Grammar is based on viewpoints (?)

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 10:11 am

"Grammar is merely a product of a viewpoint; change the viewpoint and you change the grammar."

http://www.rbuckmaster.com/the%20elt%20verb.pdf

Do you agree?

revel · Post by **revel** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 11:49 am

Hey there!

Thanks for the link, metal56, have begun reading the material but will have to set it aside to make lunch. It is certainly interesting, though.

If your question is about the quote you gave, yes, I agree that different perspectives develop into different grammars. I know that I teach grammar in a radically different (more simplified) way than my fellow teachers.

If you are asking if I agree with the document offered in your link, can't say yet, have to study it carefully, but some of the ideas are certainly worth contrasting with my own!

peace,
revel.

Lorikeet · Post by **Lorikeet** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 4:26 pm

Yes, thanks for the link. I am about halfway through. It makes a lot of sense to me, but alas I would have trouble using it in my classes. If I were younger and able to absorb the whole idea better, I might be able to use it well. As it is, I can understand what he's saying, but absorbing it, explaining it, and doing that in a context where students are exposed to the standard style of doing things as well would be difficult. However, I might incorporate some of the thoughts as alternate explanations. I have tried not to be dogmatic in my grammar explanations, since grammar is really just our efforts to make sense out of what is, and what is can always (and does!) change.

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Sun Jul 11, 2004 8:06 am

revel wrote:Hey there!

Thanks for the link, metal56, have begun reading the material but will have to set it aside to make lunch. It is certainly interesting, though.

If your question is about the quote you gave, yes, I agree that different perspectives develop into different grammars. I know that I teach grammar in a radically different (more simplified) way than my fellow teachers.

If you are asking if I agree with the document offered in your link, can't say yet, have to study it carefully, but some of the ideas are certainly worth contrasting with my own!

peace,
revel.

To clarify, yes I was asking about the quote.

Cheers

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Sun Jul 11, 2004 8:11 am

Lorikeet wrote:Yes, thanks for the link. I am about halfway through. It makes a lot of sense to me, but alas I would have trouble using it in my classes. If I were younger and able to absorb the whole idea better, I might be able to use it well. As it is, I can understand what he's saying, but absorbing it, explaining it, and doing that in a context where students are exposed to the standard style of doing things as well would be difficult. However, I might incorporate some of the thoughts as alternate explanations. I have tried not to be dogmatic in my grammar explanations, since grammar is really just our efforts to make sense out of what is, and what is can always (and does!) change.

I agree, as we get older it's harder to want to be such a radical in class. Even the proponents of the Lexical Approach still have a hard time convincing students to follow some of their suggestions in learning the grammaticalised lexis way.

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Sun Jul 11, 2004 8:42 am

Well, to comment on the quote, you could say it depends on which kind of grammar you're talking about.

If we are talking about the "innate grammar" which native speakers are supposed to have, the answer is likely to be no, but as we are nowhere near making an accurate description of it, even if the task were feasible, then I suggest we leave it out of the equation.

So grammar will change according to the viewpoint; a prescriptive grammar will be different from a descriptive grammar, which will be different from a pedagogic grammar, and a pedagogic grammar will vary according to the age and level of the students.

However, I believe what metal56 is putting up for discussion is the idea that a descriptive grammar will vary according to the viewpoint. I would go one further - a descriptive grammar is nothing more than a viewpoint. Now this doesn't mean anything goes, since the veiwpoint must still have the language viewed as its source, and the viewpoint/grammar must be as consistent as possible within itself.

And this brings me to my pet peeve about linguistics - the preponderance of roll-your-own solutions. Discuss what is a catatenative, or modality and you have any number of different explanations of the same term. It could be said, and has been by Larry, that this is because of the 'immaturity' of linguistics as a discipline. I tend to think it is because it has lost the oremus, and part of the reason is that there is a reluctance to accept that descriptive grammars are simply artefacts, and that there are advantages in accepting a certain system as standard just so we can go forward.

A few random Sunday thoughts anyway.

LarryLatham · Post by **LarryLatham** » Tue Jul 13, 2004 1:35 am

Let me also add my thanks, Metal56, for the link. Mr. Buckmaster's monograph is quite interesting, and raises some challenges for English Language Teachers to think about and, one hopes, act on.

I understood the monograph. Indeed, I found it quite easy to follow, despite some instances where I might argue with Mr. Buckmaster on some of the fine details of what he has written. It was easy for me because I have absorbed Michael Lewis from many readings of his The English Verb, on which Mr. Buckmaster's ideas are heavily based. That is not to diminish what Mr. Buckmaster has accomplished here (or rather, I would say has started, because I have the feeling that what we read was a draft of a larger and more complete work in process). But I am looking forward to a more completely or more rigorously explained thesis. I suspect that readers who have not read and apprehended Lewis may have a much harder time understanding this monograph. However, let me hasten to say, here, that I do largely and enthusiastically agree with Mr. Buckmaster's approach. His ideas pretty much match my own (but he's written them down better than I have).

As for your question in the first posting on this thread, I cannot answer because I don't understand his statement.

"Grammar is merely a product of a viewpoint; change the viewpoint and you change the grammar."

Perhaps I am just thick in the head (maybe because I'm too old), but I do not understand what this means, even in the context of his article. I don't know whether to agree with it or not.

