901. DanDillon - Jan. 14, 1999 - 3:36 PM PT
This thread has gotten off to a rotten start. What has gone on thus far has only hindered my original conception of this thread.
If there's no interest in pursuing a meaningful discussion on ways to teach grammar in the classroom, then I'm bowing out. As for those who believe that grammar need not be a part of the curriculum, they are free to leave as well and soon, for the purpose of this thread is to discuss how grammar might best be taught.
Are there any comments on my revised traditional grammar posts? Anything meaningful and/or productive at all?
902. pseudoerasmus - Jan. 14, 1999 - 3:41 PM PT
Well, I think I've made my point, so I will let the wretched Dillon loose.
903. Jonesatlaw - Jan. 14, 1999 - 3:42 PM PT
It seems that we are in a mighty prescriptivist vs descriptionist struggle here, and much of it is beyond my experience. With that admission made, I would propose a comparison to music.
Begining music theory students are taught classical rules of composition for four part harmony, much as Bach would have used. Once these are thouroughly drilled into their heads, they are told that music is replete with violations of these sacrosanct rules, and that the rules are there to be broken. With this comes the caveat that there should be a reason, and particular effect to be achieved in mind, when you break them.
If students learn the basic prescriptivist rules, they may go on to achieve something beyond the limitations of those rules when they have the ability to choose to ignore them for a known and desired effect.
904. chloel - Jan. 14, 1999 - 3:43 PM PT
DanDillon
Gosh, do you leave when your students don't think grammar should be taught in the classroom? If you can't convince us, how can you convince them?
"Or something completely different?", in the thread subhead, makes a fine lead-in even for PEs incendiary proposals (by example, and while teaching another language, if I phrase them correctly).
And please; evidence?
905. DanDillon - Jan. 14, 1999 - 3:43 PM PT
Buh-bye, Fucko Bazoo.
Hallelujah.
906. pseudoerasmus - Jan. 14, 1999 - 3:48 PM PT
Yes, my argument is that whatever grammar that must be known, could be picked up incidentally by the student in the normal course of education in literature, composition, history and the like.
907. chloel - Jan. 14, 1999 - 3:50 PM PT
Jonesatlaw
Interesting analogy. Beginning music theory students have probably (?) spent more effort playing existing great music than grade-school students have spent rewriting great literature; the music students have a wider base of examples to draw from, probably memorized. True?
908. Seguine - Jan. 14, 1999 - 4:01 PM PT
"Your verbiage notwithstanding, constraints WERE given: the clause about strolling and the clause about being washed overboard. The latter, as stated, is the main action which the writer really has little control over."
The writer has no control over which action is "main"? This is ridiculous on its face. You simply *assume* that the more dramatic action is necessarily the "main action". I'm astounded that you then accuse *me* of overreading!
Then again, I've learned to expect a certain obliviousness to subtlety from those who are less concerned for reading with care than for reading with speed. I do not accept that that abliviousness must be shared by all of us.
"Sometimes one's cannot determine one's own objectives."
Sigh. I can't believe this satement was allowed to issue from your fingertips.
"All the same, I follow my own prescriptions, and I think I do just fine."
Of course you do. But I don't follow your prescriptions and I do just fine, as do zillions of others who don't follow your prescriptions. Your point is moot.
909. CoralReef - Jan. 14, 1999 - 4:03 PM PT
Message #900 Yes, and I like the distinction between businessmen and respectable people.
Message #901 DanD, unfortunately -- and surprisingly -- this isn't a new thread. But point taken.
910. Seguine - Jan. 14, 1999 - 4:15 PM PT
"As for the general rule, sigh. It is a general rule which I infer from the best practise of writing, not some received tradition. It's an empirical rule."
A general rule inferred from the "best practise of writing", which naturally always employs the general rule. I see.
"But I haven't the stomach to wade through your dense, "resonant"
screeds. I, like Loar, must suffer from what you called in him an
"extreme neurosis sometimes characterized by a peculiar sort of mental
rigidity".
Funny that you should recognize in yourself a characteristic so plainly resonant in someone else.
For what it's worth, I wouldn't say that any mental rigidity on your part is *necessarily* associated with neurosis. Rather, I would guess it has someting to do with a reversible and occasionally benign form of Swiss early conditioning.
911. pseudoerasmus - Jan. 14, 1999 - 4:28 PM PT
Seguine (Message #908)
"Then again, I've learned to expect a certain obliviousness to subtlety from those who are less concerned for reading with care than for reading with speed. I do not accept that that abliviousness must be shared by all of us."
There is a difference between actual nuances contained in text and fantasticated fineries.
"The writer has no control over which action is 'main'?"
Not in the specific example I gave! The point was that putting the "strolling" action in the independent clause militates against the intrinsic drama of the whole sentence, for, as worded, it naturally belongs in the dependent clause. You can't make the strolling more "interesting" or "dramatic" simply by its placement in the independent clause. That's been my point.
"This is ridiculous on its face. You simply *assume* that the more dramatic action is necessarily the 'main action'."
Huh? Dramatic action = main action. If you see a distinction, it must be another fantasticated finery of yours.
"But I don't follow your prescriptions and I do just fine, as do zillions of others who don't follow your prescriptions. Your point is moot."
Nonsense. It's not a random prescription. As I said, it is a prescription born of observation of practise. The best writers follow, consciously or unconsciously, the general rule of thumb described. I wager in your less obscure moments even you do. Which if true simply goes to show that your remarks here have been bizarre theorising contrary to practise.
912. DanDillon - Jan. 14, 1999 - 5:39 PM PT
chloel,
Of course I don't leave when my students think grammar shouldn't be taught. What gave you that idea? This is a thread in an on-line forum, not a classroom.
As for evidence (though I'm not entirely sure what you mean), read my Message #870, Message #871 and Message #872.
913. Seguine - Jan. 14, 1999 - 6:03 PM PT
"The best writers follow, consciously or unconsciously, the general rule of thumb described. I wager in your less obscure moments even you do."
Not that I am aware of. But you might not know it if I did, since in those fugue states of residual Swissness which compel you to mistake your own authoritative tone for clarity, you habitually take another's nuance for obscurity.
"Dramatic action = main action. If you see a distinction, it must be
another fantasticated finery of yours."
In the sentence of mine which precedes this backhanded compliment of yours, can you identify whether the insult in the independent clause is more important or less important than those which follow it in the dependent clause?
(Allow me to spare you the effort by assuming you can't.)
"...your remarks here have been bizarre theorising contrary to practise."
On the contrary. Your remarks here have been bizarre theorizing contrary to practice.
