Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION TO TRADITIONAL GRAMMAR
The Goals of 110J
I'm going to be spending nearly a chapter here at then beginning trying to explain what this section of 110J is not about. According to the catalogue description, this is an upper-division majors course which covers the basic elements of traditional grammar and usage. For some students, this description simply means that 110J should help them to become better writers or proofreaders. In other words, it should be a part of the composition program. And I admit that some teachers regard it as such. However, this is not the Department's view nor is it mine.
You might note that this course or an equivalent is actually a prerequisite for those seeking a teaching credential as well as those working towards an MA in Teaching English as a Second Language. In addition, no major university offers an upper-division course in traditional grammar as an aid to composition, mainly because studies have shown that the academic study of grammar does not, in fact, help students write better and does not even help them to become better proofreaders if they are not already proficient.
Most students are not even aware that there are at least two different types of traditional grammars, the school or teaching grammars that all students have been forced to study and the academic or scholarly grammars which are really the subject of our course.
Linguists recognize three types of grammars based upon their purposes: normative, descriptive and explanatory. The first is the oldest and most common type. These grammars, which have become know as ‘traditional’ were written for one basic purpose: to inform people of the ‘correct’ or ‘proper’ rules of a prestige dialect so that it will not change but remain intact through time. Of course, there are other goals of normative grammars, but this has always been the primary one.
Since all the earliest grammars were normative or prescriptive in that they instructed people on how they ought or ought not use a language, it is not unreasonable to say that it is the most traditional or oldest interpretation of grammar. (But this fact alone does not make them appropriate for a modern curriculum.) In addition, I would be last to deny that 95% of even educated people believe that grammars are sets of rules for ‘correct’ or ‘proper’ usage; by the same token, most of these same 95% hated studying grammar in school. And this includes most teachers. Perhaps there is a correlation between these two sets of phenomena, particularly if we look at research that shows very little relationship between high scores on standard grammar tests and actual language proficiency.
It is for this reason that the trend in modern education is to teach grammar as an academic subject in its own right that has little to do with language performance skills. In fact, from the beginning of modern scholarship, it has been felt that an understanding of language and how it works is a necessary part of the training of any educated mind. Using modern educational terminology, it is now felt that the basic reason that one should study grammar is to develop one's mental capacities, one's critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
In contrast to then normative grammarians, understanding as opposed to prescribing was the basic goal of the ‘scholarly’ traditional grammarians. Hence, these traditional grammarians were more interested in studying and describing the way that language actually worked than they were in correcting and judging people. Although these grammarians were not what modern linguists would call ‘objective’ since they still continued to believe in a standard or prestige dialect and only sought to explore and understand that dialect and though their insights into language were not based upon the scientific method, many believe that the approach of these 19th and early 20th century scholars can provide a model for students in contemporary America.
I share this belief. So what I will be providing you with here in 110J is a reformatted version of the methods used in scholarly traditional grammars. Our aim, then, will not be to provide students with rules for correct usage but to teach you how to use your own intuitions about language to deepen your understanding
of the grammar of English. In so doing, method will be very important. For it is not what you say about language that counts as much as your reasoning behind what you say.
But before we begin, it is important to back up and spend a little more time talking about traditional normative or teaching grammars. I'll discuss what they are, why they became so important in western cultural history and in so doing give some general uses of prescriptive grammars and usage manuals.
Normative Grammars
Let me give an example of how normative grammars work. First of all, we have to understand what dialects are because all normative grammars are based upon a single preferred, standard or prestige dialect (that of whoever writes the books). Dialects are defined by modern linguists as ‘mutually intelligible forms of a single language which differ in systematic ways from each other.’ In other words, American English and French are two different languages. South Bronx (New York) street English and San Fernando Valley teen English are dialects of American English. So in reality, no one speaks a pure form of English; there is no such thing. Every native speaker speaks a dialect or variation of English.
Therefore, the specific rules of normative grammars of English are all based upon a specific dialect of English. But since most teaching grammars are based upon written as opposed to spoken English, they claim to be neutral and objective. But the fact is that written sentences are modeled on speech, and the sentences of American standard English are closer to some spoken dialects of American English than others.
Dialect Differences
Now I want to give you some specific examples of dialect differences and how these can then be translated into grammatical rules. Let’s suppose that I live in a town with two major dialects. In one dialect, the one I speak, sentences do not end with words such as ‘of’ and ‘about.’ (The [*] indicates a sentence which is not acceptable to native speakers of a language or dialect.) There is no logical reason for this fact. It is simply the way my dialect has evolved.
low-lifers, deadheads, etc., etc. But having a grammatical rule is much more civilized and polite. Now I can insist, as mayor, that all the schools teach my grammar book. I can also insist that all businesses and the media use it is a standard. In so doing, I can essentially influence how language is taught, who gets hired and what gets said in public. And it all adds up to making my dialect the dialect of power and staus without my having to say a thing.
