Paul,

I don't think you have misuse of a word here. The student misspelled
"phased"; I'm sure s/he had "fazed" in mind. The word misused is the
preposition.

As to the passive structure, we need to be careful in our objections to
it. If the student's essay is primarily about Hamlet, using passives
keeps Hamlet in subject position, which is the most felicitous for topic
coherence in the text. Subject position is also handy for things like
indicating switch to a subtopic that is expected in the context, or
contrasting Hamlet with someone else. We should caution against its
overuse, although even then, sometimes it is not a bad choice when one
wants to focus on the "vicitmization" of the undergoer of a series of
actions. Ask any lawyer.

As to prepositions, books for teaching English as a second language
often have lists of verbs with their typical prepositions. I would also
look around in the Cobuild volumes for lists of verbs that collocate
with particular prepositions -- there might be more abstract verbs there
than you would find in an ESL book.

Memorization is pretty much the only way to handle this, because the
choice of preposition is unpredictable. We can usually make sense of it
once it is set (for instance, there is logic to both "based on" and
"based off of", since the "basis" is a reference point in both cases).
In a case like this (use of 'from' as agent marker), the best I could do
is make the student feel a little better about it by telling him his
choice was logical, if not correct.

Speaking of prepositions, "to the store", like "from" as agent marker,
is also mirrored in German: "zu Hause" means at home. While it has
acquired the motion sense as in "going to the store", I believe its
origin sense was strictly motionless location. English and German also
share the use of 'to' for complete closure in a few cases, as in "the
door swung to" and German "zumachen" ("make to"), which is the general
verb meaning "close".

None of this is surprising, German and English being sister languages.

By the way, I've been reading a very interesting book called "Working
With Discourse". It presents Systemic-Funcitonal Grammar through
analysis of several real texts about the reconciliation program
instituted in South Africa at the end of apartheid. I know this list has
discussed SFG before, but I'd like to put in a plug for it, although its
terminology would have to be modified for use in American grammar
teaching. The approach is top-down and based on both the content a text
expresses (meaning)  and how each clause (or reduced clause) makes some
kind of discourse move. The book is pretty introductory. What it
promises, to my mind, is fruitful discussion of what different "chunks"
of grammatical structure do at the text level. My thoughts on it are at
a very primitive stage at the moment, but I have to say I've been
enjoying reading it. I can also immediately see where other approaches
to grammar can refine its categories and definitions (although the
authors do say they are simplifying SFG as presented by its founders
such as MAK Halliday -- but I haven't read his work). The book is not
very long, and it could provide a creative teacher with inspiration for
connecting grammar to writing and literature.

***************************************************
Johanna Rubba, Associate Professor, Linguistics
English Department, Cal Poly State University
San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
Tel. 805-756-2184 ~ Dept. phone 805-756-2596
Dept. fax: 805-756-6374 ~  E-mail: [log in to unmask]
URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
***************************************************

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