It seems that, for some reason I don't pretend to understand, you are incapable of appreciating the rhetorical aims of certain verbal constructions, just as you are incapable of being moved by visual abstractions; or, I suspect, musical ones. Although I once shared that incapacity, maybe twenty years ago, I can no longer even imagine it.
On these points concerning rhetoric, therefore, we can only agree to disagree.
914. Seguine - Jan. 14, 1999 - 6:15 PM PT
"The point was that putting the "strolling" action in the independent
clause militates against the intrinsic drama of the whole sentence, for, as worded, it naturally belongs in the dependent clause. You can't make the strolling more "interesting" or "dramatic" simply by its placement in the independent clause. That's been my point."
While mine has been that making strolling more interesting or dramatic is not the only rhetorical intention possible, and therefore placing it in either the independent clause or the dependent clause is not inherently "inept". (It could certainly be shown to be inept in a larger context.)
915. CharlieL - Jan. 14, 1999 - 6:30 PM PT
Message #877 - PE: "But that's only because you want grammar (in the traditional sense) taught."
Do I? Where have I said that? How very perceptive of you (in an extra-sensory sort of way, that is).
So now your arguments are based upon what you presume that I think? I don't base my arguments to you based upon my presumptions as to whether you think before you post.
What do you believe are my thoughts on that matter?
916. pseudoerasmus - Jan. 14, 1999 - 7:04 PM PT
Seguine (Message #913)
"But you might not know it if I did, since in those fugue states of residual Swissness which compel you to mistake your own authoritative tone for clarity, you habitually take another's nuance for obscurity."
In a vote of who among fraygrants write most obscurely, surely you would rank quite high. It's not an accident that you were once mistaken for Resonance. It is entirely probable, however, that most of the Fray might be suffering from "extreme neurosis sometimes characterized by a peculiar sort of mental rigidity". By the way, your constant allusions to Switzerland are bewildering.
"On the contrary. Your remarks here have been bizarre theorizing contrary to practice."
You're just one of those who mistake any theorising for gratuitous abstraction.
"...you are incapable of appreciating the rhetorical aims of certain verbal constructions, just as you are incapable of being moved by visual abstractions; or, I suspect, musical ones."
Hahaha. My literary and musical intuition is excellent. (I leave the doodles to you.)
But I tire of your temerity in questioning others' understanding when it is you who frequently initiate gargantuan exchanges because you fail to grasp some simple point, or because you engage in herculean fits of overreading & eccentric analysis, frequently attended by indisciplined excursions into "self-organised criticality". Perhaps in your education you have had too little of what the French call "explication de texte" and you are overcompensating.
The funny thing is, though, my argument doesn't actually contradict yours, as Message #850 and #852 show. You don't even realise this. My argument is simply broader than yours.
917. pseudoerasmus - Jan. 14, 1999 - 7:08 PM PT
Seguine (Message #914)
"...[my point] has been that making strolling more interesting or dramatic is not the only rhetorical intention possible..."
No kidding. Who has disputed this? In my "model" of Message #825, the "rhetorical intention" is fixed, not variable. Yet you from the very beginning have been varying the intention and totally missing the point.
The question being addressed in my example was how to make the best of the given identical meaning contained in the two sentences (A & B). And in both, being washed overboard is the more interesting or important action. So, according to me, you should express the strolling action in the dependent clause, as is the case with B. Yet in real life one sees sentences like B less often than those like A, which places the intrinsically less interesting action in the subordinate clause. That's what I called rhetorical ineptitude.
Frequently, as with the Godzilla & Mothra example (Message #850), one can control which action is the more interesting or important according to where you place that action. Which I gather is closer to your own argumnent.
"...[my point] has been that making strolling more interesting or dramatic is not the only rhetorical intention possible, and therefore placing it in either the independent clause or the dependent clause is not inherently 'inept'."
I can agree with this, for it's tangential to, not inconsistent with, my argument.
918. pseudoerasmus - Jan. 14, 1999 - 7:22 PM PT
Now that we're having this rather elaborate discussion, it is apropos to mention that not all subordinate clauses are the same. Take for instance,
"You simply assume that French drama is superior to English drama."
Seguine might innocently ask, which clause contains the more important action? Well, in this case, the subordinate clause also happens to be the DIRECT OBJECT of the verb and thus qualitatively different from the kind of subordination found in:
"I saw the movie Schindler's List when I was in Germany last year."
So the general rule of thumb enunciated earlier does not apply (to the sentence about drama).
What is such a subordinate clause called, anyway?
919. FiliaRationis - Jan. 14, 1999 - 7:25 PM PT
85. Seguine - Jan. 14, 1999 - 2:11 PM PT
PE: "As Seguine gazed upon Godzilla with love, Mothra was reducing Tokyo to dust" is obviously quite different from "As Mothra was reducing Tokyo to dust, Seguine gazed upon Godzilla with love".
f: Meanwhile back at the ranch. :-)
Obviously these are transitions, used to go from one scene of action to another. Usually in a new chapter. If the previous chapter was about Sequine and the new one will be about Tokyo, you put Sequine in the subordinate clause. The new subject goes in the main clause.
920. FiliaRationis - Jan. 14, 1999 - 7:47 PM PT
DanDillon,
Good point in #870 about "verb particles". I quite agree with using terms that give names to our intuitive understanding of grammar. I agree with Professor Tolkien's hobbits, who like books that tell us what we already know.
Compare the following sentences:
A
'He was strolling along the deck when a wave washed him overboard'. [sic]
B
'While he was strolling along the deck, a wave washed him overboard'. [sic]
Both are grammatically correct. However, A, the more frequent form, is rhetorically inept compared to B. A careful and rhetorically emphatic writer opts for B because he realises that the more 'interesting' materials belong in the independent clause, not the dependent one."
f: Generally yes, the more intersting or important thing goes in the main clause, modified by the subordinate clause. It functions as an adverbial clause to tell where when why or how the main thing happened.
The when and while are both a little odd there. "While vacationing in the country, he met Lady Windemere" would be ok, as meeting her did not end the vacation. "When he first met Lady W, he was vacationing in the country" would be inept, unless you go on to "So he was able to conceal from her, until it was too late, the fact that he always turned into a werewolf when exposed to the smoke of London blacking factories."
921. Seguine - Jan. 14, 1999 - 7:48 PM PT
"In a vote of who among fraygrants write most obscurely, surely you would rank quite high. It's not an accident that you were once mistaken for Resonance."
Perhaps a poll will be taken one day. In the meantime, I will only observe that while Resonance has a tendency to prosodize at length, as do I (and you), there have been quite a few occasions during your exchanges with him that I've been quite able to understand what he meant while you, strangely it seemed to me, could not. For a long time, I assumed you simply didn't wish to engage in a particular debate with him any more, and so used an out such as
"Whatever."
or
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
or
"What the fuck are you talking about??"
to close the discussion. But after a while, I realized: PE is not exaggerating.