All right. Let me give one last example. Suppose the other dialect allows sentences like the following:
4) *(I, you, he, she, it) be here today.
5) *(I, you, he, she, it) be running in the race.
while my dialect does not. What I could then do is make up a paradigm or a model of how I use the form ‘to be.’
6) ‘Is’ is the third person singular of ‘to be.’
Hence, whoever wants to use the copula ‘correctly’ will have to follow (6). Again, what I’ve done is take my own usage and set it down as a rule for others to follow. But I never make any objective attempt to explain why because I can't.
To repeat, it is clear that I am assuming that the way I do things is ‘right’ and that others ought to do just as I do. And because I am the mayor and I own every company in town and I have a very large and fierce gang of thugs and I also control what is taught in the schools, needless to say, anyone who wishes to remain alive or become upwardly mobile had better start reading my grammar book pretty fast because it is in their best interest to do so.
But as a matter of fact, in my deepest heart (I went to college), I know there is no logical reason why my rules are better. I know that the people on the other side of town are just as human as I am. It's just that I like my rules and I want other people to like them too. After all, our way of speaking has been, well, a tradition in our town. Yes, that's right. Our grammar is traditional.
Uses of Uniform Rules
Of course, there may be other, less coercive reasons for my wanting a certain type of linguistic conformity. I don't want to imply that common or shared standards are in themselves evil or repressive. Far from it. For example, I might be in business and have to deal with people who speak various foreign languages as well as different dialects of my own. Hence, I simply want to establish uniformity so that a manager in one branch can communicate clearly and efficiently with another.
Computer programs may serve as a good model for the point I'm trying to make here. Suppose I have a company with many branches throughout the country and have one single computer program that serves all the computers that all my branches use, regardless of what state they are in. Uniformity assures me that a letter in a file in our Georgia branch can be accessed by our branch in Idaho.
Now this program has certain rules which anyone who uses the program must follow. One such rule is that all document names must begin with a drive name, a [:] and a [\] and they all must end with [.Doc]. In addition, the document names can be a maximum of eight characters.
1) A:\Letter.Doc
2) *A\:Letter.Doc
3) *A:\A Word to your Mother.Doc
This is a description of a rule, but note that the rule itself is not natural or correct. It is, in a sense, made up and arbitrary. It was designed by the programmer to fit into the system he or she was developing. The rule itself is not right or wrong. It is simply a rule. But conforming to the rule determines whether or not you will be able to use the program and communicate with others in my company who do.
So even though my computer program may not be the only one or even the best one, anyone who wishes to work for me must learn it and use it correctly.
The fact of the matter is my employees may go to another company that uses a different program that involves a different set of rules. Suppose my competitor has a program that states that a document has to be identified with a drive name [drive:] only
f the document is to be sent to another drive and that it can have a name with a maximum of thirty characters. In this case, the following would all be ‘correct.’
4) A Word to your Mother
5) B:A Word to your Mother
6) C:A Word to your Mother.Doc
7) C:A Word to your Mother.Letter
On the other hand, this relative flexibility doesn't mean just anything goes. For example, there may still be strict rules regarding document names, e.g. I may not use a [:] inside a name.
8) *Your: Mother
Of course, these are the types of rules that are built in to the program, so that if you were to violate them, you would not be able to proceed. Hence, if you tried to save a document with an incorrect title, your program would not allow you to save it and you would be stuck. However, there may be other procedures that I might insist upon that are not programming but policy protocols. In fact, both companies might have a policy rule that states that all letters and correspondence must be saved on a central D drive, so all letters to vendors would begin with a [D:\] or a [D:].
At any rate, most would agree that my request for conformity in this case is really quite reasonable. If my workers can’t access their computers and communicate with other workers, they can’t do their jobs efficiently and I go out of business and everyone loses.
Grammars as Usage Guides
Now, to return to the subject of grammar, let me repeat once again that most people, even educated people, believe that learning grammar means learning the rules for correct usage. A grammarian or an English teacher is seen as a police officer of language whose job is to point out ‘errors’ and correct them. And a grammar book is like a rule book where the universal rules of language are stated once and for all for any and all to follow.
This line of reasoning is based upon a misconception of what natural languages and grammars of natural languages are. First of all, computer program manuals can be accurate because they de
describe artificial systems which were created by humans. Natural languages are far more complex than any human system. When you think about it, in principle, there is a user's manual for every program that has been created. However, there are thousands of dialects of American English alone and only a small handful of grammars. Even the claim that there is one standard written English and these grammar books explain that one dialect is false. There are literally hundreds of written dialects of English.
