Since the school year has just come to an end, I feel like this blog needs some sort of closure too. I haven’t posted in awhile since some of the projects begun on this blog have been taking shape in other forms. Much of the information from the blog now resides at Exploring Language, a website that contains lessons for grades 3-8. It is very much in a newborn stage, so I will be making changes, corrections, additions, etc. Please feel free to send feedback using the contact form on the website. Also resulting from the blogging is an article on the Common Core, spurred by this post that will be published in Wiley-Blackwell’s Compass later this year. And I have a couple of other articles out for review that may be of interest to readers of this blog; when they have a published form, I’ll let you know.
Another good site that Dave Pippin tipped me off to is Englicious (that’s the log in page, but teachers can have a free trial period, and you can read see sample materials before registering here). It’s tied to the UK’s National Curriculum, which is much more of a top-down curriculum than anything we have in the U.S., though with many similarities to the Common Core (which, remember, is not a curriculum). Linguist Bas Aarts, at University College London, is heading up this project, which looks like a good model for us here. Here’s a brochure about the enterprise, and here’s a Telegraph article about the need for more instruction in language, grammar, in particular, that is motivating the Englicious materials.
I may still post here on MiddleSchoolLing occasionally; I do find that I like to spit out stuff here first and hear from some of you; then it can begin to take a more refined form (as a lesson or an article or a conversation with a friend).
Haboo!
(See Angela Roh’s article, “And you can all say haboo: Enriching the standard language arts curriculum with linguistic analysis” in Linguistics at School: Language awareness in primary and secondary education for more on "haboo".)
Thursday, June 19, 2014
Wednesday, April 30, 2014
Common Core Musings
I’ve been spending time lately not developing lessons with teachers, but trying to bring together the work we have done into some kind of resource that is useful to a wider audience (a website, I think), as well writing some articles on what I’ve been learning through my collaborations. I’ve also been thinking again about the Common Core. I have developed a set of lessons for grades 3-5, each connected to the standards - but I’m a little uncomfortable with these, and I've been trying to figure out why. Here are some of the reasons.
I, like many, have mixed feelings about the Common Core State Standards. The only ones I’ve spent any time reading through and thinking about are the Language Standards. On the one hand, these are exciting since they include quite a bit of knowledge about grammar, usage, etymology, and morphological analysis. Apparently, there were even some linguists among the creators of the language standards strand with its three sections: Conventions of Standard English, Knowledge of Language, and Vocabulary Acquisition and Use. Each strand includes between about 15 and 30 standards per grade in these three areas. Examples from grades 3, 5, 7, and 9-10 of Conventions of Standard English are shown below:
On the other hand, I’m troubled that these standards may become yet another list, items to check off without teacher or student fully understanding or appreciating the value of such knowledge. For indeed, the value isn’t evident if the standards are approached as concepts to be taught. However, if they are used as a scaffold for introducing a method of thinking, of discovery, rather than as a checklist, they could become a very good starting place for investigations into language.
There is some very direct value in studying the concepts alone, as I’ve written about elsewhere in this blog. Learning about the concepts in the standards, such as parts of speech, tense, aspect, types of clauses, and so on, will have direct applications to reading, writing, and analysis of literature. But importantly, students can gain much more than knowledge about grammar and its applications. Cameron (1997, "Sparing the Rod: What teachers need to know about grammar," Changing English 4.2), in discussing similar standards in England, stresses the importance of knowledge beyond “constituent structure and word class categories…if you want students to have not merely some factual knowledge about language but a critical awareness on such issues as the value of standard and nonstandard dialects, the status of minority languages, etc.” (235). And quite critically, knowledge about the structure of language is the foundation upon which such other knowledge is built. Cameron adds the following:
The other component of the standards that makes me somewhat uncomfortable has to do with so-called Standard English. One of the sections of each Language Strand is called Conventions of Standard English. This term promotes the mythical idea – what some would call an ideal – of a single standard variety. My collaborator extraordinaire, Anne Lobeck, and I have been working on several projects related to this idea of Standard/Academic English. She has noted that there is much evidence that there simply is no homogeneous linguistic variety with specific rules and forms that speakers and writers know and agree on. There are a handful of shibboleths of both speaking and writing, but not enough to build an entire notion of a standard around. Promoting such a hypothetical standard in our standards allows for an institutionalization of the process of linguistic subordination and overlooks the discrimination suffered by speakers of non-mainstream dialects, including (some) non-native speakers of English.
Many of the lessons that have grown out of my collaborations with teachers – many in this blog – begin to get at all of these notions, but the standards themselves, don’t. It’s important, then, that we approach the standards critically. We may use them to help achieve what we want our students to know, but we must make sure that they are not reinforcing aspects of ideologies about language that we reject.
I, like many, have mixed feelings about the Common Core State Standards. The only ones I’ve spent any time reading through and thinking about are the Language Standards. On the one hand, these are exciting since they include quite a bit of knowledge about grammar, usage, etymology, and morphological analysis. Apparently, there were even some linguists among the creators of the language standards strand with its three sections: Conventions of Standard English, Knowledge of Language, and Vocabulary Acquisition and Use. Each strand includes between about 15 and 30 standards per grade in these three areas. Examples from grades 3, 5, 7, and 9-10 of Conventions of Standard English are shown below:
Grade 3:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.3.1.A: Explain the function of nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs in general and their functions in particular sentences.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.3.1.B: Form and use regular and irregular plural nouns.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.3.1.C: Use abstract nouns (e.g., childhood).
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.3.1.D: Form and use regular and irregular verbs.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.3.1.E: Form and use the simple (e.g., I walked; I walk; I will walk) verb tenses.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.3.1.F: Ensure subject-verb and pronoun-antecedent agreement.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.3.1.G: Form and use comparative and superlative adjectives and adverbs, and choose between them depending on what is to be modified.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.3.1.H: Use coordinating and subordinating conjunctions.
Grade 5:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.5.1.A: Explain the function of conjunctions, prepositions, and interjections in general and their function in particular sentences.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.5.1.B: Form and use the perfect (e.g., I had walked; I have walked; I will have walked) verb tenses.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.5.1.C: Use verb tense to convey various times, sequences, states, and conditions.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.5.1.D: Recognize and correct inappropriate shifts in verb tense.
Grade 7:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.7.1.A: Explain the function of phrases and clauses in general and their function in specific sentences.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.7.1.B: Choose among simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences to signal differing relationships among ideas.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.7.1.C: Place phrases and clauses within a sentence, recognizing and correcting misplaced and dangling modifiers.*
Grade 9-10:The amount of knowledge about language expected here is more than we’ve seen in any other standards, so that’s good (though intimidating!) – the more knowledge about grammar and language, the better. (Though some of them are quite strange, as I wrote about here. I’m especially struck by this 8th grade one.)
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.9-10.1.B: Use various types of phrases (noun, verb, adjectival, adverbial, participial, prepositional, absolute) and clauses (independent, dependent; noun, relative, adverbial) to convey specific meanings and add variety and interest to writing or presentations.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.9-10.3: Apply knowledge of language to understand how language functions in different contexts, to make effective choices for meaning or style, and to comprehend more fully when reading or listening.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.9-10.4.D: Verify the preliminary determination of the meaning of a word or phrase (e.g., by checking the inferred meaning in context or in a dictionary).
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.9-10.5: Demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships, and nuances in word meanings.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.9-10.5.A: Interpret figures of speech (e.g., euphemism, oxymoron) in context and analyze their role in the text.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.9-10.5.B: Analyze nuances in the meaning of words with similar denotations.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.9-10.6: Acquire and use accurately general academic and domain-specific words and phrases, sufficient for reading, writing, speaking, and listening at the college and career readiness level; demonstrate independence in gathering vocabulary knowledge when considering a word or phrase important to comprehension or expression.
On the other hand, I’m troubled that these standards may become yet another list, items to check off without teacher or student fully understanding or appreciating the value of such knowledge. For indeed, the value isn’t evident if the standards are approached as concepts to be taught. However, if they are used as a scaffold for introducing a method of thinking, of discovery, rather than as a checklist, they could become a very good starting place for investigations into language.
There is some very direct value in studying the concepts alone, as I’ve written about elsewhere in this blog. Learning about the concepts in the standards, such as parts of speech, tense, aspect, types of clauses, and so on, will have direct applications to reading, writing, and analysis of literature. But importantly, students can gain much more than knowledge about grammar and its applications. Cameron (1997, "Sparing the Rod: What teachers need to know about grammar," Changing English 4.2), in discussing similar standards in England, stresses the importance of knowledge beyond “constituent structure and word class categories…if you want students to have not merely some factual knowledge about language but a critical awareness on such issues as the value of standard and nonstandard dialects, the status of minority languages, etc.” (235). And quite critically, knowledge about the structure of language is the foundation upon which such other knowledge is built. Cameron adds the following:
“[I]if people don’t understand the grammar, they cannot make critical positions their own, because they cannot understand the supporting arguments. For instance, the sociolinguist’s axiom that ‘all varieties of a language are equal’ is not just a political statement to the effect that one should not be prejudiced against, say, Black or working-class speech, it is a statement about the comparability of varieties on structural linguistics criteria such as systematicity, formal complexity and rule-governedness. For someone who does not understand what is meant by these terms, who cannot look at grammar as a system and formulate the rules, the axiom remains mere dogma, something you believe, or not, according to ideological conviction. To be truly ‘critical,’ language awareness must be informed by ‘technical’ knowledge about language” (235).The CCSSs also include a Knowledge of Language section for each grade level strand, which does incorporate notions about language in use with standards such as the following.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.5.3.B: Compare and contrast the varieties of English (e.g., dialects, registers) used in stories, dramas, or poems.In order to do address these well, however, and in ways that aren’t discriminatory, one must really understand the grammatical structures underlying the varieties, as well as understand the basis of biases of spoken and written variations.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.9-10.3: Apply knowledge of language to understand how language functions in different contexts, to make effective choices for meaning or style, and to comprehend more fully when reading or listening.
The other component of the standards that makes me somewhat uncomfortable has to do with so-called Standard English. One of the sections of each Language Strand is called Conventions of Standard English. This term promotes the mythical idea – what some would call an ideal – of a single standard variety. My collaborator extraordinaire, Anne Lobeck, and I have been working on several projects related to this idea of Standard/Academic English. She has noted that there is much evidence that there simply is no homogeneous linguistic variety with specific rules and forms that speakers and writers know and agree on. There are a handful of shibboleths of both speaking and writing, but not enough to build an entire notion of a standard around. Promoting such a hypothetical standard in our standards allows for an institutionalization of the process of linguistic subordination and overlooks the discrimination suffered by speakers of non-mainstream dialects, including (some) non-native speakers of English.
Many of the lessons that have grown out of my collaborations with teachers – many in this blog – begin to get at all of these notions, but the standards themselves, don’t. It’s important, then, that we approach the standards critically. We may use them to help achieve what we want our students to know, but we must make sure that they are not reinforcing aspects of ideologies about language that we reject.