Larry Latham

LarryLatham · Post by **LarryLatham** » Tue Jul 13, 2004 3:52 am

Stephen,

Your English vocabulary has always been better than mine!! What is an oremus?

Larry Latham

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Tue Jul 13, 2004 6:46 am

Woops! Spanglish rears its ugly head again! "perder el oremus" is a Spanish phrase meaning to lose one's bearings. The word oremus does exist in English; it is a liturgical prayer beginning with the word 'oremus' (SOED).

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Tue Jul 13, 2004 8:30 am

As for your question in the first posting on this thread, I cannot answer because I don't understand his statement.

"Grammar is merely a product of a viewpoint; change the viewpoint and you change the grammar."

Glad you enjoyed the article, Larry.

I think he means that there is no fixed viewpoint on grammar. For example, many students and teachers stiil believe that the term "past simple" came about because the verb is used mostly to describe before-now actions. That's a viewpoint which not only is in error, but leads to misunderstandings about the from. Another viewpoint is the one espoused by Lewis, Buckmaster and you and I-Ido hope there are more of us. That view looks at the "past" from of the verb as distancing. Distancing in time, likelihood and formality. The latter viewpoint prefers "the second form" as a term for what is known by others as the past simple. Change the viewpoint and change the grammar.

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Tue Jul 13, 2004 8:32 am

Stephen Jones wrote:Well, to comment on the quote, you could say it depends on which kind of grammar you're talking about.

...and that there are advantages in accepting a certain system as standard just so we can go forward.

Are there any disadvantages?

revel · Post by **revel** » Tue Jul 13, 2004 10:13 am

Hey all!

One disadvantage I encounter (which is not a horrible one) is that most students when they come to me, look for a pat explanation of every phenomena they encounter in my classes. Since I teach English in a contextual manner, I often have to teach the additional rule of "English is like that!" Naturally, at first, they laugh at that rule, and after 20 hours studying with me, they continue to laugh when I don't give a detailed explanation of sentences like "Nowhere is there a .... " I instead try to get the meaning across and let them know that if that is the meaning they want to convey, this is the chain of sounds that will convey that meaning, if they get past the intonation, reduction, liason and all those other things we do to add meaning to our words.

Where is the grammar of intonation? Of modulation? Of inappropriate word stress?

I went to the store yesterday.
I went to the store yesterday.
I went to the store yesterday.
I went to the store yesterday.
I went to the store yesterday?¿?¿

Despite grammars that would say "First person singular personal pronoun + go in simple past + preposition of direction + definite article + noun + time marker", how do we get our students to use these five sentences with the meanings that are implicit (or can be deducted) by the change in stress? The grammar gives us a model, but each artist will paint what he or she sees.

So, yes, viewpoint does change "grammar", if you are bothering to use grammar to get your point across....

peace,
revel.

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Tue Jul 13, 2004 10:13 am

Obviously. And a lesser or greater number depending on the system that's accepted.

Thanks for the link anyway; it was worth it just for the quote from Swan about those who 'Have seen the light'.

I've put the book on my PDA so I should have it read within the next couple of days.

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Tue Jul 13, 2004 10:16 am

----"For example, many students and teachers stiil believe that the term "past simple" came about because the verb is used mostly to describe before-now actions."----

They are of course quite right.

LarryLatham · Post by **LarryLatham** » Tue Jul 13, 2004 5:15 pm

Metal56 wrote: I think he means that there is no fixed viewpoint on grammar. For example, many students and teachers stiil believe that the term "past simple" came about because the verb is used mostly to describe before-now actions. That's a viewpoint which not only is in error, but leads to misunderstandings about the from. Another viewpoint is the one espoused by Lewis, Buckmaster and you and I-Ido hope there are more of us. That view looks at the "past" from of the verb as distancing. Distancing in time, likelihood and formality. The latter viewpoint prefers "the second form" as a term for what is known by others as the past simple. Change the viewpoint and change the grammar.

OK. I guess in my wobbly mind, 'the grammar' and 'the viewpoint' are separate things. I would have said, since I very much agree with Buckmaster that the grammar of a language is a system, that you can have many descriptions of the grammar, and some of them may be more accurate than others, but the actual grammar (that is, the system itself) remains what it is. Look at a chair from straight on and you get one viewpoint. Move a few degrees to the left or right, and it looks different, but the chair hasn't changed. English grammar, the way I see it, is just exactly what it is at any particular time. It does change, of course, because it evolves. Not only that, it evolves differently in different speech communities, depending on the degree of isolation of those communities from others. But our imperfections as describers, or our pitiful scramblings to keep up with evolutionary modifications, do not themselves change the grammar of English. My goodness, English grammar has enough problems to deal with without that complication!!!

Larry Latham
BTW, lolwhites is another brother in "distancing". There are more of us, I'm sure. Even Stephen Jones is close, though I'm sure he'd be loathe to admit it. He keeps insisting that because Past Simple is used most often for distancing in time, that "[those who argue that the form is used to mark events in past time] are of course quite right." And, of course, he is quite right (in that limited sense)...and he knows we know that too. But I believe he can see the logic in the "distance" argument. And I think he'll come round soon enough. He just enjoys a good fight!

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Grammar is based on viewpoints (?)

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