"Now that we're having this rather elaborate discussion, it is apropos to mention that not all subordinate clauses are the same."
NOW it is apropos? NOW IT IS APROPOS?
I really must go and do other things now.
922. pseudoerasmus - Jan. 14, 1999 - 7:59 PM PT
What on earth is "prosodize"? I don't think it's a word, and while I have no problem with a neologism, I must be able to intuit its meaning.
Resonance's prose at its worst features four characteristics: turgidity, prolixity, opacity and pretentiousness. I think opacity was not the greatest of his problems, although I often enough find his prose opaque.
923. FiliaRationis - Jan. 14, 1999 - 8:04 PM PT
841. PincherMartin - Jan. 13, 1999 - 10:28 PM PT
As the students' English progressed, another problem surfaced. They would combine words and phrases that were awkward, without being wrong (don't ask me for examples, because I don't remember these either). When I would correct them, some would ask why it was wrong. The only answer I could give them was that we don't say it that way.
f: For some rather chilling examples, see /Hinduism Today/ or other publications from India. Mixed fossilized metaphors, for one thing. Other mixed idioms I can't quite label.
924. CharlieL - Jan. 14, 1999 - 8:04 PM PT
Yes, but if you had been swept overboard while watching "Schindler's List," it would have been much more dramatic, even if less rhetorical.
925. MrSocko - Jan. 14, 1999 - 8:37 PM PT
Message #873, CharlieL:
"If a politician says in a speech, 'If you and me join together, we can correct what is wrong with America,' I can be pretty sure that Education won't be one of the priorities of the politician."
Sounds like a distraction to me. There's nothing remarkable in a speaker tripping over the me/I or who/whom rule. To do so doesn't reveal anything terribly important about anything; leaving aside the substance of one's remarks, the only real test of "educated" communication is the communicator's clarity of expression. I mean, I'm sure resonance wouldn't "incorrectly" use the word "me," but that doesn't make him any more lucid.
By the way, I thought PE's Message #822 was beautifully put. It's a fact that I've never once, over hundreds of posts spanning nearly a couple of years, read anything significantly objectionable by him on the subject of English usage. Quite the reverse, in fact.
926. Seguine - Jan. 14, 1999 - 9:17 PM PT
"What on earth is "prosodize"? I don't think it's a word, and while I
have no problem with a neologism, I must be able to intuit its meaning."
Oh, you're quite right. I have no idea what I thought that should convey. I should have said, "Resonance has a tendency to prose at length..."
"Resonance's prose at its worst features four characteristics: turgidity, prolixity, opacity and pretentiousness."
Give the guy a break. It's only four if you figure that pretentiousness is subcategory of turgidity.
I would replace opacity with circularity.
927. CoralReef - Jan. 14, 1999 - 9:22 PM PT
"It's a fact that I've never once, over hundreds of posts
spanning nearly a couple of years, read anything
significantly objectionable by him on the subject of English
usage. Quite the reverse, in fact."
Huh?? You and PE argued endlessly over differing views of English usage, didn't you? Eh, 'Fruit pit'? ;) Perhaps you don't agree with some things he says but don't find them out-of-bounds unreasonable. That I'd believe. Or perhaps you just changed your mind on some things later, after thinking about them more?
928. CoralReef - Jan. 14, 1999 - 9:27 PM PT
Although I do agree with Message #822. I was taught composition and reading and only a little grammar and somehow survived.
929. Jonesatlaw - Jan. 14, 1999 - 9:36 PM PT
Choel- Thanks for following up on the analogy. I think you may be right. There is very little copywork done in schools these days, and little memorization of poetry, dramatic reading etc. I truly hadn't considered that issue. On the other hand their little heads are full of poetry (usually bad) in the form of pop lyrics, TV jingles and nursery rhymes.
I was more focused on the process of going from a rigid structure to a more flexible, creative and intuitive standard. If you follow classical composition rules, you'll produce something euphonious and sounding somewhat classical. The very gifted will pick most of the substance up intuitively, but the majority of us must plod through the basics before going on to deconstructing the rules.
930. BobaFett - Jan. 14, 1999 - 9:43 PM PT
lot of love in this room
931. MrSocko - Jan. 14, 1999 - 10:28 PM PT
Message #927:
I don't recall disagreeing with him on any of the essentials.
932. pseudoerasmus - Jan. 15, 1999 - 12:05 AM PT
By the way, it should be noted that if someone asked the question, "What was the guy doing when the sea took him?", then the rhetorically right way to answer would be "He was [just] strolling on the deck when the wave washed him overboard". The reason is that the question determines what is the most important action in the answer.
933. pseudoerasmus - Jan. 15, 1999 - 12:12 AM PT
Message #883
I think #1 is a hallucination of meaning. #2 is bad -- the B sentence would be preferable there. I guess #4 is the same point as made in my above post.
934. pseudoerasmus - Jan. 15, 1999 - 10:44 AM PT
Just in case I was needlessly dismissive of Seguine's remarks, I quickly reread the exchange between us on rhetoric.
I have no reason to retract anything. In Message #825, I enunciated the "general rule of thumb" quite explicitly: put the more interesting or important action in the independent clause. This rule is quite sensitive to context or to situation or to intention, certainly more so than Seguine recognised or realised.
935. chloel - Jan. 15, 1999 - 2:39 PM PT
DanDillon
I didn't think you'd leave a classroom if your students wanted to know why grammar should be taught; so it seems even odder to me that you should threaten to leave a online forum, which has no purpose but discussion and debate. Something you think is obvious, that grammar needs to be taught as a subject in itself, is not obvious to everyone; what's your evidence?
936. chloel - Jan. 15, 1999 - 3:01 PM PT
Jonesatlaw
What would a good pop musician get out of a music theory class? Does one usually learn something abstract enough to apply to any music huans listen to, or is it the hundred-odd rules of counterpoint and so forth?
I had a great conversation once with a rap-music fan, who saw me waving my fingers while writing stuff down and thought I might be trying to rap. I was actually reading something on forms of meter - the anvil and the oar? - and a rap fan was just who I needed to talk to at the time, lacking Old English poets. He seemed pleased by the idea that there was a theory of what he was doing, too. I am, subsequently, of the opinion that good minds full of doubtful material are easily rescuable; it's the empty minds I wouldn't know what to do with. (I wouldn't call rap intrinsically doubtful, either (so no-one needs to leap to its defense)).