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Strand 2/Morphology - Part 9: Contractions and spelling and conventions oh my
Deidre and her students have been talking about possessive nouns and the apostrophes that go along with them. I joined them today as they looked at contractions of verbs with pronouns. She had given them a list of pronouns and a list of verbs and they were to make a list of all of the possible contractions: I + am = I’m, you + are = you’re, who + s = who’s and so on. They noted that some looked odd in writing, like it’d, it’ll and who’re even though they sounded fine in speech. Deidre mentioned that in formal writing in general, you don’t find as many contractions. Next they broke into groups to investigate is and has and how pronouns contracted with these. One of the goals was to discover that you end up with identical-looking contractions that are made up of different words:
The students did great with the contractions and were really clear on the fact that the apostrophe represented the deleted letters. Deidre had them say which letters were missing to reinforce this. She was able to talk about the oft-conflated it’s/its and who’s/whose, so a spelling lesson comes along for free.
Auxiliary Have and Main Verb Have
What this activity made me think about as a possible follow-up lesson was the distinction between auxiliary verbs and main verbs, because, along with recognizing that is and has both contract to -‘s, the students were also discovering that there were two different verbs have. One could continue this exploration to see how auxiliary have and main verb have differ not only syntactically but also phonologically.
Have students describe the different pronunciations of have and has in the following examples or some like them:
Auxiliary verb have but not main verb have can also contract with not:
As speakers of a language, we just know that auxiliary verbs can do things that other verbs can’t. They contract with pronouns. They contract with not. They move to precede the subject in questions. AND, here's some syntactic evidence that some contractions are their own grammatical beast; they aren't just squished versions of the whole words. Consider the following:
Other lessons that deal with main and auxiliary verbs are here and here.
she’s = she + is or she + hasThe group I was hovering near immediately contracted the pronouns with has but then came up with the example sentence: He has candy. “Oh, but then you can’t contract it.” Another said, “But you can contract it if it’s like, He’s got three chickens.” They were coming up with great data to illustrate that there are two distinct types of have.
he’s = he + is or he + has
The students did great with the contractions and were really clear on the fact that the apostrophe represented the deleted letters. Deidre had them say which letters were missing to reinforce this. She was able to talk about the oft-conflated it’s/its and who’s/whose, so a spelling lesson comes along for free.
Auxiliary Have and Main Verb Have
What this activity made me think about as a possible follow-up lesson was the distinction between auxiliary verbs and main verbs, because, along with recognizing that is and has both contract to -‘s, the students were also discovering that there were two different verbs have. One could continue this exploration to see how auxiliary have and main verb have differ not only syntactically but also phonologically.
Have students describe the different pronunciations of have and has in the following examples or some like them:
I have ten dollars. - have pronounced with /v/Cool, huh? We just know that these are different words with different functions, and the pronunciation is an indicator of those differences. And they have already noticed that only auxiliary verb have can contract with a preceding pronoun, so that’s a syntactic fact about it:
She has ten dollars. - has pronounced with /z/
I have to go. - have pronounced with /f/
She has to go - has pronounced with /s/
She has been to Twisp.But main verb has, meaning ‘possess’ cannot contract. No main verb can (except main verb be, but that’s a story for another day); only the auxiliary verbs (forms of be and forms of have and the modal verbs).
She’s been to Twisp.
She has a horse.Negation and Questions
*She’s a horse. (Can only mean that she is a horse, not that she has a horse.)
Auxiliary verb have but not main verb have can also contract with not:
The girl has not seen a horse.And auxiliary have can move to the front in questions.
The girl hasn’t seen a horse.
*The boy has not a horse.
She has seen that movie.For this one – has he three dogs - students might think it sounds ok since we’re accustomed to hearing this in older literature. (Have you any wool?) But for American speakers (and most British speakers too these days), we’d have to say Does he have three dogs?.
Has she seen that movie.
He has three dogs.
?Has he three dogs?
As speakers of a language, we just know that auxiliary verbs can do things that other verbs can’t. They contract with pronouns. They contract with not. They move to precede the subject in questions. AND, here's some syntactic evidence that some contractions are their own grammatical beast; they aren't just squished versions of the whole words. Consider the following:
She has not seen that movie.When the auxiliary verb is negated, the contracted form (here, hasn’t) can go at the front, but with the uncontracted (has not), the not has to go after the subject. How do we know that? We just do. It’s an example of the syntactic information that we all have. It’s pretty cool. And students can come work together to discover these patterns about auxiliary verbs and main verbs, but also, more broadly, about the vast amount of grammatical knowledge that they already have a firm handle on.
She hasn’t seen that movie.
Hasn’t she seen that movie?
*Has not she seen that movie?
Has she not seen that movie?
Other lessons that deal with main and auxiliary verbs are here and here.
Friday, March 7, 2014
Sentence Diagrams
I’ve been thinking about sentence diagramming. Both this kind:
(which has gotten some recent press with the release of this poster)
and this kind
Or a more complex version of this linguistically-informed syntax tree, such as this:
Dick Hudson discussed a bit about the history of diagramming recently here and Beth Keyser has been using linguisticky (Like that spelling? And how would you spell the present participial form (-ing) of the verb picnic? We are picnic___. Sometimes our spelling system fails us, but we make do.) trees in her classes for several years; she and I will report on this soon. I’m also planning to write up a more thorough investigation (an article rather than a blog post) of the pros and cons of various kinds of visual representations for sentence diagrams, but in the meantime, these are some musings and some questions.
There were various studies in the 1930s and 1940s about whether sentence diagramming improved student writing. Mostly it didn’t seem to (though the methods of evaluating improved writing were and are messy). But what else can creating and using visual representations of sentences do for us? Certainly, whatever kind of diagram is used, one must know the categories of each word and of each phrase and be able to show how all of those fit together to make clauses. Throughout this blog, there is a presumption that such knowledge of categories, phrases, and clauses is useful. I have emphasized that we have such knowledge unconsciously, so what are the benefits of making it conscious knowledge? Even those who say that in middle and high school you should just teach grammar in context (such as Constance Weaver), and suggest teaching the bare minimum, all include some very basic grammatical information that students should recognize and be able to discuss. These include the basic parts of speech, subject and predicate, and clauses and phrases. Well, that’s a lot, actually. And can using diagramming of one kind or another help with that? Or does it introduce an unnecessary complication? My college students who are planning to become teachers say and write over and over that one of the most important things they learn in my classes that they hope to introduce to their future students is using visual representations - tree diagrams - to help elucidate the structure of sentences. What do you think?
(which has gotten some recent press with the release of this poster)and this kind
Or a more complex version of this linguistically-informed syntax tree, such as this:
Dick Hudson discussed a bit about the history of diagramming recently here and Beth Keyser has been using linguisticky (Like that spelling? And how would you spell the present participial form (-ing) of the verb picnic? We are picnic___. Sometimes our spelling system fails us, but we make do.) trees in her classes for several years; she and I will report on this soon. I’m also planning to write up a more thorough investigation (an article rather than a blog post) of the pros and cons of various kinds of visual representations for sentence diagrams, but in the meantime, these are some musings and some questions.
There were various studies in the 1930s and 1940s about whether sentence diagramming improved student writing. Mostly it didn’t seem to (though the methods of evaluating improved writing were and are messy). But what else can creating and using visual representations of sentences do for us? Certainly, whatever kind of diagram is used, one must know the categories of each word and of each phrase and be able to show how all of those fit together to make clauses. Throughout this blog, there is a presumption that such knowledge of categories, phrases, and clauses is useful. I have emphasized that we have such knowledge unconsciously, so what are the benefits of making it conscious knowledge? Even those who say that in middle and high school you should just teach grammar in context (such as Constance Weaver), and suggest teaching the bare minimum, all include some very basic grammatical information that students should recognize and be able to discuss. These include the basic parts of speech, subject and predicate, and clauses and phrases. Well, that’s a lot, actually. And can using diagramming of one kind or another help with that? Or does it introduce an unnecessary complication? My college students who are planning to become teachers say and write over and over that one of the most important things they learn in my classes that they hope to introduce to their future students is using visual representations - tree diagrams - to help elucidate the structure of sentences. What do you think?
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Strand 3/Conventions – Post 7: New Punctuation…☺
We know that language is always changing. Pronunciation changes perhaps faster than other kinds of grammatical changes since it doesn’t match up with the written language very well anyway; so you can say “bought” pretty much however you want, as long as you have something close to a “b” sound at the beginning and something close to a “t” sound at the end. We’re slower to accept morphological and syntactic changes since you can see them in writing. If you say I seen him, that looks a lot different from I saw him, so we notice these variations more. And until recently, I’d say that our punctuation system was pretty set. You can read a very brief history of punctuation in this post, and I’ve also written about how standards of punctuation can vary, as mentioned here, but in general, our system of punctuation has been fairly fixed since the 18th century. So the new punctuation is really exciting! We have old punctuation being used in new ways, and new symbols being incorporated into our punctuation system (emoticons).
Slash/ - Anne Curzan has written about slash, and it was even a runner-up in the Word of the Year vote by the American Dialect Society. The / used to be a not so frequent punctuation mark, but has come in to the spoken language much more frequently of late, and into the written language as slash, written out as a word like that. You can read more about this new conjunction here. What’s especially interesting is that this newish (it’s not clear how new - a former student just wrote me yesterday that she heard a Friends episode from 2002 when Ross says, "So much for my dinosaur slash Amelia Earhart theme park,” so it’s been around at least since then with this newish meaning. Thanks, Mary!) use in which speaking the punctuation (and writing it as slash rather than /) seems to capture something kind of different from how we understand the punctuation mark in writing. And getting a new conjunction is big news, because we just don’t get those very often, like not in 1000 years.
These things: “” - These so-called quotation marks have long been used to mark things other than quotations. I mentioned here the Blog of Unnecessary Quotation Marks which has examples like this one:
. Why are these funny? Let’s first consider the three primary uses for these little marks, “”: (1) to mark direct quotations, (2) as scare quotes, which serve to alert the reader that either the word or phrase is being used in an unusual way or that the writer doesn’t accept the phrase or is using it ironically, or (3) to emphasize, which is what most of the Blog of Unnecessary Quotation Marks’ examples are intending to express. OK, so why are they funny? Because we can read them as scare quotes, even though we know that’s not their intended use: Excuse our “Emptiness”
It seems that all of these writers can’t be wrong in their use of this bit of punctuation. It’s simply less established than the other two uses of the “” marks. It’s true that the emphatic “”s show up a lot more in hand-written signs where we don’t have the benefit of bold or increasing font size in a systematic way, so these marks “” are given yet another duty. But the emphatic use is not something that was likely ever taught. It’s come about out of a need; writers’ ingenuity comes into play. In speaking, of course, we’d have other ways of making the point, with intonation, pitch, and facial expressions. In print, we have to make do with other methods. Would underlining be preferable? Why or why not?
Ellipses… - My students brought the changing meaning of ellipses to my attention. We all know the basic use of these within a quotation where you’ve left some of the stuff out: Harry Potter said, “In school if you make a mistake, you can just try again…but out there, you don’t know what that’s like.” That’s not new or interesting. The new use is mostly in texting. Texting has brought about all kinds of appropriation of existing punctuation, and in some cases, these are gaining new meanings. So one student mentioned a text he received from his dad which read something like “Give me a call when you get a chance…” The student was worried; he interpreted the ellipses as a marker of anger or disappointment. Other students agreed that they would too. When he talked with his dad, though (abandoning texting in favor of a voice call since he thought Dad was mad), Dad was fine and hadn’t intended that meaning at all. I think I got the dad’s intended meaning from the ellipses, though: this isn’t urgent, call when you can, no big deal. The ellipses as used in text messages have completely different meanings for these two writers.
