Is there a grammar of spoken English?

[metal56]

Summarising: Three ways of looking at it. Extracts from the Geoffrey Leech article, English Grammar in Conversation.

View 1: Spoken English has no grammar at all: it is grammatically inchoate.


(That view) ...does not need to be taken seriously, although it is surprisingly persistent in the mind of the folk grammarian. It is inherited from the age-old tradition associating grammar with the written language, and it is bolstered by examples such as the following, which, like others which follow, is from the Longman spoken corpus:


No. Do you know erm you know where the erm go over to er go over erm where the fire station is not the one that white white



View 2: Spoken English does not have a special grammar: its grammar is just the same as the grammar of written English

Conversation makes use of entities such as prepositions, modals, noun phrases and relative clauses, just as written language does. So - assuming, as many would, that differences of frequency belong to the use of the grammar, rather than to the grammatical system itself - it is quite natural to think in terms of one English grammar, whose use in conversational performance can be contrasted with its use in various kinds of writing. In other words, conversational grammar is seen to be just a rather special implementation of the common grammar of English: a discovery which does not necessarily in any way diminish the interest of studying the grammar (i.e. the grammatical use) of spoken language.

View 3: Spoken English does have a special grammar - it has its own principles, rules and categories, which are different from those of the written language.

In handling spoken language, (David) Brazil argues for a totally different approach to grammar from the approach which has become familiar through conventional focus on the written language. He argues for a linear model moving dynamically through time, and puts aside the more traditional architectural model in terms of hierarchies of units. Although Carter and McCarthy do not take this thorough-going approach, they do throw the spotlight on grammatical features of spoken language which they feel have been largely neglected by standard grammars entrenched in the 'written tradition'. They argue that structures which are inherent to speech have not been properly studied until the advent of the spoken computer corpus, and are consequently absent from canonised written grammar familiar to learners of English throughout the world: structures such as the 'dislocated topic' of This little shop ... it's lovely or the 'wagging tail' of Oh I reckon they're lovely. I really do whippets. These tend to find their raison d'être in the fact that conversation constructs itself in a dynamic fashion, giving the speaker only a small look-ahead window for planning what to say, and often inducing retrospective add-ons. Carter and McCarthy (1995) put forward a structural model for the clause in conversation, containing in addition to the core clause itself a pre-clause topic and a post-clause tail. With their refreshing emphasis on the dynamic modelling of grammar in action, Carter and McCarthy seem to be taking a line similar to Brazil's advocacy of a new grammar of speech.

Read more at: http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/phil/english/ ... /Leech.htm

[joshua2004]

Thanks for sharing the article. I hope perspective 3 takes hold and becomes further studied. It would be a giant leap forward in my opinion in how we teach our students to speak. I think so many students try to speak like they are writing and spoken language just isn't the same!

[JuanTwoThree]

http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/ucrel/bncfreq/flists.html

[LarryLatham]

View 1, as you say, needn't be taken seriously.

View 2 seems to be the one assumed by most language teachers I have met. I suppose most just never think about it, because after all, that's the view they were taught in school. It's the view still taught in most teacher training (unless there's been a big change in course structure in the last couple of years). Only if a teacher is personally curious about such matters does it occur to him/her to wonder if there might be structural differences (or lexical differences) between written and spoken language. Then he/she has to go after it (study) independently.

View 3 seems to have quite a lot of evidence to support it. It's hard to deny that there are expressions which appear only in written or only in spoken English. One hears, and participates in, language every day that would never be written down, except possibly as dialog. And if one truly listens to students reading aloud from any written text, one realizes that people don't talk that way. But as far as I am aware, only the recent Longman Grammar of Spoken English attempts a detailed description of spoken as a distinct architecture.

Larry Latham

[metal56]

View 1, as you say, needn't be taken seriously.

View 2 seems to be the one assumed by most language teachers I have met. I suppose most just never think about it, because after all, that's the view they were taught in school. It's the view still taught in most teacher training (unless there's been a big change in course structure in the last couple of years).

Larry Latham

Regarding support from education authorities, the research and teaching of spoken grammar seems to be catching hold in Britain more than in the States.


http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/Pubs/carter.html

Spoken language to have own grammar
Consideration about what children should be taught about the rules of language structure has, in the past, been closely linked to their work on writing. Now, however, there is to be an official focus on what should be taught about the grammar of spoken language.

The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority in England has embarked on a study of what grammatical terms are needed to describe speech, and how some of these can be made explicit to children. This is a complex and largely unexplored area since the rules of language have until now been seen largely in terms of writing - almost as though speech were an aberrant form of written language. The QCA has brought in a leading linguistics academic, Professor Ron Carter of Nottingham University, to work with them on the project. The QCA sees the project as vital to primary teachers, who have to help pupils make the transition from speech to writing and understand the difference between the two forms.

The spoken grammar initiative was launched at a seminar Spoken English, Grammar and the Classroom in 2001. Following the seminar, participants produced written responses to the issues raised and made suggestions for classroom work. QCA is now exploring the latter with a group of teachers and, as a result of these consultations, materials will be produced for trialling in primary and secondary schools. The initial focus will be on key stages 2 and 3.

The primary literacy strategy, which has transformed English teaching in the past few years, has no speaking and listening learning objectives. National tests assess reading and writing skills, so teachers have focused on these.

(The Primary Education Magazine, December 2001)


http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/Databas ... ml#grammar