937. pseudoerasmus - Jan. 15, 1999 - 3:01 PM PT
Message #934
which is to say, nothing in the rule of thumb precludes the writer himself from determining, if possible, which action is the most important or interesting.
938. chloel - Jan. 15, 1999 - 3:03 PM PT
PE
But why did you put the presumed-more-interesting clause at the end of both examples?
939. pseudoerasmus - Jan. 15, 1999 - 3:34 PM PT
I don't know. Heuristic symmetry?
Perhaps I should discourse on the tripartite structure of every sentence (dependent or independent clause), and how the end is usually the most emphatic, the beginning the second most emphatic, and the middle the least emphatic. A competent and rhetorically forceful writer works with this general truth.
940. katewrath - Jan. 15, 1999 - 7:13 PM PT
The thread will forgive me, I hope, for jumping in here, especially because I've only read the last 2-3 dozen posts.
I was able to avoid all but a single afternoon of grammar instruction during my childhood. My ability to diagram a sentence in the manner of Mrs. Egert, my fifth grade teacher, is nil. Verb, noun, adjective: fine. But start going on about tenses and clauses, and I will resort to writing by ear (which has served me well, I think. The only serious mistake I regularly make is "If X was" when I want to say "If X were."
BUT: I was a bookish child with a photographic memory. A good friend in grad school reports that her English Comp classes are regularly filled with 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds who don't know why "If someone was old enough to vote in 1996, they could have voted for Bob Dole" has some grammatical problems and no idea at all why "My reasons for this conclusion is simple: He was on the ballot and voting is the right of every American citizen." is incorrectly conjugated. To hell with issues of dependent and independent clauses! Undergraduates at Washington University (and God knows where else) have begun to believe that conjugating subjects and verbs is an arcane practice, best left to hoity-toity grad students. (This is truly a common explanation: "This is the way I talk", "This is how I express myself." The idea that they should follow a small (very small) set of rules in order to make themselves more clearly understood is incomprehensible to them, even repugnant.
941. Seguine - Jan. 15, 1999 - 7:43 PM PT
Sigh. My Message #926 should have read: "It's only THREE if you figure..."
942. Seguine - Jan. 15, 1999 - 7:46 PM PT
PE: "By the way, it should be noted that if someone asked the question, "What was the guy doing when the sea took him?", then the rhetorically right way to answer would be "He was [just] strolling on the deck when the wave washed him overboard". The reason is that the question determines what is the most important action in the answer."
I don't suppose you had this epiphany after reading my remarks concerning CONTEXT. What do you think I have been saying here, bucko?
"I have no reason to retract anything."
Your initial pronouncement. Modify it.
"In Message #825, I enunciated the "general rule of thumb" quite explicitly: put the more interesting or important action in the independent clause."
Here is your statement, which you'll notice did NOT include the phrase "as a general rule of thumb"; you introduced that later:
"A careful and rhetorically emphatic writer opts for B because he realises that the more 'interesting' materials belong in the independent clause, not the dependent one."
This is just the sort of remark an absolutist makes. I find it excessive (and not just because it is preceded by the imprecise "A is rhetorically inept compared to B"). Note how "the more 'interesting' materials BELONG in the independent clause" (there's a right place), "NOT the dependent one" (and a wrong place).
An emphatic and careful writer realizes pronouncements about rhetoric are usually best served seasoned with qualifiers. Thus:
"'B' is a rhetorically stronger statement than 'A'. A careful and rhetorically emphatic writer opts for B because, as a rule, the more 'interesting' materials are employed to most forceful effect in the independent clause, rather than the dependent one."
943. Seguine - Jan. 15, 1999 - 7:48 PM PT
"This rule is quite sensitive to context or to situation or to intention, certainly more so than Seguine recognised or realised."
Excuse me, but it was I who pointed out what *you*, in your intitial post on this subject, failed to recognize: your examples were too devoid of context to justify so sweeping a judgment on one or the other's essential rhetorical ineptitude. Had you made your observation--had you even expressed your "general rule"--with the caveat that it is context-sensitive, I'd have had no objection to it. Moreover, if what "sensitive to context [etc.]" means is that the rule may be broken in more circumstances than I "recognised or realised", then you are being inordinately silly. The legitimacy of breaking the rule has been my argument from the start: simply put, your A is rhetorically appropriate in some cases, inappropriate in others. It cannot, therefore, be *inherently* "rhetorically inept".
"I guess #4 is the same point as made in my above post."
I guess the point in your above post is the same one made in my #4, which preceded it.
"#2 is bad -- the B sentence would be preferable there."
No. Once again, the initial "while" in your B sentence would give away too much! The passage is designed to underplay the gruesome events being described, while at the same time offering an element of surprise or shock in the first sentence.
#2: "He was strolling along the deck when a wave washed him overboard. He struggled to maintain conciousness for several seconds before succumbing to an undertow that pulled him under the body of the ship. His corpse was never found.
Understatement is rhetorically *weak*. But WEAKNESS IS NOT THE SAME THING AS INEPTITUDE (otherwise you would desire sex only with big-thighed Amazons). A strategic weakness can be rhetorically useful, and appropriate, and therefore is not inherently
944. Seguine - Jan. 15, 1999 - 7:50 PM PT
...therefore is not inherently INEPT. [Unlike cutting off the crux of one's statement in the blades of the 2000-character limit.]
945. Seguine - Jan. 15, 1999 - 7:58 PM PT
It is in narrative writing, particularly, that PE's "general rule" may be least applicable. Following are two Resonantly long, hastily assembled examples of what I mean. The first employs PE's A for one rhetorical effect, the second employs his B for another.
946. Seguine - Jan. 15, 1999 - 8:03 PM PT
The Prescriptivist [A]
From the time the linguist was a small boy, he had harbored an unreasonable terror of drowning. All his youthful vacations were spent watching in rigid fear from beachfront vantage points as his brother, Melville, mastered the arts of sailing under the expert tutelage of their father. It was not until he had reached the end of middle age that the linguist finally resolved to free himself from the bondage that had threatened to keep him, in life, a captive of soil and sand and rootedness. For on the day he turned fifty-nine it occurred to him that, in death he would, like all dust, belong to the earth forever.
Desensitization therapy cost him several thousand dollars and a great deal of anxiety. But it was worth the outlay, for when in his sixty-first year the linguist booked a cruise to Jamaica from Florida, he experienced for the first time a sunrise over the Atlantic ocean where no land was in sight, watched the moon setting in multitudinous reflections on inky, blue swells, and saw schools of tiny, silver fish shimmering in the wake of the ocean liner he now rode in peace and joyful anticipation of penetrating moments altogether new to him. He even enjoyed the bracing chill of salt spray that sometimes crossed his cheek as he leaned intrepidly, far out over the lower deck ship's railing, just to hear the rush of the turbulence below. And when, in the evenings, he made his way via the open air to one of the ship's dining rooms, he made an exercise of peering into the firmament, searching out stars theretofore unnoticed by him, until he was dizzy from staring.