The Period. - Similarly, there’s an article here on the changing meaning of the period in texting and other informal online communication: When there is a shift in topic, a line break can do the job. Most texters would agree that
Activity: Have students consider their uses of capitalization in texting, in email, and in other online communication. Do they ever not capitalize the first letter of their name? If so, when? What factors enter in to that choice? What about ALL CAPS? Would they ever use that in a message, and if, so, what is the intended effect?
Activity: Have your students consider their use of acronyms and abbreviations such as lol, brb, or ttyl. Do they use them? If so, in what situations? Have them come up with other acronyms and abbreviations that are completely integrated into the language, such as radar, laser, and scuba or DVR or tv, or ID. If they aren’t aware of what the full forms of these words and phrases are, have them look those up in a dictionary. (Many of my students report that their parents, in their 40s and 50s, for the most part, are much more consistent users of abbreviations such as u for you and ur for you’re or your, and also of the acronmyms.)
Activity: What is the future of emoticons? Emoticons offer us an opportunity to express emotion in writing in a way that is otherwise really cumbersome. We can convey that something is ironic or silly or sad, without using words. We can soften the way that something is read. Now, the use of emoticons is restricted to texts, chat, and some email communication, but have your students discuss whether these features might ever enter into more formal written discourse. What would be the benefits? Drawbacks?
Oh, and no discussion of punctuation is complete without mention of the interrobang. My students always lament its lack of popularity. I tell them they have the power to make it happen.
Slash/ - Anne Curzan has written about slash, and it was even a runner-up in the Word of the Year vote by the American Dialect Society. The / used to be a not so frequent punctuation mark, but has come in to the spoken language much more frequently of late, and into the written language as slash, written out as a word like that. You can read more about this new conjunction here. What’s especially interesting is that this newish (it’s not clear how new - a former student just wrote me yesterday that she heard a Friends episode from 2002 when Ross says, "So much for my dinosaur slash Amelia Earhart theme park,” so it’s been around at least since then with this newish meaning. Thanks, Mary!) use in which speaking the punctuation (and writing it as slash rather than /) seems to capture something kind of different from how we understand the punctuation mark in writing. And getting a new conjunction is big news, because we just don’t get those very often, like not in 1000 years.
These things: “” - These so-called quotation marks have long been used to mark things other than quotations. I mentioned here the Blog of Unnecessary Quotation Marks which has examples like this one:
Ellipses… - My students brought the changing meaning of ellipses to my attention. We all know the basic use of these within a quotation where you’ve left some of the stuff out: Harry Potter said, “In school if you make a mistake, you can just try again…but out there, you don’t know what that’s like.” That’s not new or interesting. The new use is mostly in texting. Texting has brought about all kinds of appropriation of existing punctuation, and in some cases, these are gaining new meanings. So one student mentioned a text he received from his dad which read something like “Give me a call when you get a chance…” The student was worried; he interpreted the ellipses as a marker of anger or disappointment. Other students agreed that they would too. When he talked with his dad, though (abandoning texting in favor of a voice call since he thought Dad was mad), Dad was fine and hadn’t intended that meaning at all. I think I got the dad’s intended meaning from the ellipses, though: this isn’t urgent, call when you can, no big deal. The ellipses as used in text messages have completely different meanings for these two writers.
The Period. - Similarly, there’s an article here on the changing meaning of the period in texting and other informal online communication: When there is a shift in topic, a line break can do the job. Most texters would agree that
I’m home nowcan sound a lot friendlier than
what’s for dinner?
I’m home now. What’s for dinner?The question I like to pose to my students is how they know all this. Where do their ideas about the meanings of the punctuation and the contexts in which they are appropriate come from? How are these standards and new uses emerging? My students – and yours too – definitely have a sense of when certain marks are appropriate and when they are not. And because some of these uses are relatively new, we’re not all on the same page, so to speak, and so misunderstandings can emerge. I just think this is a cool way to begin to explore the notion of standardization and language change and to realize that now, as always, we the people are the creators of the standards. And it’s important to drive home that the students are really savvy about these evolving rules of etiquette and conventions. And, in fact, students are knowledgeable not only about conventions of texting, but also about when to use various genres of writing styles (despite the myth that texting language is ruining “language skills”. See here for a LanguageLog post on that). Focusing on their knowledge is a good way to introduce these topics - You’re good at this! Now let’s explore what you know! Linguist John McWhorter, in this New York Times piece, writes the following about texting and email:
“…the looseness and creativity of these new ways of writing are a sign of a new sophistication in our society. This becomes clear when we understand that in the proper sense, e-mail and texting are not writing at all….Keyboard technology, allowing us to produce and receive written communication with unprecedented speed, allows something hitherto unknown to humanity: written conversation. In this sense, [emails and texts] are not “writing” in the sense we are accustomed to. They are fingered speech.”I think there are lots of conversations and activities that could emerge from the info in this post, but here are a few:
Activity: Have students consider their uses of capitalization in texting, in email, and in other online communication. Do they ever not capitalize the first letter of their name? If so, when? What factors enter in to that choice? What about ALL CAPS? Would they ever use that in a message, and if, so, what is the intended effect?
Activity: Have your students consider their use of acronyms and abbreviations such as lol, brb, or ttyl. Do they use them? If so, in what situations? Have them come up with other acronyms and abbreviations that are completely integrated into the language, such as radar, laser, and scuba or DVR or tv, or ID. If they aren’t aware of what the full forms of these words and phrases are, have them look those up in a dictionary. (Many of my students report that their parents, in their 40s and 50s, for the most part, are much more consistent users of abbreviations such as u for you and ur for you’re or your, and also of the acronmyms.)
Activity: What is the future of emoticons? Emoticons offer us an opportunity to express emotion in writing in a way that is otherwise really cumbersome. We can convey that something is ironic or silly or sad, without using words. We can soften the way that something is read. Now, the use of emoticons is restricted to texts, chat, and some email communication, but have your students discuss whether these features might ever enter into more formal written discourse. What would be the benefits? Drawbacks?
Oh, and no discussion of punctuation is complete without mention of the interrobang. My students always lament its lack of popularity. I tell them they have the power to make it happen.
Friday, February 7, 2014
Strand 3/Conventions – Post 6: Punctuation Variation: the Oxford Comma
At first, I didn’t think there was really anything interesting to say about the comma with items in a series, but I think it’s actually a good example of how we latch on to some of the early things we were taught, and then we stick to these things, often passionately, just because. Also, even if you’re not interested in this serial comma, the Common Core State Standards are. It shows up here for fifth grade: but is asterisked as one of those “Language Progressive Skills” that “are particularly likely to require continued attention in higher grades as they are applied to increasingly sophisticated writing and speaking.” They suggest revisiting this skill in grades 4-8. That seems really strange to me since it’s so straightforward. I guess it’s the lack of a clear yes or no/right or wrong strategy that bothers people.
So you know the scoop: there are two ways of writing items in a series, with either a comma before and or no comma before and (or other conjunctions).
It’s the comma after jelly that can either be there or not, depending on what your fourth grade teacher told you. That really seems to be how people decide - whatever they were taught first is what they stick to. So this comma is sometimes called the Oxford comma because Oxford University Press uses it - and they’re very fancy, so maybe that’s a good reason to go with it. Then again, those Brits do other funny things with punctuation, like put the “end punctuation” outside the quotation marks. (Wait, that actually makes a lot more sense.) So what do American style guides say? The Chicago Manual of Style recommends its use, while The Associated Press Style Guide (and therefore most journalistic writing) says to avoid it, unless doing so results in ambiguity. Consider the following sentence:
And this particular Anne and I are good examples of the two different acceptable standards here. I’m a consistent user of the Oxford comma, and Anne is a consistent user of the no Oxford comma. We write a lot of things together, so I put them in and she takes them out, or she leaves them out and I put them in, and then we have to wait for some copyeditor to make the call.
Let’s see, a good activity for this funny little punctuation rule is to go on an Oxford comma (or lack thereof) treasure hunt to see where it appears and where it doesn’t in published writing. And have your students look for the possibility of ambiguity as well. And if this wasn’t a blog targeted at middle school, I would provide you a link to the Vampire Weekend song “Oxford Comma,” but it might get you in trouble if you play it at school. (The first line of the song would have made a much better title for this post too.)
So you know the scoop: there are two ways of writing items in a series, with either a comma before and or no comma before and (or other conjunctions).
The kid ate the bread with a peanut butter, jelly, and a banana.
It’s the comma after jelly that can either be there or not, depending on what your fourth grade teacher told you. That really seems to be how people decide - whatever they were taught first is what they stick to. So this comma is sometimes called the Oxford comma because Oxford University Press uses it - and they’re very fancy, so maybe that’s a good reason to go with it. Then again, those Brits do other funny things with punctuation, like put the “end punctuation” outside the quotation marks. (Wait, that actually makes a lot more sense.) So what do American style guides say? The Chicago Manual of Style recommends its use, while The Associated Press Style Guide (and therefore most journalistic writing) says to avoid it, unless doing so results in ambiguity. Consider the following sentence:
I went to the LSA meeting with Anne, a linguist, and a horseback rider.This is ambiguous, of course, because it is not clear whether a linguist is an appositive describing Anne, or is the second person in a list of three different people. When we remove the final comma, we lose the possibility that a linguist is an appositive, but still have the possibility that we have three separate people attending the meeting.
I went to the LSA meeting with Anne, a linguist and a horseback rider.And we now have the possibility that Anne is both a linguist and a horseback rider (and in fact, if you know Anne, she is), so there is ambiguity both with and without the final comma. We can, of course, change the wording to remove the ambiguity.
And this particular Anne and I are good examples of the two different acceptable standards here. I’m a consistent user of the Oxford comma, and Anne is a consistent user of the no Oxford comma. We write a lot of things together, so I put them in and she takes them out, or she leaves them out and I put them in, and then we have to wait for some copyeditor to make the call.
Let’s see, a good activity for this funny little punctuation rule is to go on an Oxford comma (or lack thereof) treasure hunt to see where it appears and where it doesn’t in published writing. And have your students look for the possibility of ambiguity as well. And if this wasn’t a blog targeted at middle school, I would provide you a link to the Vampire Weekend song “Oxford Comma,” but it might get you in trouble if you play it at school. (The first line of the song would have made a much better title for this post too.)
Strand 1/Grammar: Lesson 20 - Restrictive and Non-Restrictive Relative Clauses - and punctuation again
Relative clauses are clauses (so they contain a subject and a predicate) that describe, or modify, a noun. They fall into two classes, restrictive and nonrestrictive. The restrictive ones limit, or “restrict” what the noun refers to.
Nonrestrictive relative clauses, on the other hand – though they might provide similar information – do not restrict the reference of the noun in the same way as restrictive relative clauses. In writing, nonrestrictive relative clauses are set off by commas, and you can also usually detect “comma intonation” in a speaker’s voice, distinguishing the two types.
restrictive: The PlayStation which we bought recently from a friend wasn’t too expensive.
nonrestrictive: The PlayStation, which we bought recently from a friend, wasn’t too expensive.
