Herb: I agree with you. There is much more to be said about grammar than I did, but I was referring to basic guiding principles, and not to the details. Still I am getting a little confused: do you want to write a grammar encyclopaedia, or a practical grammar? And if you want to write a practical grammar ( which is my assumption) for which grade(s) are you going to write that grammar? It appears to me that we will necessarily have to write grammarS, not just a grammar, each adjusted to some school level. One thing is to teach grammar to the elementary school students, another to teach grammar to college students. Each such level would require a grammar specifically written for its own purposes. Eduard On Fri, 18 Aug 2006, Herbert F.W. Stahlke wrote... >Eduard, > >Quite a lot, in fact, as I suggested in my posting to Phil. Part of my >problem in this discourse is that I come from a background in which >traditional grammar includes Jespersen, Poutsma, Kruizinga, and others >of the great 19th and 20th c. scholars of English grammar. Traditional >school grammar, like what is found in the Warriner's series, for >example, a series that was used widely in American high schools for >quite a long time, is in part of reduction of this combined with a >variety of stylistic prescriptions and proscriptions. I don't have the >negative reaction Fries had, because I go back to Jespersen on a lot of >matters. However, I agree with Fries as to the sometimes mindless way >in which traditional grammar has been reduced to a few inflexible terms, >concepts, and maxims. > >Herb To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/