The linguist, at last, had become unmoored. [A] The sense of freedom that presaged his new fearlessness did not grow indefinitely, however. To his chagrin, in fact, there came a day when it began to shrink.
On that notable occasion, he was engaged in a particularly acrobatic effort to sense what it must be like to fly. He had tried, by leaning a little
947. Seguine - Jan. 15, 1999 - 8:05 PM PT
...a little too far off the vessel's port bow, to quash the tide of nausea that now rose in him each time he even thought about falling overboard. But directly he received, as if by transmission from the Deity, a premonition of his doom. It would come, he realized, in the very midst of his performing just such a stupid excursion past the boundaries of common sense as leaning over the ship's railing, or doing cartwheels on the very tip of the ship's prow, or dancing incautiously with some twenty-year-old around the perimeter of the ship's swimming pool, into which he would fall and drown when the inevitable myocardial infarction struck.
Thus chastened by God, the linguist resolved to restrict his liberty to such acts as other elderly mortals performed: eating in moderation, breathing, paying bills, walking gently. And for the remainder of his time aboard ship, he obeyed that resolution.
He was strolling along the deck when a wave washed him overboard. For a moment, the shock of the water's impact stilled his heart, paralyzed him mentally... and then, perhaps by instinct, he reached into himself for whatever had once tied him to chalk and rock and loam. A grammatical prescription or two bubbled up from his expensively repaired psyche, but there were no ropes left tied in him, no loops with which to hook himself ashore. And no shore.
He struggled to maintain conciousness for several seconds before succumbing to a current which pulled him under the body of the ship.
948. Seguine - Jan. 15, 1999 - 8:08 PM PT
The Prescriptivist [B]
From the time the linguist was a small boy, he had harbored an unreasonable terror of drowning. All his youthful vacations were spent watching in rigid fear from beachfront vantage points as his brother, Melville, mastered the arts of sailing under the expert tutelage of their father. It was not until he had reached the end of middle age that the linguist finally resolved to free himself from the bondage that had threatened to keep him, in life, a captive of soil and sand and rootedness. For on the day he turned fifty-nine it occurred to him that, in death he would, like all dust, belong to the earth forever.
Desensitization therapy cost him several thousand dollars and a great deal of anxiety. But it was worth the outlay, for when in his sixty-first year the linguist booked a cruise to Jamaica from Florida, he experienced for the first time a sunrise over the Atlantic ocean where no land was in sight, watched the moon setting in multitudinous reflections on inky, blue swells, and saw schools of tiny, silver fish shimmering in the wake of the ocean liner he now rode in peace and joyful anticipation of penetrating moments altogether new to him. He even enjoyed the bracing chill of salt spray that sometimes crossed his cheek as he leaned intrepidly, far out over the lower deck ship's railing, just to hear the rush of the turbulence below. And when, in the evenings, he made his way via the open air to one of the ship's dining rooms, he made an exercise of peering into the firmament, searching out stars theretofore unnoticed by him, until he was dizzy from staring.
The linguist, at last, had become unmoored.
949. pseudoerasmus - Jan. 15, 1999 - 8:10 PM PT
Seguine, you are simply reprising the misapprehension with which you initially greeted my Message #825.
"I don't suppose you had this epiphany after reading my remarks concerning CONTEXT. What do you think I have been saying here, bucko?"
It was not an epiphany. It is a natural logical implication of the general rule of thumb. This is what you don't seem to understand.
And as I said, nothing in my Message #825 precludes a different interpretation of the rhetorical efficacy of A and B given a DIFFERENT context. But #825, standing alone, IS ITS OWN context. In order to make a point, one cuts down on unnecessary details. And it was a small point I was making, but you with your wonderful but indisciplined imagination are prone to inferring meanings more liberally from text than is necessary or appropriate.
"Your initial pronouncement. Modify it."
No reason to.
"Here is your statement, which you'll notice did NOT include the phrase 'as a general rule of thumb'; you introduced that later: 'A careful and rhetorically emphatic writer opts for B because he realises that the more 'interesting' materials belong in the independent clause, not the dependent one.' "
I stand by it.
"This is just the sort of remark an absolutist makes."
Nonsense. It is a flexible remark. But you haven't the logic or the perception to see it.
"An emphatic and careful writer realizes pronouncements about rhetoric are usually best served seasoned with qualifiers."
Apparently, an emphatic and careful writer should assume that his readers are less perceptive than he.
"Excuse me, but it was I who pointed out what *you*, in your intitial post on this subject, failed to recognize: your examples were too devoid of context to justify so sweeping a judgment on one or the other's essential rhetorical ineptitude."
No, you simply failed to re
950. Seguine - Jan. 15, 1999 - 8:11 PM PT
[B] The air was still and the sun was hot on the day that the linguist, suffused with the aura of unusual receptivity that sometimes descended on him when he was out walking, encountered his last penetrating moment. While he was strolling along the deck, a wave washed him overboard.
For a second, the shock of the water's impact stilled his heart, paralyzed him mentally... and then, perhaps by instinct, he reached into himself for whatever had once tied him to chalk and rock and loam. A grammatical prescription or two bubbled up from his expensively repaired psyche, but there were no ropes left tied in him, no loops with which to hook himself ashore. And no shore.
He struggled to maintain conciousness for several seconds before succumbing to a current which pulled him under the body of the ship.
951. pseudoerasmus - Jan. 15, 1999 - 8:11 PM PT
No, you simply failed to recognise that the judgment about A and B in Message #825 is the correct one given that there is no further information than the meaning contained in A and B. Perhaps I should have said "A is rhetorically inept, ceteris paribas", but I'd rather not introduce economics terminology into a discussion of rhetoric.
"Moreover, if what 'sensitive to context [etc.]' means is that the rule may be broken in more circumstances than I 'recognised or realised', then you are being inordinately silly."
Don't be dumb. Sensitivity to context does not mean the rule may be broken. I call it a general rule of thumb, but frankly I can't see a reason to break the rule at all.
"The legitimacy of breaking the rule has been my argument from the start: simply put, your A is rhetorically appropriate in some cases, inappropriate in others."
Sigh. Perhaps you don't even understand the rule. In Message #932, A becomes rhetorically appropriate because the action in that clause becomes primary.
952. pseudoerasmus - Jan. 15, 1999 - 8:15 PM PT
A becomes rhetorically appropriate because the STROLLING action in that sentence becomes primary.