The restrictive relative clause, which (or that - I’ll come back to that) we bought recently from a friend, limits which PlayStation we’re referring to, to the one we bought recently from a friend. The non-restrictive relative clause, on the other hand, does not restrict the reference of the noun PlayStation; it isn’t information that distinguishes this PlayStation from other ones. That we bought the PS from a friend is simply extra, incidental information.
This difference between restrictive and nonrestrictive is really revealed when you have a noun that there is only one of - a proper noun. In that case, restricting that already singular set is weird, but using a non-restrictive clause is fine.
Activity. Identify the relative clauses in the following sentences and then determine whether they are restrictive or non-restrictive by putting commas around the non-restrictive ones. Many of them could be both, but the meaning would be slightly different. If that’s the case, briefly explain the difference.
It’s a question which you can think about and analyze for yourself. Sometimes I just think which sounds better (but Word has given me a green squiggle line for that last one!).
The realtor [who is selling our house] is really funny.So the bracketed clauses here pick out which realtor, place, and child.
The place [where we love to go on vacation] is usually Orcas Island.
The child [who is juggling] wants to be in the circus.
Nonrestrictive relative clauses, on the other hand – though they might provide similar information – do not restrict the reference of the noun in the same way as restrictive relative clauses. In writing, nonrestrictive relative clauses are set off by commas, and you can also usually detect “comma intonation” in a speaker’s voice, distinguishing the two types.
restrictive: The PlayStation which we bought recently from a friend wasn’t too expensive.
nonrestrictive: The PlayStation, which we bought recently from a friend, wasn’t too expensive.
The restrictive relative clause, which (or that - I’ll come back to that) we bought recently from a friend, limits which PlayStation we’re referring to, to the one we bought recently from a friend. The non-restrictive relative clause, on the other hand, does not restrict the reference of the noun PlayStation; it isn’t information that distinguishes this PlayStation from other ones. That we bought the PS from a friend is simply extra, incidental information.
This difference between restrictive and nonrestrictive is really revealed when you have a noun that there is only one of - a proper noun. In that case, restricting that already singular set is weird, but using a non-restrictive clause is fine.
Hailey, who I saw on the bus yesterday, has a new graphing calculator.This second sentence could only work if there is more than one Hailey and this is picking out the intended Hailey - the “on the bus Hailey” not the “next door neighbor Hailey” or something.
??Hailey who I saw on the bus yesterday has a new graphing calculator.
Activity. Identify the relative clauses in the following sentences and then determine whether they are restrictive or non-restrictive by putting commas around the non-restrictive ones. Many of them could be both, but the meaning would be slightly different. If that’s the case, briefly explain the difference.
The kid from your class who has that cool dog is walking towards us.There is a prescriptive rule of writing that suggests that which should be used with non-restrictive relative clauses and that with restrictive relative clauses. This rule, however, varies, by style guides and editors, and is also a fairly recent restriction. Both which and that are and have been common for centuries with restrictive relative clauses. Most speakers and writers would agree that it sounds odd, however, to use that in a non-restrictive relative clause; you probably wouldn’t write (or say)
The store only allows returns that have the tags on and a receipt.
The sunglasses which I bought last month already broke.
Some gum is in my bag which is on the table.
The girl who is going to buy our old bikes is coming over tomorrow.
Sue who is going to buy our old bikes is coming over tomorrow.
Sushi, that I love, is on sale at the market.MS Word seems to be reinforcing this rule, though. When its grammar checker finds which not preceded by a comma, it suggests the change to that. It’s not incorrect, however, to have which in restrictive relative clauses. British English conventions care even less about this. Oxford Dictionaries writes, “In British English, restrictive relative clauses can be introduced by that or which when they are referring to things rather than people.”
The coat that/which Dan had on yesterday was new.Probably more than you ever wanted to know about this debate - whether which should be used in restrictive relative clauses - can be found here.
It’s a question which you can think about and analyze for yourself. Sometimes I just think which sounds better (but Word has given me a green squiggle line for that last one!).
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Sandra Wilde's Funner Grammar
I saw something about this book when it came out in 2012, but I’ve just gotten my hands on it (my library didn’t have it, so it had to come from St. Martin’s University in Lacey, Washington), and I’ve now ordered my own copy because it’s so good. It’s called Funner Grammar: Fresh ways to teach usage, language, and writing conventions, grades 3-8, and it’s making me breathe a sigh of relief. Sandra Wilde has written many other good books and resources for teachers, including You Kan Red This! Spelling and punctuation for whole language classrooms, K-6 (1991), What’s a Schwa Sound Anyway? A holistic guide to phonetics, phonics, and spelling (1997), Miscue Analysis Made Easy: Building on Student Strengths (2000), Testing and Standards (2002), Spelling Strategies and Patterns (2007), but this one makes me so happy, and I want all the 3rd-8th grade teachers I know to give it a look.
How refreshing that she starts off with “Did you know that are about six thousand languages in the world?” and then goes on to talk about language change, grammar, and even the Common Core. For a resource book of this type, it does the best job I’ve seen of talking directly and convincingly about language privilege. “Language variation is a social justice issue just as much as racial identity is” (96).
But it also talks about what a lot of teachers are very interested in – mechanics and usage. Here are the chapter titles, after the introductory one.
It's been great to be able to do some reading of some of the other resources out there, like this one, while on sabbatical, so I’ll soon be adding an updated list of resources to TeachLing, which has a list that Dave Pippin compiled a few years ago. But the list is lacking in resource books like Wilde’s, so I’ll add the few other suggestions I have. But in the meantime, get this book. And thank you, Sandra Wilde!
How refreshing that she starts off with “Did you know that are about six thousand languages in the world?” and then goes on to talk about language change, grammar, and even the Common Core. For a resource book of this type, it does the best job I’ve seen of talking directly and convincingly about language privilege. “Language variation is a social justice issue just as much as racial identity is” (96).
But it also talks about what a lot of teachers are very interested in – mechanics and usage. Here are the chapter titles, after the introductory one.
2. Mechanics: Conventions Found Only in Written LanguageAnd Wilde provides annotated lists of other resources, appendices of suggestions of what to do in each grade (3-8), commentary on the Common Core (saying straight up that to teach about the subjunctive, as indicated in this 8th grade standard is misguided. Yeah, I agree - it’s a bit crazy.), and a careful consideration and explanation of why each subject she addresses should be taught. And it’s a nice slim volume at that.
3. Nitty-Gritty Grammar: Words, Tenses, Sentences, and Complexity
4. Usage
5. Language Diversity and Social Justice
6. Linguistics for Kids
It's been great to be able to do some reading of some of the other resources out there, like this one, while on sabbatical, so I’ll soon be adding an updated list of resources to TeachLing, which has a list that Dave Pippin compiled a few years ago. But the list is lacking in resource books like Wilde’s, so I’ll add the few other suggestions I have. But in the meantime, get this book. And thank you, Sandra Wilde!
Sunday, January 26, 2014
Calling It Like It Is: Noun Clause, Adjective Clause, Adverb Clause
Terminology is a problem in grammar. Maybe it is in lots of fields. Marine biologists get up in arms, I hear, when we call starfish starfish instead of the more correct, apparently, seastar. They aren’t fish, they tell us, so don’t call them fish. (They aren’t stars either, but whatever.)
I’ve already talked about the adverb/adverbial issue here, and a related one that I’ve been asked about is Noun Clause, Adjective Clause, and Adverb Clause. So let’s get to it.
These terms are pretty widespread, perhaps more so in teaching English to speakers of other languages, and in teaching other languages to speakers of English, but are also sometimes used in straight-up descriptions of English grammar to English speakers. Yeah, they’re everywhere.
So, on the one hand, the labels don’t matter that much; call things whatever you want. On the other hand (the more important hand), using these terms once again conflates form and function, which can confuse and mislead. I have discussed elsewhere why it’s better for students to take advantage of their intuitions about morphological and syntactic patterns, rather than on meaning-based definitions and functions. We have some techniques for identifying nouns, for example, (they can be made plural, they take determiners, etc.) but then these noun clauses don’t match up with what we know about nouns.
A noun clause is typically defined as a clause that functions as a noun. Let’s look at some typical examples of things labeled as noun clauses, the bracketed parts below;
I would say, however, that these are both simply subordinate clauses. They are subordinate to the main clause and dependent upon the main verb in that clause. We can further label them that-clauses and wh-clauses, but there doesn’t seem to be any real advantage to calling them noun clauses. The reason they are considered nounish and labeled as noun clauses by some is that they serve as complements of a verb or as subjects, as nouns can. But it’s a lot more straightforward to simply call them subordinate or dependent clauses and ignore that noun part. You gain nothing from that label, and it leads students to doubt their intuitions about what nouns really are.
So let’s look at adjective clause and adverb clause, to see if those labels help shed light on the noun clause label – or on anything, for that matter.
Adjective clauses are also called (my preference) “relative clauses”. The term is preferable since it doesn’t conflate an actual adjective with the function of adjectives. These types of clauses serve to give more information about a noun, like adjectives do, but they are not adjectives themselves. They’re just clauses. They’re called relative clauses because they “relate” the info in the clause to the noun that the clause modifies.
Same for so-called adverb clauses. As discussed in this post, adverbs are a bit messy – and all kinds of things get labeled as adverbs. I believe that we should not add clauses to that. Here are some examples of the kinds of things that some people label adverb clauses:
Nothing is gained, that I can see, by calling these adverbial. It confuses form and function, which wouldn’t be a problem if it wasn’t actually confusing!
It’s just clearer and more accurate to call nouns nouns, adjectives adjectives, adverbs adverbs, and clauses clauses. Are there benefits to distinguishing among the various kinds of clauses? Yeah, sure, there can be. But I’d want to use labels that don’t conflate form and function. I can discuss different types of subordinate clauses in another post. Till then, let's just call it like it is.
I’ve already talked about the adverb/adverbial issue here, and a related one that I’ve been asked about is Noun Clause, Adjective Clause, and Adverb Clause. So let’s get to it.
These terms are pretty widespread, perhaps more so in teaching English to speakers of other languages, and in teaching other languages to speakers of English, but are also sometimes used in straight-up descriptions of English grammar to English speakers. Yeah, they’re everywhere.
So, on the one hand, the labels don’t matter that much; call things whatever you want. On the other hand (the more important hand), using these terms once again conflates form and function, which can confuse and mislead. I have discussed elsewhere why it’s better for students to take advantage of their intuitions about morphological and syntactic patterns, rather than on meaning-based definitions and functions. We have some techniques for identifying nouns, for example, (they can be made plural, they take determiners, etc.) but then these noun clauses don’t match up with what we know about nouns.
A noun clause is typically defined as a clause that functions as a noun. Let’s look at some typical examples of things labeled as noun clauses, the bracketed parts below;
She believes [that the fairies are real].Good old about.com gives us this – Noun clause: A dependent clause that functions as a noun (that is, as a subject, object, or complement) within a sentence. Also known as a nominal clause.
We wonder [when they will arrive].
