
>
> First of all, prospective teachers may only have a single semester of
> exposure to linguistics, which is hardly enough to bring those concepts
> home in any kind of compelling way. And they are also faced with
> students who do not seem to be reading and writing with any kind of
> facility and need some kind of intervention, perhaps intervention in
> ways that their language study hasn't suggested.
>
> Here's Baron again, at article's end:
>
> "Perhaps the most important grammar lesson to learn, then, is to trust
> our language instincts instead of mimicking some ideal which turns out
> to be a moving target. We need to finally leave the eighteenth-century
> prescriptions behind and aim for language that is simply good enough to
> do the job of expressing whatever it is we need to say. And when we
> study language, we should study what it is, not what someone thinks it
> should be."
>
> Once again, the prime advice is to "trust our language instincts."
> Everything is still focused on 'correctness", though Baron calls it a
> "sliding scale." There seems to be no connection between effective
> "expression" and language choice, no hint at how a study of language
> might help us become better readers or writers.
>
> You could easily turn the criticism around. Linguists want us to use
> knowledge about language in our teaching of reading and writing, but
> have failed to show us how. Teachers revert to prescriptive rules by
> default.
>
> Craig
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> STAHLKE, HERBERT F wrote:
>> As it happens, Dennis Baron (Illinois) has just posted an article on his
>> Web of Language site
>> at http://illinois.edu/db/view/25/17976?count=1&ACTION=DIALOG dealing
>> with what it means to teach Standard English.
>> As we have come to expect from Baron, it's a good read.
>>
>> Herb
>>
>> Herbert F. W. Stahlke, Ph.D.
>> Emeritus Professor of English
>> Ball State University
>> Muncie, IN 47306
>> [log in to unmask]
>> ________________________________________
>> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
>> [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Brad Johnston
>> [[log in to unmask]]
>> Sent: December 3, 2009 10:02 PM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: making the past paster
>>
>> Someone wrote: Many varieties of non-standard English do make the
>> distinction grammatically, and for these speakers the second example
>> would have to be
>>
>> I had left last year.
>>
>> because the time of the action is remote. This is not a standard use of
>> the past perfect and is, in the varieties that use it, not a past
>> perfect but a remote past.
>>
>> Brad now: Here's an item from my archives.
>>
>> It doesn't matter how long ago it was. The past is past. The Battle of
>> Hastings was fought in 1066, however remote that year may seem. 'Had
>> been' won't help the Anglo-Saxons a whit, even now.
>>
>> Note also that ATEG stands for the Teaching of English Grammar. There is
>> no place for the "remote past" or the "paster past" in the teaching of
>> English grammar. It may be interesting that the "remote past" is
>> sometimes heard in waterfront bars in Houston or San Diego, but that
>> doesn't help a grammar teacher accomplish the task at hand.
>>
>> .osistm.brad.03dec09.
>>
>>
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>>
>>
>>
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