953. ScottLoar - Jan. 15, 1999 - 8:17 PM PT
Pseudoerasmus, indulge my sincere curiousity as I once did yours. Do you not find a point in an argument beyond which it is useless to continue? Why this tenacity? It surely cannot be to advance understanding which escapes your opposite but to win, win at arguing.
954. Seguine - Jan. 15, 1999 - 8:21 PM PT
Katewrath: "To hell with issues of dependent and independent clauses! Undergraduates at Washington University (and God knows where else) have begun to believe that conjugating subjects and verbs is an arcane practice, best left to hoity-toity grad students. (This is truly a common explanation: "This is the way I talk", "This is how I express myself." The idea that they should follow a small (very small) set of rules in order to make themselves more clearly understood is incomprehensible to them, even repugnant."
You're right, of course, there are more important matters to obsess over.
And anyway, I do agree with PE on the point that there's no reason to teach children to diagram the parts of speech. It's a nice thing to know how to do if you're a linguist, and useful in studying a foreign labguage, but if the latter is not required anyway I don't see the use in knowing how to diagram. Better the time should be spent learning to conjugate verbs.
955. pseudoerasmus - Jan. 15, 1999 - 8:35 PM PT
katewrath (Message #940)
I don't see anything seriously wrong with either of the sentences you quote, although they do contain solecisms according to the punctilios of standard English grammar.
956. Seguine - Jan. 15, 1999 - 8:57 PM PT
I don't have a good reason for disliking the conjugation of singular subjects that imply plurality with the plural pronoun "they". But it drives me nuts. It strikes me as a strained bit of political correctness.
If anyone objects, he may browbeat me for being a hypocritical prescriptivist. I don't care.
957. DanDillon - Jan. 16, 1999 - 8:18 AM PT
PEE-YEW!!! What is that stench?!
958. DanDillon - Jan. 16, 1999 - 8:33 AM PT
In order to teach grammar to our students so that they will be able to consciously manipulate constituent parts of language for the purpose of constructing complete and effective sentences (and, ergo, good writing), we need to show them how English works on the transformational level. Indeed, the eight parts of speech we all know (or don't know) by heart are next to useless unless they are to serve as a springboard to a higher understanding of basic sentence structure. Just as a word has its own grammar (antagonistic, not agonicistant), sentences must follow certain patterns dictated by usage, clarity and concision.
There are a mere ten basic sentence patterns in English, and at the heart of each of these ten patterns lay the verb. As indicated by my earlier posts, the verb is that element of the sentence that ought to be treated as the pivot point around which all other parts of an Englsih sentence revolve.
Given: Students need to learn these ten basic sentence patterns and be instilled with a certain reverence for the verb so that they know the rules of English grammar. Then, once they are well-versed in these rules, they can break them at will. However, they must first know what the rules are before they can go and do any purposeful, artful or even mindless breaking.
959. Seguine - Jan. 16, 1999 - 1:18 PM PT
"...they must first know what the rules are before they can go and do any purposeful, artful or even mindless breaking."
Sure, but you're assuming that the only or best way to teach those rules is by concious explication of them. Most people who learn proper grammatical usage do so intuitively (except when the language is foreign; and even then, to some extent).
The issue is one of pedagogy, not linguistics. As such, the pedagogical effectiveness of one methodology of instruction over another is probably testable. How, then, have you determined that the instructional techniques you advocate work better than immersing students in correct speech and writing, correcting their errors, requiring them to read examples of good usage, and so on?
960. MrSocko - Jan. 16, 1999 - 2:44 PM PT
Message #953, Loar
I suspect the tenacity is a seduction technique.
Message #940, kate wrath
There's absolutely nothing wrong with your first (someone/they) sentence. The second is perfectly acceptable too.
961. pseudoerasmus - Jan. 16, 1999 - 2:49 PM PT
Message #853
You are wise, and I am young and foolish. Moreover, both antagonists having testicles, the scene inevitably ends up as mountain goats locking horns.
962. darkviolet - Jan. 16, 1999 - 2:58 PM PT
Did anyone go over the correct usage of "effect" and "affect" yet?
963. darkviolet - Jan. 16, 1999 - 3:17 PM PT
I think I understand the usage in the context of a future event, but when either refers to something that is happening or has already happened, I don't know which to use.
964. katewrath - Jan. 16, 1999 - 4:53 PM PT
I fucked up, as the Anglo-Saxons used to say. There's a much better example of the was/were problem:
There's a song about a woman who has had a tragic car accident. Her boyfriend laments: "I wish I was the brake on which you depended." So he wants to be the brake, right now? In the crushed, blood-splattered wreck of the car, as it sits in the police evidence lot? Okay. But wouldn't he rather say "I wish I were the brake on which you had depended"? That way, either he saves his girlfriend's life or he dies with her, instead of suffering the less-meaningful fate of being a symbolic, inanimate object after the fact. (Suspending for now issues of whether boyfriends-as-brakes save lives or what.) Both are poignant, but one is more so.
The neat-o thing about the someone/they rule, is that if you think about it, usually you can think of something better than "someone", which means you can then use "they," "he" or "she" with impunity. If my sister was old enough to vote in 1998, she could have voted for Bob Dole. Oh wait! (Broad parody of mincing grammatically-obsessed teacher follows:) "Was" conveys an actual state of affairs, not a conditional state of affairs! Since Molly was only 16 in 1998, we want to say "if she were 18 in 1998..." If I wasn't making fun of my 5th grade teacher, this posting would make me sound like an ass, but if I were smart, I would shut up before PE savages me in the name of provoking debate.
Note to DanD: How can you hope to speak as the quote-voice of reason-unquote and/or quote-defender of the English language-unquote and yet use such hideously unsophisticated/ineffectual name-calling and single entendre? Peew-yew? Fucko or sucko or whatever it was? C'mon, man! This is the Fray!
965. jkuzmak - Jan. 16, 1999 - 6:45 PM PT
Beware!!! I understand that the phrasecommando intends to visit this thread.
966. Seguine - Jan. 17, 1999 - 9:25 AM PT
"If my sister was old enough to vote in 1998, she could have voted for
Bob Dole. Oh wait! (Broad parody of mincing grammatically-obsessed
teacher follows:) "Was" conveys an actual state of affairs, not a
conditional state of affairs! Since Molly was only 16 in 1998, we want
to say "if she were 18 in 1998..."
I'm under the impression that "were" used as you have used it denotes a conditional and present-tense state of affairs. Thus, the more precise way of discussing your sister's capacity to vote for Bob Dole would be, "Had she been 18 in 1998, my sister could have voted for Bob Dole." Or, "If my sister had been 18 in 1998, she could have voted for Bob Dole."