I would say, however, that these are both simply subordinate clauses. They are subordinate to the main clause and dependent upon the main verb in that clause. We can further label them that-clauses and wh-clauses, but there doesn’t seem to be any real advantage to calling them noun clauses. The reason they are considered nounish and labeled as noun clauses by some is that they serve as complements of a verb or as subjects, as nouns can. But it’s a lot more straightforward to simply call them subordinate or dependent clauses and ignore that noun part. You gain nothing from that label, and it leads students to doubt their intuitions about what nouns really are.
So let’s look at adjective clause and adverb clause, to see if those labels help shed light on the noun clause label – or on anything, for that matter.
Adjective clauses are also called (my preference) “relative clauses”. The term is preferable since it doesn’t conflate an actual adjective with the function of adjectives. These types of clauses serve to give more information about a noun, like adjectives do, but they are not adjectives themselves. They’re just clauses. They’re called relative clauses because they “relate” the info in the clause to the noun that the clause modifies.
The man [who I saw yesterday] left his hat here.It’s clearer to me – and to my students and the students of other teachers I have worked with – to not use the terms noun clause and adjective clause. Let nouns be nouns and adjectives be adjectives.
I saw the fox [that ate the chickens from our coop].
Let’s eat at the restaurant [where you went last night].
Same for so-called adverb clauses. As discussed in this post, adverbs are a bit messy – and all kinds of things get labeled as adverbs. I believe that we should not add clauses to that. Here are some examples of the kinds of things that some people label adverb clauses:
Joe scrubbed the floor [until his arms ached].Huh? The claim is that these are all adverb clauses because they answer the questions where, when, or why. But lots of different kinds of phrases do that. These are prepositional phrases; I’ve discussed them here.
The dogs had been barking [since the owners left].
Fay walked to the store [because she was out of eggs].
Nothing is gained, that I can see, by calling these adverbial. It confuses form and function, which wouldn’t be a problem if it wasn’t actually confusing!
It’s just clearer and more accurate to call nouns nouns, adjectives adjectives, adverbs adverbs, and clauses clauses. Are there benefits to distinguishing among the various kinds of clauses? Yeah, sure, there can be. But I’d want to use labels that don’t conflate form and function. I can discuss different types of subordinate clauses in another post. Till then, let's just call it like it is.
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Strand 3/Conventions – Post 5: Apostrophe’s Apostrophes
Mostly, this little punctuation mark gives us no trouble. It stands in for missing letters (don’t, should’ve, e’er), it marks possession (Charlie’s dog, the woman with the hat’s friend), and sometimes it marks plurals.
So the missing letter part is rarely problematic (though it should probably just go away – couldn’t we just write dont?). The possessive apostrophe, however, does sometimes give us trouble since, well, since English hasn’t marked case for many hundreds of years, except for this little remnant. And the plural-marking apostrophe is tangled up with this possessive one, so let’s look into that first.
From the 17th century on, an apostrophe was used in plurals when the noun ended in a vowel: toga’s, opera’s, menu’s, fee’s. Grammarians began to condemn this usage in the mid-19th century, but it continues to appear. And in fact, an apostrophe is strongly recommended by many style guides to mark certain kinds of plurals.
So there are a few cases where –’s can mark plural. But some apostrophes slip in in plurals where they are not “supposed” to because some words just look weird without a demarcation of their morpheme boundary, and could even be mispronounced: menus, skis, fees, pizzas. And when writers put that apostrophe in, even if it’s just a slip of the pen/finger on the keyboard, it does illustrate an awareness of the distinct morpheme one is adding on. The writers in the 17th and 18th centuries were on to something here - and so are the writers of today who make this "error."
Ok, so we’re used to seeing apostrophes in words where they do not mark possession, sometimes “rightly” and sometimes “wrongly.” But let’s look more at that possessive/genitive use. As mentioned, this -’s is a remnant of case marking in Old English; English used to put different endings on the nouns, depending on how they were functioning – as subject (nominative case), object (accusative case), indirect object (dative case), or possessive (genitive case). You can see some Old English noun declensions here. Now we don’t have case marking, with the exception of our pronouns (I versus me, for example), and this genitive (possessive), which mostly just shows up in writing.
The basic convention of the possessive apostrophe is straightforward: insert an apostrophe before an [s] and before another noun when that noun is owned by or “possessed” by the first noun. If the word is a plural already ending in [s]; then, just add an apostrophe.
Pronunciation and words that end in ssssssss,zzzzzzzzzz
Consider, for example, the possessive apostrophe with singular nouns that end in [s] like molasses, hippopotamus, walrus, octopus, boss, or floss. Should an [s] be added after the apostrophe when these singular nouns indicate possession? Is it the walrus’ friend or the walrus’s friend? It actually depends on who (or whom!) you ask. The Associated Press Stylebook recommends omitting the -’s after the apostrophe in singular words ending in [s], but, according to The Chicago Manual of Style, if the [s] at the end of a singular word is pronounced, the possessive is formed by adding -’s. So pronunciation matters too? To some, but not too others, so this leads to confusion about the rule. And what happens, for example, if it’s spelled with x, which is of course pronounced “ks”? It should probably be a fox’s tail, not a fox’ tail, don’t you think? Sometimes we’re faced with dilemmas that don’t have a neat resolution. LanguageLog has another example of that.
Proper Nouns
Proper nouns seem to cause a host of other problems. Consider, for example, names such as Jones or Thomas or even one that doesn’t end in -s, such as Yin. You may see a sign on someone’s house that reads "the Jones" or "the Yins." Or it could read "the Jones'," "the Jones’s" or "the Yin’s".
Why the multiple possibilities? Well, the meaning is actually ambiguous. It could mean the group of people named Yin – so it would be the plural. Or it could be possessive, meaning the Yin’s house. So there is not necessarily an error here, but two possible meanings, as indicated by the possessive apostrophe or lack thereof.
And pronunciation factors in here too. Fowler’s Modern English Usage, first published in 1892, recommends omitting the [s] after the apostrophe only for names ending in an “iz” sound, as in Bridges’. Do they mean just “an iz sound”? What about just “z” as in Jones? Is it the Jones’ house or the Jones’s house? And this example is especially interesting because there is more than one way to pronounce it, with one syllable or two. And we seem to want to make the spelling with an additional [s] correspond to the additional syllable. So if you say “jownziz,” you might feel better spelling it Jones’s, but if you say “jownz”, you might want to spell it Jones’. And the style guides – some of them – will agree. Some of them try to simplify the rules, giving a single rule (like maybe your fourth grade teacher did), but then you end up with words that just don’t seem to fit.
(And what if there is, say, a reunion of the Jones family, so you have multiple Jones families in attendance. Can you pluralize a proper name and have Joneses? And then if we're talking about the multiple houses of those Joneses, can we write Joneses' houses? Looks weird. Try it with a name that doesn't end in [s] - Yins' houses. That seems fine.)
Important historical people?
And finally, a very strange rule of many style guides with respect to the possessive of proper names states that ancient names or important, historical, or classical names that end in [s] should end with an apostrophe alone; so, Moses’ sandals, Jesus’ friend, Venus’ name. But The Chicago Manual of Style, for instance, doesn’t follow this rule, offering Aristophanes’s plays and Zeus’s wife. Such a rule is, of course, subjective too, raising the question of how old is ancient or who should be considered important enough.
Of course there’s its/it’s
The most common issue I see in student writing with the use of apostrophes is it's for its. None of the possessive pronouns or possessive determiners use apostrophes: mine, yours, his, hers, its, ours, theirs. So most of us would have no problem with this rule if it weren’t for the contraction of it and is to it’s; therefore, we’re used to seeing the word it’s, and we know that apostrophes indicate possession, so it’s an easy slip to make – and actually illustrates the knowledge that apostrophes in general do indicate possession. Somewhat less common, but also prevalent is who’s instead of whose: Who’s hat is that? might not look so wrong, but the standard version would be Whose book, using the possessive determiner.
So one reason there are so many “errors” of apostrophe usage is because there is a great deal of variation, even among writers of edited academic English. And another reason is due to an unconscious linguistic savvy; we add in morpheme boundaries and spelling helpers where they seem useful.
Why pick on just apostrophes?
And now really finally, sometimes there are practical considerations that lead to an apostrophe being left off where it might otherwise appear. For example, many people have picked on the errors of apostrophe usage on signs. Lynne Truss of Eats, Shoots, and Leaves fame writes about wanting to protest the movie Two Weeks Notice because it had no apostrophe in its title – and should, she claimed.
But we don’t seem to get similarly bothered by the lack of punctuation on signs in general. We do not expect fully-punctuated sentences on signs.
SLOW not PLEASE GO SLOWLY.
Or even Please drive slowly.
We could have a book-length – which this almost is – discussion on apostrophe usage alone. One thing I mean to emphasize here is that there are some reasons for the variation and reasons for the “errors” that go beyond people simply being “ignorant” or “lazy.” Remember, language change is ongoing, and quite often the variety used by a minority of people – and thus the stigmatized form – eventually becomes the form adopted by the majority and then becomes standard.
But apostrophe usage that differs from standard expectations really bugs a lot of people. The Apostrophe Protection Society has an impressive collection of apostrophe errors found out in the world. You too can send in your own. Spotting these errors gives people a “gotcha” moment, where they can proudly point out how someone misused the apostrophe. I get it. No one wants to not conform to expectations for fear of being judged. But what I think is more interesting is to think about why people make apostrophe errors - variations, we'll call them - and in what particular cases they do.
OK, this has gotten way too long. Oh, but in other punctuation news, it would be so fun to talk about the use of so-called “scare quotes”. If you’re still with me, you can just check this out. It’s actually a useful exercise to figure out why these are funny. It demonstrates that, just like spoken language, punctuation is evolving and these marks “” have more than one use and meaning, just like apostrophes.
Here is an activity on collecting and analyzing apostrophe data.
So the missing letter part is rarely problematic (though it should probably just go away – couldn’t we just write dont?). The possessive apostrophe, however, does sometimes give us trouble since, well, since English hasn’t marked case for many hundreds of years, except for this little remnant. And the plural-marking apostrophe is tangled up with this possessive one, so let’s look into that first.
From the 17th century on, an apostrophe was used in plurals when the noun ended in a vowel: toga’s, opera’s, menu’s, fee’s. Grammarians began to condemn this usage in the mid-19th century, but it continues to appear. And in fact, an apostrophe is strongly recommended by many style guides to mark certain kinds of plurals.
Please bring all the DVD’s to the garage sale.This practice of using apostrophes to mark plurals in abbreviations, with numbers, with letters, etc. is beginning to fall out of fashion, but is still quite standard. The Columbia Guide to Standard American English says that the “apostrophe is used sometimes to mark plural number and letters (three 6’s, two A’s)” (p. 35). Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage says that the use of -’s to mark plurals is not as common as it used to be, but can still be found. They recommend 1980s instead of 1980’s (p. 10).
I got five A’s and one B on my report card.
You need to go back to dot your i’s and cross your t’s.
The 1980’s was a bad decade for fashion.