Second, computer programs were intended to be used and user's manuals or some other interface make that use possible. On the otheq¨and, natural languages, even in written form, have existed and will continue to exist without formal grammars.
Third, given what we have just said, viewing a single grammar of English to be a user's guide to English misses the point of what a grammar can, logically, be. No grammar can be a guide to proper usage in all contexts and in all situations. Most of you would not try using a manual for one program (Microsoft Word) to explain another (Aldus Pagemaker) just as we would not try to tune a Honda V-Tech engine using Julia Child's recipe for strawberry mousse. Why is it, then, that we demand that there be a single grammar book to teach us the correct way to write and to speak in all contexts and in all styles? It boggles the mind.
But here is where the user's manual analogy really works. In the real world, there are unique usage needs that can be spelled out in an explicit guide. However, these rules are not general and global but specific to the needs of specific companies, organizations or industries. For example, in the case of punctuation, the US Postal Service now requests that punctuation not be used in addressing envelopes. So many usage guides and style sheets for companies are now being revised.
If a student came from a university with his or her old grammar book and tried to apply it to a job setting, the student would either have to follow company guidelines or be out. Hence, when it comes to usage, it is far more important for a student to learn how to be flexible and ready and willing to change than it is to have mastery over a static set of rules that really don't apply to anything because they are already outdated even as they are being learned. The current emphasis on critical thinking in education
today is really an emphasis on flexibility, since intellectual flexibility is the key to survival in an ever-changing complex world.
Lastly, the goals of usage manuals and the goals of scholarly traditional grammars are different. The purpose of a grammar is not to serve as a how-to-do-it guide but as a means to understanding and appreciating the complexity of language for its own sake. Very little of the terminology of grammatical analysis has much to do with revising compositions or proofreading newspaper articles.
So, the primary goal of studying the parts of speech and grammatical functions in 110J will not be to enable the student to write better. Rather, the student will learn how to describe and analyze the basic sentences of English in order to gain improve his or her critical thinking skills and in so doing gain a deeper understanding of how language works. Sometimes there will be more confusion than clarity, but this is one of the risks of any intellectual enterprise.
Sorting Things Out
Again, I want to make it very clear that I am not opposed to normative grammars just as I am not opposed to computer user's manuals, road maps or normative critical thinking models. After all, we have to be realistic: whether we like it or not, our society does require that educated people master certain forms of language as well as thought.
In conclusion, the problem is not with normative approaches in themselves but how these approaches are understood and how they are taught. Grammatical correctness has been traditionally related to morality, class background and intelligence in the same way that personal hygiene, e.g. bathing regularly and flossing one's teeth, has been related to morality and goodness and light. Please examine the following statements:
•Persons of superior moral worth speak proper English at all times.
•God® doesn't ever, ever say ain't or who dat?
•The more correct a man's English is, the less likely that man is
to lie, cheat, steal, chew or beat his dog.
•The measure of a man's of true social standing (class background) can always been seen in his mastery of the rules of correct English.
•The better a woman's spoken English the better able she is to
control her emotions and behave rationally.
•Stupid people don't understand the importance of correct speech.
•Proper English and superior intelligence are one and inseparable.
•Unless you master the rules of correct and proper English once and for all, people will always look down upon you and you will never advance in the world and get the promotions you so richly deserve.
•If one knows the rules of correct grammar, then one won't ever have to use a napkin when dining in fine restaurants.
•Learn to improve your English in five easy lessons and you can be come a movie star, the Pope or even the President of America.
As ludicrous as it might seem from a logical point of view, these are the types of judgments which have dominated our social and cultural thinking about grammar until very recently. Thanks to the computer, MTV, sports, the power of money and the intense competition to find new markets, all this is being changed. But even here, I don't believe that change is good in and of itself. Change is simply change. Whether it amounts to good or bad is up to us.
But let me repeat one more time that I understand perfectly why even good students demand that 110J help them to improve their writing and speaking (as opposed to their thinking). They imagine large and powerful corporations out there that literally demand that university graduates be able to communicate using the rules of standard or correct usage or else they will be totally and utterly destroyed and never get jobs and titles and BMW's. And some of these nightmares are true. I won't deny this.
Of course, times are changing. Rapidly. So what more and more corporations are, in fact, demanding is all-around intelligence, open-mindedness and enhanced problem-solving skills. And it is the primary objective of this course to use traditional grammar as a means of developing these three areas. What I would like to do