Better yet: "Had she been 18 and stupid in 1998, my sister could have voted for Bob Dole."
967. Seguine - Jan. 17, 1999 - 9:27 AM PT
Message #961
Hahahahaha!
968. CoralReef - Jan. 17, 1999 - 9:44 AM PT
Message #963 IndigoGirl, I'm pretty sure both can be used when referring to something in the past. I affected events because my actions had an effect on something. Effect normally being a noun, and affect normally being a verb.
969. phillipdavid - Jan. 17, 1999 - 9:49 AM PT
darkviolet,
Effect is a noun; affect is a verb.
970. wonkers2 - Jan. 17, 1999 - 9:51 AM PT
Sometimes "effect" is a verb. As in "What can I do to effect my release from jail?"
971. wonkers2 - Jan. 17, 1999 - 9:59 AM PT
Further--The best way to effect my release from prison is to favorably affect the attitudes of the members of the parole board.
972. DanDillon - Jan. 17, 1999 - 11:54 AM PT
katewrath Message #964,
I wasn't aware that I was aspiring to such lofty heights in nicknames. Thank you for your, um, bizarre vote of confidence. (Btw, what is a "single entendre"?)
Seguine Message #959,
My phrase was "consciously manipulate" (what the students do), not "conscious explication" (what the teacher does). Furthermore, the last paragraph of your post is absolute nonsense. You've asked me to dispute and/or defend claims that I simply have not made. If you haven't understood something I posted, perhaps you should consider asking me for clarification.
973. katewrath - Jan. 17, 1999 - 2:58 PM PT
Dan: Well, um, it wasn't really a vote of confidence. I was just saying that if you want to impress upon us how a strong grasp of English grammar has helped you become a deft, inventive writer, then slightly better insults would help your case. I can't believe you didn't notice the high standards established by the creme de la Fray. Did you miss the Flame Thread? Oh, those were heady times indeed.
Double entendre, I'm sure you're familiar with: Two men, standing at a bar, see a woman enter.
(Man1:) Oh, I've got an itch she could scratch
(Man:) If bodies were weapons, she'd be under arrest for posession of a double-barrelled shot gun.
A single entendre works like this: Two men, standing at a bar, see a woman enter.
(Man1:) Wow, I'd really like to fuck her.
(Man2:) Now those are what I call huge breasts.
See? I suppose you could argue that "Peee-yew" only IMPLIES disapproval of PE, working via a metaphor of smell & stinkiness, but really, it's pretty one-note and it hardly addresses the heart of your disagreement with him as opposed to (for example, you understand. I don't share your feelings towards PE) something like:
Look, I'd love to chat with you about this, but ... wait, does anyone else smell that? It's like rotting--oh, Christ! PE, have you looked in the mirror recently? The stench of gangrene is coming off you like fingers at a leprosy convention. Well, that explains it. You'd never have kept up this arguement if it weren't that the supply of oxygen to your brain was completely cut off. You know, judging from the smell, I'd say amputation is your only option. Why don't you go seek some medical attention and we'll resume this debate at some later point?
974. DanDillon - Jan. 17, 1999 - 3:03 PM PT
katewrath,
Shush.
975. resonance - Jan. 17, 1999 - 3:10 PM PT
I don't think that conjugations are any more helpful than any other mental exercise in terms of developing mental agility, and they may be harmful in that they teach us to think of language and our understanding of it in artificial terms. Which is only harmful in that it may inhibit a greater common understanding of our linguistic skills. I'm not a structuralist -- I don't think that we must understand our lingual skills in order to understand our world -- but I do think we might profit a great deal by understanding how it is that we assimilate and alter speech.
Having said that, the argument against teaching functional grammar -- that our grammatical competence is subconscious -- is spurious, I believe. So much of what's taught in school is nothing more than mental push-ups -- mostly irrelevant in and of itself except for how it contributes to the building of our criticval thought skills.
If we want to get the best of both worlds -- good mental drills that are closely aligned with the real manner in which we learn to talk -- it's just a matter of teaching transformational grammar. And transformational grammar is really rather easy, at least at the levels we'd teach grade school students.
976. pseudoerasmus - Jan. 17, 1999 - 3:12 PM PT
"I don't think that we must understand our lingual skills in order to understand our world."
I agree completely. I use my lingual skills only when I address ladies.
977. pseudoerasmus - Jan. 17, 1999 - 3:13 PM PT
Could someone define transformational grammar and functional grammar?
978. MrSocko - Jan. 17, 1999 - 3:27 PM PT
Yeah, and while you're at it, resonance, tell us about pantransformational grammar.
979. MrSocko - Jan. 17, 1999 - 3:28 PM PT
"I use my lingual skills only when I address ladies."
Shurely "undress"?
980. pseudoerasmus - Jan. 17, 1999 - 3:33 PM PT
Message #979
Various states of undress are to be achieved linguapalatally.
981. resonance - Jan. 17, 1999 - 3:35 PM PT
Well, a good tongue will get you far, so I'm told. But I had another meaning in mind.
982. pseudoerasmus - Jan. 17, 1999 - 3:37 PM PT
Message #975: Resonance's prose has improved a lot, but his use of "lingual" is a reminder of one of his three natural states -- turgidiy. Any ordinary, unpretentious person hell-bent on being understood would have used "language skills", rather than "lingual", which is almost a malapropism.
983. pseudoerasmus - Jan. 17, 1999 - 3:38 PM PT
Message #981
Oh really? Mein Gott!
984. resonance - Jan. 17, 1999 - 3:40 PM PT
I don't know that functional grammar is a proper title, if that's what you took it to mean -- by it I meant an understanding of grammar which includes the ability to conjugate, decline, etc. Transformational grammar is that school of grammar which purports to mirror the organic competence we humans have in speech -- the way, and order in which, we learn grammar, and the way we use this competence to construct, decode, and assimilate speech. If you know Chomsky grammar, you have some basic understanding of the precepts of transformational grammar.
You achieve states of undress 'linguapalatally'? Does that mean when she asks you if you'd like to slip into something more comfortable, your tongue cleaves to the roof of your mouth and the resultant seizure causes the EMTs to loosen your collar?
985. resonance - Jan. 17, 1999 - 3:45 PM PT
""lingual", which is almost a malapropism."
Of course it isn't. It's a precise word and the meaning applies quite well. I should add it's in common use in the field of linguistics -- at least, in common use among the studies I've had to read in my coursework.
986. resonance - Jan. 17, 1999 - 3:46 PM PT
You, on the other hand, have studied linguistics... when?