So there are a few cases where –’s can mark plural. But some apostrophes slip in in plurals where they are not “supposed” to because some words just look weird without a demarcation of their morpheme boundary, and could even be mispronounced: menus, skis, fees, pizzas. And when writers put that apostrophe in, even if it’s just a slip of the pen/finger on the keyboard, it does illustrate an awareness of the distinct morpheme one is adding on. The writers in the 17th and 18th centuries were on to something here - and so are the writers of today who make this "error."
Ok, so we’re used to seeing apostrophes in words where they do not mark possession, sometimes “rightly” and sometimes “wrongly.” But let’s look more at that possessive/genitive use. As mentioned, this -’s is a remnant of case marking in Old English; English used to put different endings on the nouns, depending on how they were functioning – as subject (nominative case), object (accusative case), indirect object (dative case), or possessive (genitive case). You can see some Old English noun declensions here. Now we don’t have case marking, with the exception of our pronouns (I versus me, for example), and this genitive (possessive), which mostly just shows up in writing.
The basic convention of the possessive apostrophe is straightforward: insert an apostrophe before an [s] and before another noun when that noun is owned by or “possessed” by the first noun. If the word is a plural already ending in [s]; then, just add an apostrophe.
the girl’s shoes (one girl)Well, it’s not always so straightforward. Here are some reasons why.
the girls’ shoes (more than one girl)
the traveler’s suitcase (one traveler)
the travelers’ suitcases (more than one traveler)
Pronunciation and words that end in ssssssss,zzzzzzzzzz
Consider, for example, the possessive apostrophe with singular nouns that end in [s] like molasses, hippopotamus, walrus, octopus, boss, or floss. Should an [s] be added after the apostrophe when these singular nouns indicate possession? Is it the walrus’ friend or the walrus’s friend? It actually depends on who (or whom!) you ask. The Associated Press Stylebook recommends omitting the -’s after the apostrophe in singular words ending in [s], but, according to The Chicago Manual of Style, if the [s] at the end of a singular word is pronounced, the possessive is formed by adding -’s. So pronunciation matters too? To some, but not too others, so this leads to confusion about the rule. And what happens, for example, if it’s spelled with x, which is of course pronounced “ks”? It should probably be a fox’s tail, not a fox’ tail, don’t you think? Sometimes we’re faced with dilemmas that don’t have a neat resolution. LanguageLog has another example of that.
Proper Nouns
Proper nouns seem to cause a host of other problems. Consider, for example, names such as Jones or Thomas or even one that doesn’t end in -s, such as Yin. You may see a sign on someone’s house that reads "the Jones" or "the Yins." Or it could read "the Jones'," "the Jones’s" or "the Yin’s".
Why the multiple possibilities? Well, the meaning is actually ambiguous. It could mean the group of people named Yin – so it would be the plural. Or it could be possessive, meaning the Yin’s house. So there is not necessarily an error here, but two possible meanings, as indicated by the possessive apostrophe or lack thereof.
And pronunciation factors in here too. Fowler’s Modern English Usage, first published in 1892, recommends omitting the [s] after the apostrophe only for names ending in an “iz” sound, as in Bridges’. Do they mean just “an iz sound”? What about just “z” as in Jones? Is it the Jones’ house or the Jones’s house? And this example is especially interesting because there is more than one way to pronounce it, with one syllable or two. And we seem to want to make the spelling with an additional [s] correspond to the additional syllable. So if you say “jownziz,” you might feel better spelling it Jones’s, but if you say “jownz”, you might want to spell it Jones’. And the style guides – some of them – will agree. Some of them try to simplify the rules, giving a single rule (like maybe your fourth grade teacher did), but then you end up with words that just don’t seem to fit.
(And what if there is, say, a reunion of the Jones family, so you have multiple Jones families in attendance. Can you pluralize a proper name and have Joneses? And then if we're talking about the multiple houses of those Joneses, can we write Joneses' houses? Looks weird. Try it with a name that doesn't end in [s] - Yins' houses. That seems fine.)
Important historical people?
And finally, a very strange rule of many style guides with respect to the possessive of proper names states that ancient names or important, historical, or classical names that end in [s] should end with an apostrophe alone; so, Moses’ sandals, Jesus’ friend, Venus’ name. But The Chicago Manual of Style, for instance, doesn’t follow this rule, offering Aristophanes’s plays and Zeus’s wife. Such a rule is, of course, subjective too, raising the question of how old is ancient or who should be considered important enough.
Of course there’s its/it’s
The most common issue I see in student writing with the use of apostrophes is it's for its. None of the possessive pronouns or possessive determiners use apostrophes: mine, yours, his, hers, its, ours, theirs. So most of us would have no problem with this rule if it weren’t for the contraction of it and is to it’s; therefore, we’re used to seeing the word it’s, and we know that apostrophes indicate possession, so it’s an easy slip to make – and actually illustrates the knowledge that apostrophes in general do indicate possession. Somewhat less common, but also prevalent is who’s instead of whose: Who’s hat is that? might not look so wrong, but the standard version would be Whose book, using the possessive determiner.
So one reason there are so many “errors” of apostrophe usage is because there is a great deal of variation, even among writers of edited academic English. And another reason is due to an unconscious linguistic savvy; we add in morpheme boundaries and spelling helpers where they seem useful.
Why pick on just apostrophes?
And now really finally, sometimes there are practical considerations that lead to an apostrophe being left off where it might otherwise appear. For example, many people have picked on the errors of apostrophe usage on signs. Lynne Truss of Eats, Shoots, and Leaves fame writes about wanting to protest the movie Two Weeks Notice because it had no apostrophe in its title – and should, she claimed.
But we don’t seem to get similarly bothered by the lack of punctuation on signs in general. We do not expect fully-punctuated sentences on signs.
SLOW not PLEASE GO SLOWLY.
Or even Please drive slowly.
We could have a book-length – which this almost is – discussion on apostrophe usage alone. One thing I mean to emphasize here is that there are some reasons for the variation and reasons for the “errors” that go beyond people simply being “ignorant” or “lazy.” Remember, language change is ongoing, and quite often the variety used by a minority of people – and thus the stigmatized form – eventually becomes the form adopted by the majority and then becomes standard.
But apostrophe usage that differs from standard expectations really bugs a lot of people. The Apostrophe Protection Society has an impressive collection of apostrophe errors found out in the world. You too can send in your own. Spotting these errors gives people a “gotcha” moment, where they can proudly point out how someone misused the apostrophe. I get it. No one wants to not conform to expectations for fear of being judged. But what I think is more interesting is to think about why people make apostrophe errors - variations, we'll call them - and in what particular cases they do.
OK, this has gotten way too long. Oh, but in other punctuation news, it would be so fun to talk about the use of so-called “scare quotes”. If you’re still with me, you can just check this out. It’s actually a useful exercise to figure out why these are funny. It demonstrates that, just like spoken language, punctuation is evolving and these marks “” have more than one use and meaning, just like apostrophes.
Here is an activity on collecting and analyzing apostrophe data.
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
Strand 1/Grammar: Lesson 19 – Preps or Particles? Learning about Phrasal Verbs
Particles look just look prepositions, but over time they have shifted to become a part of the verb. The bolded phrases are all verbs that contain particles.
We know that these are particles instead of prepositions because of their meaning. The verb plus particle has a meaning that is distinct from the sum of the meanings of the parts. And also they have a neat trick, called Particle Shift; they can move from their position right next to the verb to a position following the noun phrase complement.
There are certain particles that seem to have a distinct meaning from the meanings of the parts, like the ones above, but that cannot undergo Particle Shift. Sometimes these are called “prepositional phrasal verbs” to distinguish them from phrasal verbs. Distinguishing the two types of phrasal verbs from each other is not important unless you are using the movement diagnostic to distinguish phrasal verb particles from prepositions. You may encounter some that really seem to make meaning in conjunction with the verb, but are unable to undergo Particle Shift, like the following.
I'll leave you with one of my favorite strings of prepositions (and other stuff? Are there any particles here?). I grew up in Appalachia, and this was a phrase my third grade teacher, Genave Montgomery, had recalled hearing someone say. It's great.
Don’t run down the batteries.
We looked up the answers.
Turn on the light, please.
Don’t forget to turn in your homework.
I’m excited to pick out a present for my friend.
We know that these are particles instead of prepositions because of their meaning. The verb plus particle has a meaning that is distinct from the sum of the meanings of the parts. And also they have a neat trick, called Particle Shift; they can move from their position right next to the verb to a position following the noun phrase complement.
Don’t run the batteries down.Cool, huh? Prepositions can’t do that.
We looked the answers up.
Turn the light on, please.
Don’t forget to turn your homework in.
I’m excited to pick a present out for my friend.
We ran down the street. ACK! We ran the street down.Activity. Have your students figure out if the bolded words are prepositions or are part of the verb (particles). Have them describe how they know.
We looked up the street toward the park. ACK! We looked the street up toward the park.
We turned onto the freeway. ACK! We turned the freeway onto.
They climbed up the fence.So what’s kind of weird and kind of cool about particles is that they are really part of the verb, so you’d expect them to fuse to the verb, but instead they can move away from it. This is a remnant of English’s Germanic roots; German (and Old English) have these “separable verbs,” as they’re called, too.
He shot off his toy rocket.
Bert looked for a banana.
The rabbit hopped through the grass.
Please turn up the radio.
They brought up the issue several times.
You should think through the problem carefully.
I already handed in my paper.
There are certain particles that seem to have a distinct meaning from the meanings of the parts, like the ones above, but that cannot undergo Particle Shift. Sometimes these are called “prepositional phrasal verbs” to distinguish them from phrasal verbs. Distinguishing the two types of phrasal verbs from each other is not important unless you are using the movement diagnostic to distinguish phrasal verb particles from prepositions. You may encounter some that really seem to make meaning in conjunction with the verb, but are unable to undergo Particle Shift, like the following.
She can pass for an American.Also, there are multi-word phrasal verbs with more than one particle. For these too, the meaning suggests that the particles have glommed on to the verb. (There's one - glom on!)
The smallest puppy often gets picked on.
I ran into a good friend at the café.
The grandparents are looking after the kids.
You should stand by your principles.
You shouldn’t put up with that noise.So when discussing either verbs or prepositions, it’s important to know about these particles. Also, English Language Learners (ELLs) often learn long lists of these phrasal verbs since they are quite common in speech, more so in American English than British English, apparently, and are a marker, therefore, of real fluency. There are a gazillion books and websites like this one to help ESL students with phrasal verbs. It's important to note that phrasal verbs often have more formal synonyms – put off vs. postpone, get together vs. assemble – so are used somewhat less in the written language.
I am really looking forward to the party.
We loaded up on junk food for the game.
They have been sitting in for me while I’ve been sick.
I'll leave you with one of my favorite strings of prepositions (and other stuff? Are there any particles here?). I grew up in Appalachia, and this was a phrase my third grade teacher, Genave Montgomery, had recalled hearing someone say. It's great.
I walked out up over in back of yonder.Ponder on that.
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Abandon "A Sentence Is a Complete Thought"
A typical, traditional way of teaching about clauses, primarily in order to get students to avoid writing fragments or run-ons (also known as comma splices), offers the notion that sentences are complete thoughts, while fragments are incomplete thoughts. The definition from Springboard, which is in turn taken from The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue University, is the following:
Fragments function, both in speech and writing, to introduce new information; the old, or understood, information does not need to be stated. Consider the dialogue between speaker A and speaker B, with the fragments in B's replies.