987. pseudoerasmus - Jan. 17, 1999 - 3:48 PM PT
Message #985: I said "almost a malapropism". All the same, your attempted exculpation doesn't change the fact that "language skills" would been simpler, more idiomatic and just better than "lingual skills".
Message #986: Never. But who gives a shit.
988. pseudoerasmus - Jan. 17, 1999 - 3:49 PM PT
would HAVE been
989. pseudoerasmus - Jan. 17, 1999 - 3:52 PM PT
Actually, I would like a source for the use of "lingual" from linguistics. The OED lists several technical definitions of "lingual", mostly from anatomy and zoology, and one from phonetics. But the phonetics definition means "formed by the tongue".
990. resonance - Jan. 17, 1999 - 3:53 PM PT
Doesn't it ever strike anyone else as extremely ironic that one person can say 'Mein Gott', 'turgidity' and 'linguapalatally' and in almost the same breath accuse someone else of being pretentious and using words that most others would not commonly understand? Does it ever occur to you, PE, that the silence that usually accompanies one of your pronouncements of my 'pretentiousness' is not one of reverence for your wit, but rather one of awe-stricken homage to your pot-and-kettle hypocrisy?
991. pseudoerasmus - Jan. 17, 1999 - 3:55 PM PT
Message #990: No.
"Linguapalatally" was clearly a joke. The use of "mein Gott" was obviously caused by a Resonant infection.
992. resonance - Jan. 17, 1999 - 4:04 PM PT
"But
the phonetics definition means "formed by the
tongue"."
PE, while you're rooting in your resources, would you care to tell me how it is that phonetics isn't a part of linguistics?
Yes? No?
If you're so petty and hot about it, though, I'll change it to 'linguistic' or even 'language', though the former is much more precise than the latter. The semantics change but the thrust of the point is the same -- that we don't have to understand the way in which our brain and body processes and forms language, in order to understand the composition and laws of our world.
993. Seguine - Jan. 17, 1999 - 4:05 PM PT
Little Buster,
The victims of his exotic oral manipulations don't ask PE if he would like to slip into something more comfortable. They simply tear off his clothes and, in a fit of induced estrus, mount him.
994. resonance - Jan. 17, 1999 - 4:09 PM PT
Enough about his bodyguards, though.
995. Seguine - Jan. 17, 1999 - 4:09 PM PT
DanDildo,
"My phrase was "consciously manipulate" (what the students do), not "conscious explication" (what the teacher does)."
What ARE you blithering about? Here's your statement:
D: "In order to teach grammar to our students so that they will be able to consciously manipulate constituent parts of language for the purpose of constructing complete and effective sentences (and, ergo, good writing), we need to show them how English works on the transformational level."
Here's mine (and it took into account not only the above but a whole host of remarks made by you in this thread):
S: "[Y]ou're assuming that the only or best way to teach those rules is by concious explication of them. Most people who learn proper grammatical usage do so intuitively (except when the language is foreign; and even then, to some extent)."
996. resonance - Jan. 17, 1999 - 4:10 PM PT
Was that the sound of a horrified PE reading Message #993 and then frantically making plans to leave the country and lay low in Dortmund for a while?
997. Seguine - Jan. 17, 1999 - 4:11 PM PT
D: "Furthermore, the last paragraph of your post is absolute nonsense. You've asked me to dispute and/or defend claims that I simply have not made. If you haven't understood something I posted, perhaps you should consider asking me for clarification."
Cut the bullshit. Here is one of your lofty mysteries:
D: "Students need to learn these ten basic sentence patterns and be instilled with a certain reverence for the verb so that they know the rules of English grammar."
Are you or are you not advocating a methodology for teaching English that entails CONCIOUS EXPLICATION, by a teacher, of the the eight parts of speech, the "ten basic sentence patterns" and the rules of English grammar? What the fuck does it mean to "instill[] a certain reverence for the verb", or for that matter, "show them how English works on a transformational level"? You're going to accomplish these didactic feats *without* concious explication? I don't think so. Because you've already said quite explicitly that parts-of-speech identification is a "means" of getting students to understand how sentences are made:
D: "[P]art of speech identification is not an end in itself. It is a means to a larger goal. A student's knowledge of what a noun or a verb is is completely useless unless he understands how a sentence is built. And this understanding is impossible without first gathering constituent information from a whole sentnece."
So are you or are you not advocating diagramming sentences?
998. Seguine - Jan. 17, 1999 - 4:12 PM PT
"After all, a part of speech is determined by the word's function is sentence, not by whether it is a person, place, or thing. Ineed, "automobile" is a thing, but in "automobile show" it functions as an adjective."
This, according to Dildo, needs to be explained to native speakers because:
D: "Beginning or basic writers, even though they are native speakers of English, do not possess the special forms and conventions of written English. These forms and conventions are dramatically different from those of spoken language and therefore must be treated as componenets of a different "dialect." Given that, beginning and basic writers demonstrate some elements of the behavior of learners of a second language."
But in the first place, written English is not "dramatically different" from spoken *standard* English, unless the "special forms and conventions" you're talking about comprise bits of trivia like avoiding ending sentences with prepositions. In the second place, so WHAT if written language is like a different dialect. Do you think people need to have the parts of speech taught to them, or learn to 'revere' the verb, in order to pick up new dialects? (Word: home *know* "automobile" a ajitive, even tho he aint down wit what be a adjitive, or how come he got to know *why* iss a ajitive.)
999. Seguine - Jan. 17, 1999 - 4:14 PM PT
The reason beginning/basic writers don't write well is a) inexperience and b) because they speak provincially and generally haven't been required to do otherwise. Nor are they required to read widely (until college), nor write to a standard exceeding mediocrity.
I would think that heavy and relentless exposure to the 'dialects' of written language--that is, making students read a lot of good and varied prose, write constantly, and submit to far higher standards of writing than are common--is probably sufficient to teach them to write well enough. If it isn't, then you may begin an explanation of why it is not by answering my question: How have you determined that the instructional techniques you advocate work better than these?
1000. pseudoerasmus - Jan. 17, 1999 - 4:16 PM PT
resonance (Message #992): Gibberish. Of course phonetics is part of linguistics. But what were you using "lingual" in the phonetics sense? Obviously not.
Resonance, I have never seen anybody in the Fray who, as much as you, can be counted on to use obscure or jargon words even though ordinary-language substitutes are ready to hand. This would be hardly worth observing if you used these obscure words for some rhetorical or poetical purpose, or to convey some shade of meaning not found in their simpler synonyms. But that's virtually never the case. I have seen you use the word "nescience" when you clearly meant nothing more than "ignorance" (and it was not in some parallel construction with "science"). I have seen you substitute "praxis" for "policy". These things, so egregiously inapt, stood out like chancres.