But if you want your students to avoid them, then having each sentence have a subject is key, and I’ve written about that here and here and here.
“An independent clause is a group of words that contains a subject and verb and expresses a complete thought” (357).As I’ve written before (here) it’s time to do away with this “complete thought” quip. This shortcut to a real description of fragments and clauses can lead writers to doubt their intuitions; that is, it is important for students to recognize that fragments occur naturally and appropriately in speech, often in writing, and that they are a feature of all languages. Fragments serve as useful rhetorical devices; they appear quite commonly, not only in fiction, but also in more formal work. (Schuster (2006), has a great article which challenges the idea that students should be taught to avoid all sentence fragments; in it, he examines 50 essays in The Best American Essays 2001, finding them chock full of fragments. He writes, “In every case, the fragments express the same idea as the sentences and do so in fewer words – significantly fewer, in several cases. In every case, too, the fragments are more emphatic…Thirdly, the fragments are almost always more natural, more like conversational English…On the basis of this evidence, we might ask the question: Can one be in favor of economy of wording, emphasis, and naturalness of expression and be against the use of sentence fragments?” (79). And another shout-out to Schuster - he has a great article "Beyond Grammar: The Richness of English Language, or the Zero-Tolerance Approach to Rigid Rules", also published in English Journal in 2011 that deals not only with fragments, but with "flouting" of other admonitions, including avoid passive, avoid be, and do not begin with conjunctions. Read it.)
Fragments function, both in speech and writing, to introduce new information; the old, or understood, information does not need to be stated. Consider the dialogue between speaker A and speaker B, with the fragments in B's replies.
A. Where are you going?Such replies are, of course, perfectly normal and acceptable ways to speak. And the fragment replies in the B examples are certainly complete thoughts. Understanding how fragments function and that they are a natural feature of language helps student realize why they might write in fragments, and to understand and appreciate one of the differences between spoken and more formal varieties of written language.
B. To the bank.
A. She probably should wear a painting smock.
B. Yeah, because those are nice clothes.
But if you want your students to avoid them, then having each sentence have a subject is key, and I’ve written about that here and here and here.
Thursday, January 9, 2014
Strand 1/Grammar: Lesson 18 – PPs and Subject-Verb Agreement (and a rant about Springboard)
A typical method for teaching about language is to integrate in to writing instruction, often in mini-lessons, or, in textbooks, in “Grammar and Usage” sidebars, such as this one in 
from The College Board’s Springboard: English Textual Power (Level 2, p. 97), for grade 7. Too often, these approaches attempt shortcuts to real explanations about language, leading students to miss the intended lesson and doubt their intuitions; consequently, students, regardless of writing ability, do not gain command of grammar as a rhetorical tool, nor do they have any confidence in their ability to analyze language.
Let’s look at this “Grammar and Usage” box a bit more closely. Here's the whole text from the photo, which occurs alongside a text about persuasive writing.
It is at the end of this sidebar that a connection to a typical "error" of writing, subject-verb agreement, is made. However, no examples are given, and it would be very difficult for students (or teachers) to glean how prepositional phrases are related to subject-verb agreement, or even to understand what is meant by that phrase or others such as “object of the prepositional phrase.”
I offer what I think the intended lesson is here. Subject-verb agreement is often listed as one of the most common errors of writing; it shows up on lists from elementary to college-level writing. Most writers, however, do not have issues at all with subject verb agreement in general. Our unconscious intuitions serve us quite well in guiding this agreement. (English language learners may have specific issues with subject-verb agreement, and these learners deserved a distinct, targeted lesson. Also, some English dialects have different patterns of subject-verb agreement that might deserve a separate lesson. Such variations should not be called “errors” since they are patterned and logical for each dialect, but they may differ from the so-called academic writing expected in most classroom writing.) However, one place in which there is variation with respect to subject-verb agreement involves subjects which contain prepositional phrases, as in the following examples:
A second issue I have with this particular “grammar and usage” sidebar is the conflation of adjective phrase, adverb phrase, and prepositional phrase. There has long been a tendency to conflate “form” and “function”, or syntax and meaning, in pedagogical grammatical explanations. To do so, however, ignores the actual patterns of language. Such conflation of terms is not only not useful, but it leads students to doubt their intuitions about word categories, and it provides no tools of analysis to extend to other examples. Consider the italicized words below.
Hmm, I titled this "lesson" but I'm not sure that it is, except maybe it's a lesson to avoid using Springboard, which many of the teachers I know don't like anyway. And it does provide another justification for studying prepositions and prepositional phrases if you want to wrestle with subject-verb agreement as it arises in your students' writing. Of course, intervening prepositional phrases are just one of the reasons that agreement with the verb varies. Browse through this or this or this one from my alma mater to find some others - but I wouldn't suggest marching through all of the reasons that subject-verb agreement "problems" arise.
Let’s look at this “Grammar and Usage” box a bit more closely. Here's the whole text from the photo, which occurs alongside a text about persuasive writing.
“A preposition links the noun or pronoun following it (its object) to another word in a sentence. Prepositional phrases add specific or necessary detail in sentences. They function as adjectives or adverbs.(Springboard: English Textual Power, Level 2, p. 97)
Adverb phrase modifying the verb has swerved:You can use prepositional phrases to add specific details when you write. Take care to use correct subject-verb agreement. When a prepositional phrase separates the subject and verb, the verb agrees with the subject, not with the object of the prepositional phrase.
“…Skateboarding has swerved from the fringe.”
Adjective phrase modifying the noun cost:
“…the cost of doing business.”
It is at the end of this sidebar that a connection to a typical "error" of writing, subject-verb agreement, is made. However, no examples are given, and it would be very difficult for students (or teachers) to glean how prepositional phrases are related to subject-verb agreement, or even to understand what is meant by that phrase or others such as “object of the prepositional phrase.”
I offer what I think the intended lesson is here. Subject-verb agreement is often listed as one of the most common errors of writing; it shows up on lists from elementary to college-level writing. Most writers, however, do not have issues at all with subject verb agreement in general. Our unconscious intuitions serve us quite well in guiding this agreement. (English language learners may have specific issues with subject-verb agreement, and these learners deserved a distinct, targeted lesson. Also, some English dialects have different patterns of subject-verb agreement that might deserve a separate lesson. Such variations should not be called “errors” since they are patterned and logical for each dialect, but they may differ from the so-called academic writing expected in most classroom writing.) However, one place in which there is variation with respect to subject-verb agreement involves subjects which contain prepositional phrases, as in the following examples:
Each one of the birds are/is going to leave the nest soon.The typical usage suggestion is to make the verb agree with the subject noun preceding the prepositional phrase. However, when there is a mismatch in the “number” – singular each compared to plural birds, for example, as in the first example above – then speakers and writers choose either a verb to match the noun preceding the prepositional phrase or the noun within the prepositional phrase. And the facts are, of course, more complicated. The type of noun preceding the prepositional phrase can affect the form of the verb. Consider these examples with a term of measurement, like gallon or quart.
Neither of my two suitcases is/are adequate for this trip.
Bellingham is one of those cities which is/are working hard to reclaim a waterfront.
Three gallons of milk is enough.Here singular is seems better even though gallons is plural. In contrast, plural are is preferred in the following example:
Three cats with long fur are enough.Or consider nouns that have two meanings, as either a mass or a count noun, like chicken.
All of the chicken is gone.The all, the noun preceding the prepositional phrase in both examples, is irrelevant in determining the agreement; instead, we do and should use the noun in the prepositional phrase to determine the appropriate agreement, just as we are advised not to by the general usage rule. Whether or not you decide to deal with the additional data that make this particular usage rule a bit more complicated (but really interesting!), it certainly illustrates that patterns of language can be complex and sometimes murky. And that we should take more time to discuss grammatical terminology (prepositional phrases), grammatical functions (subjects), and the reasons behind the variations. After that, students can make informed choices about, for example, subject-verb agreement in writing. However, I challenge any student to understand these lessons or adjust their own verb choices in writing from an oversimplified sidebar such as the one discussed here.
All of the chickens are gone.
A second issue I have with this particular “grammar and usage” sidebar is the conflation of adjective phrase, adverb phrase, and prepositional phrase. There has long been a tendency to conflate “form” and “function”, or syntax and meaning, in pedagogical grammatical explanations. To do so, however, ignores the actual patterns of language. Such conflation of terms is not only not useful, but it leads students to doubt their intuitions about word categories, and it provides no tools of analysis to extend to other examples. Consider the italicized words below.
“A preposition links the noun or pronoun following it (its object) to another word in a sentence. Prepositional phrases add specific or necessary detail in sentences. They function as adjectives or adverbs”And it offers the following example, where the italicized prepositional phrase is called an adverb phrase.
Adverb phrase modifying the verb has swerved:And the next, where the italicized prepositional phrase is called an adjective phrase.
“…Skateboarding has swerved from the fringe.”
Adjective phrase modifying the noun cost:Why this conflation of terms? Why call prepositional phrases adjectives and adverbs? I believe the point is to illustrate that prepositional phrases can modify verbs (like adverbs can) and nouns (as do adjectives). This is true, and discussion of modification is important and useful. It's also true that there is overlap in how the various parts of speech function, as modifiers and complements of other categories. However, the category distinctions are real distinctions – categories that we all have in our heads that function uniquely in terms of their morphology and their syntax. Terms like noun, adjective, preposition, or adverb are not labels arbitrarily imposed on a language, but are real (and complex) categories. Understanding this is another useful lesson for students, and using the terminology that matches their intuitive categorization will allow them to make use of labels in a productive way, extending the conversations beyond simply labeling to how to manipulate phrases in their writing. We can offer students straightforward tools of analysis that allow them to discover these category distinctions and see how they employ such tools unconsciously all the time. We all have unconscious knowledge about categories. By using accurate labels, we are simply connecting that unconscious knowledge to terminology to help make it conscious knowledge which we can then apply in all sorts of ways – to our writing, to our analysis of literature, to investigation of other linguistic patterns, and so on. Sidebars or mini-lessons such as the ones described here are attempts to cut to the chase, to deal with common writing errors in a fast and efficient manner. However, the assumed background knowledge, the misleading terminology, and the lack of discussion of reasons behind the variations ("errors") render such lessons essentially useless.
“…the cost of doing business.”
Hmm, I titled this "lesson" but I'm not sure that it is, except maybe it's a lesson to avoid using Springboard, which many of the teachers I know don't like anyway. And it does provide another justification for studying prepositions and prepositional phrases if you want to wrestle with subject-verb agreement as it arises in your students' writing. Of course, intervening prepositional phrases are just one of the reasons that agreement with the verb varies. Browse through this or this or this one from my alma mater to find some others - but I wouldn't suggest marching through all of the reasons that subject-verb agreement "problems" arise.
Strand 1/Grammar: Lesson 17 - Prepositions
What to say about prepositions? Their main job is to relate or connect two parts of a clause. But that's vague - lots of categories do that. As mentioned here, many of them convey some kind of directional, spatial, or locational meaning. I mentioned there too that we have seen preposition meaning undergo changes, like all words, and that many of the original spatial relations have been extended, often metaphorically, to convey other kinds of meanings like time (until 6 o’clock, since I was four), manner (by train), accompaniment (with fries), among others. And consider the prepositions in the following examples.
So their meanings are quite polysemous, which is cool, and is just one indicator of how they have lost some of their meaning, on the one hand, while gaining more subtle meaning distinctions on the other. Believe it or not, there’s a great little 5-minute video from The Human Language Series by Gene Searchinger where Ray Jackendoff talks about the complexity of prepositions.
Prepositions’ transition from being content words to function words means that that their “contentful” meaning is lost, which is why we find variation in which one can be used.
Prepositions ride the line between being content/form/meaningful/open class words and function/grammatical/closed class words. Our main content words are nouns, verbs, and adjectives. We can and do add new words to these categories all the time. The other classes of words (which includes determiners, auxiliary verbs, conjunctions, degree words, modals, pronouns, and quantifiers) have members that are fairly fixed, and new words do not join these categories very frequently. (One recent exciting new conjunction, though, is slash. Read what Anne Curzan says about it here. My students are in solid agreement on the new usage of this conjunction slash conjunctive adverb.) Prepositions haven't been added to the language in a very long time, so in that way they seem like a closed class. They, however, do still have some "real" meaning - up means up, down means down. But others are more ethereal.
As discussed in that other post, there are a group of prepositions, sometimes called subordinating conjunctions, which introduce clauses. Some don’t like the “conjunction” part of this label since conjunctions join “like” things – NPs (dogs but cats), VPs (runs or jumps), PPs (in and out), APs (big and tall), clauses (We ate all the cereal, but then we bought some more.). And this subtype of preposition introduces subordinate clauses, so they are not equal to, but subordinate to or dependent on, the main clause. They include after, as, before, since, until, because, while,(al)though, when, where, and phrasal ones such as even though, as much as, and as though.
I haven't constructed a lesson plan for prepositions because the teachers I work with have seen no need for one. Students are able to identify them fairly easily, and there aren’t many usage rules surrounding them (except the one about not ending a sentence with a preposition, which I can’t bear to draw more attention to, especially since it’s a faux rule, but if you want to read about it, there certainly are places you can do that. And in fact Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary has a good short video about it). Common Core Standards want students to know about prepositions. Here's just one example from 5th grade, but there are several others. And I will post soon about how prepositional phrases correlate with subject-verb agreement. Oh, and there are a whole group of words, called particles, that used to be prepositions and now glom on to the verb. So I'll talk about those. They're cool - and they can be a pain in the neck for non-native English speakers. In the meantime, prepositions are interesting little beasts, so you should bring them up.
I am standing by the pole.
The poem was written by my friend.
She wore a shirt with stripes.
They hit the ball with a stick
So their meanings are quite polysemous, which is cool, and is just one indicator of how they have lost some of their meaning, on the one hand, while gaining more subtle meaning distinctions on the other. Believe it or not, there’s a great little 5-minute video from The Human Language Series by Gene Searchinger where Ray Jackendoff talks about the complexity of prepositions.
Prepositions’ transition from being content words to function words means that that their “contentful” meaning is lost, which is why we find variation in which one can be used.
I waited in line for the movie.Prepositions have changed over time from being meaningful, content words to being more grammatical, function words. (See the Parts of Speech doc here.) And the fact that we can use varying prepositions also demonstrates this lack of specific meaning. Their presence is key, though. No one that I know of can have no preposition in any of the examples above.
I waited on line for the movie.
I picked up the wrong shirt on accident.
I picked up the wrong shirt by accident.
I feel sick to my stomach.
I feel sick at my stomach.
I feel sick on my stomach.
Prepositions ride the line between being content/form/meaningful/open class words and function/grammatical/closed class words. Our main content words are nouns, verbs, and adjectives. We can and do add new words to these categories all the time. The other classes of words (which includes determiners, auxiliary verbs, conjunctions, degree words, modals, pronouns, and quantifiers) have members that are fairly fixed, and new words do not join these categories very frequently. (One recent exciting new conjunction, though, is slash. Read what Anne Curzan says about it here. My students are in solid agreement on the new usage of this conjunction slash conjunctive adverb.) Prepositions haven't been added to the language in a very long time, so in that way they seem like a closed class. They, however, do still have some "real" meaning - up means up, down means down. But others are more ethereal.
As discussed in that other post, there are a group of prepositions, sometimes called subordinating conjunctions, which introduce clauses. Some don’t like the “conjunction” part of this label since conjunctions join “like” things – NPs (dogs but cats), VPs (runs or jumps), PPs (in and out), APs (big and tall), clauses (We ate all the cereal, but then we bought some more.). And this subtype of preposition introduces subordinate clauses, so they are not equal to, but subordinate to or dependent on, the main clause. They include after, as, before, since, until, because, while,(al)though, when, where, and phrasal ones such as even though, as much as, and as though.
We arrived at school [after the doors were locked].If you feel more comfortable calling these subordinating conjunctions, I see no problem with that. Or, as I mentioned, my students prefer the term subordinating prepositions.
The squirrels simply looked at us [as we filled the feeder].
My relatives give me money [because they have no idea what I like].
I haven't constructed a lesson plan for prepositions because the teachers I work with have seen no need for one. Students are able to identify them fairly easily, and there aren’t many usage rules surrounding them (except the one about not ending a sentence with a preposition, which I can’t bear to draw more attention to, especially since it’s a faux rule, but if you want to read about it, there certainly are places you can do that. And in fact Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary has a good short video about it). Common Core Standards want students to know about prepositions. Here's just one example from 5th grade, but there are several others. And I will post soon about how prepositional phrases correlate with subject-verb agreement. Oh, and there are a whole group of words, called particles, that used to be prepositions and now glom on to the verb. So I'll talk about those. They're cool - and they can be a pain in the neck for non-native English speakers. In the meantime, prepositions are interesting little beasts, so you should bring them up.
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
Because preposition
If you haven’t already done so, you might want to talk with your students about the 2013 Word of the Year selections just voted on by the American Dialect Society at the annual Linguistic Society of America meeting.
The word, as you may have already heard, is because. You can check out Ben Zimmer’s post here and Anne Curzan’s here and LanguageLog’s here.
If you’re worried about the classification of because as a preposition, as some are, you can read this by Geoff Pullum. However, he can be offputting; he calls those who label because an adverb “stupid” and those who call it a conjunction “flamingly and demonstrably wrong.” Yikes.
So let’s look at some data. We, on this blog, haven’t discussed prepositions or conjunctions, for that matter, so a real exploratory investigation of this is perhaps best delayed, but let’s take a preliminary look.
Let’s first see how because does behave like other prepositions. Most prepositional phrases (bracketed below) contain a head preposition and a complement (in second set of brackets) of that preposition. Those complements are typically noun phrases:
I think that one reason that some are uncomfortable calling because a preposition is that many of our prepositions are directional/locational. And some may have learned a little ditty like a preposition is anything a bunny can do to a hill or anything an airplane can do to a cloud: in, out, on, around, above, inside, behind, and so on. Because doesn’t fit that mold. But the meanings of prepositions have been expanding for centuries, becoming much more metaphorical, for one thing: from two to four o’clock is no longer strictly directional, for example, and we're ok with it being called a preposition.
This notion of spatial or directional meaning is reinforced in some dictionaries. Remember how we have discussed how meaning-based definitions of other categories can be problematic. See posts here, here, and here. And here are a couple of dictionaries' definitions of preposition.
A group of words called complementizers or subordinating conjunctions introduces clauses, but these link a subordinate clause to a main clause, like the following:
The word, as you may have already heard, is because. You can check out Ben Zimmer’s post here and Anne Curzan’s here and LanguageLog’s here.
If you’re worried about the classification of because as a preposition, as some are, you can read this by Geoff Pullum. However, he can be offputting; he calls those who label because an adverb “stupid” and those who call it a conjunction “flamingly and demonstrably wrong.” Yikes.
So let’s look at some data. We, on this blog, haven’t discussed prepositions or conjunctions, for that matter, so a real exploratory investigation of this is perhaps best delayed, but let’s take a preliminary look.
Let’s first see how because does behave like other prepositions. Most prepositional phrases (bracketed below) contain a head preposition and a complement (in second set of brackets) of that preposition. Those complements are typically noun phrases:
I sat [on [the roof]].But they can also be participial verb phrases:
We walked [to [the store]].
She replied [without [reading the email]].or another prepositional phrase:
They put the food [out [on the table]].And they can be clauses:
The dog was tired [after [we took her for a walk]].We seem less uncomfortable – more comfortable – with after (than with because) as a preposition because it can also occur with just noun phrases. Same for since.
I’ll call you [after [10 o’clock]].After and since both occur with clauses too.
I’ve been waiting [since [the dawn of time]].
I’ll call you [after [I finish my coffee]].And, like after, since, even though, until, and when, because can also be followed by a clause:
I’ve been waiting [since [you walked out the door]].
I like you [because [you are funny]].So if our definition of preposition allows clausal complements like these, because fits right in.
I like you [even though [you are funny]].
I liked you [until [you weren’t funny anymore]].
I liked you [when [you were funny]].
I think that one reason that some are uncomfortable calling because a preposition is that many of our prepositions are directional/locational. And some may have learned a little ditty like a preposition is anything a bunny can do to a hill or anything an airplane can do to a cloud: in, out, on, around, above, inside, behind, and so on. Because doesn’t fit that mold. But the meanings of prepositions have been expanding for centuries, becoming much more metaphorical, for one thing: from two to four o’clock is no longer strictly directional, for example, and we're ok with it being called a preposition.
This notion of spatial or directional meaning is reinforced in some dictionaries. Remember how we have discussed how meaning-based definitions of other categories can be problematic. See posts here, here, and here. And here are a couple of dictionaries' definitions of preposition.
Merriam-Webster’s definition of preposition: a word or group of words that is used with a noun, pronoun, or noun phrase to show direction, location, or time, or to introduce an object.So when you’re working with these kinds of definitions, calling because a preposition may seem weird. And it’s important to note that for the most part, those definitions work, just as calling a noun a “person, place, or thing” usually works. Some huge majority of our prepositions are spatial and directional. There are good reasons to call because a preposition, but there are also reasons to not fault those who don’t like that label. I’ve had students who really want a different label for this group of words that introduce clauses that are not subordinate clauses. Some classes have settled on “subordinating prepositions.” Maybe your students have some other ideas. Let’s briefly look at how these prepositions that introduce clauses are different from another group of words that introduces clauses.
And Dictionary.com: any member of a class of words found in many languages that are used before nouns, pronouns, or other substantives to form phrases functioning as modifiers of verbs, nouns, or adjectives, and that typically express a spatial, temporal, or other relationship, as in, on, by, to, since.
A group of words called complementizers or subordinating conjunctions introduces clauses, but these link a subordinate clause to a main clause, like the following:
I know [that [she is hungry]].That, if, and whether introduce whole clauses too (like because), but behave very differently syntactically and semantically. They link one clause to another, introducing the subordinate clause, and the predicate in the main clause depends on that lower clause in order to complete the sentence. Our because doesn’t do that. More on all this in another post, because lunchtime.
I wonder [if [it will rain]].
She asked [whether [she should dance]].
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