Re: Subject / Object / ?

Quoting "J. 'Mach' Wust" <j_mach_wust@...>:

> On Tue, 14 Sep 2004 12:01:49 +0200, Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> wrote:
>
> >Quoting "J. 'Mach' Wust" <j_mach_wust@...>:
> >
> >> On Mon, 13 Sep 2004 17:34:32 +0200, Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> >It also seems a priori unexpected - why would not one's subconscious
> >> >grasp of one's native grammar suffice, when it clearly does for
> >> >speaking? At least I "say" what I'm going to write in my head as I type
> >> >it, which makes it hard for me to believe the mental processes involved
> >> >in the production of written and spoken texts are _that_ different.
> >>
> >> Spoken language is different from written language.
> >
> >I believe I implied as much. Question is, different to what degree, and in
> >what respects. As far as my native Swedish is concerned, there seems to be
> >very little in the way of _grammatical_ differences - the chief
> >differences are of style and of higher level structure (eg, multi-clause
> >sentences being more common in writing).
> >
> >I certainly do not normally carry out any conscious grammatical analyses
> >when writing a Swedish text. If having been taught formal grammar helps
> >here, it must be by sharpening one's subconscious linguistic competence.
>
> Different languages.
Indeed. It's not hard to see how conscious grammatical understanding might be
effectively necessary for literacy in a sufficiently diglossic situation.

Going back to where this started, the question should then be whether knowing
formal grammar is necessary for Americans to write good written English. My gut
feeling would be 'no'. (Redlox is a case in point - his written English isn't
particularly bad as far as this non-native can judge.)

> >> >> If your goal is just to allow all children to write SMS messages on
> >> >> their mobiles, then you're right that this is unnecessary. I
> >> >> personally think literacy should be a little higher than that.
> >> >
> >> >I would too, but I had never in my life suspected that that sort of
> >> >conscious grammatical understanding would be necessary or even
> >> >particularly helpful for achieving it.
> >>
> >> I've experienced this. In the gymnasium school (age 15 to 20), we had a
> >> very tough German teacher, that is, a teacher who teached us much of
> >> grammar, quite exceptional here in Switzerland (at least by
> >> impressionistic comparison to Linguistics university students). When we
> >> got a written text back, it used to be all red because of his
> >> corrections, even if it were written by the best students. He made us
> >> analyze thoroughly our errors, syntactical errors, logical errors,
> >> stylistical errors, errors of word choice, etc. We all hated it, but the
> >> awareness of syntactical ambiguities proved to be very useful for the
> >> better domination of the written language.
> >>
> >> I believe that the same effect can be achieved by years of reading
> >> practice.
> >
> >The later might apply to me - in my early school years, my writing
> >(particularly spelling) was way below par, while by gymnasium age (16-19)
> >it was well above*, and I read _alot_ in the intervening years.
> >
> >Anyway, of the types of errors you mention, only syntactical ones would
> >seem here relevant - at the very least, I'm gonna take plenty of
> >convincing to believe that teaching formal grammar helps against
> >stylistical or lexical errors, and I'm highly skeptical on logical ones
> >too. The null hypothesis must be that they're better fought by teaching
> >the students logic and stylistics, and expanding their vocabularies.
>
> I should have put the types of errors between apostrophes, since it's just
> the terms he was using. I consider them to be hard to break up into
> different categories (that is to say, it'd require a lot of theoretical
> decisions).
>
> An example from this reply of mine: First I had written "German orthography
> may require more syntactical knowledge than other languages". In my
> teachers terms, IIRC, this would be an error of the kind "Syntax-Logik:
> Bezug" (syntaxis logic: reference), since a comparison requires two
> entities of the same type to be compared. I've corrected it to "(...) than
> _orthographies of_ other languages".
I doubt I'd noticed the incongruency if you'd let it be.

But I don't consider this a _grammatical_ error. That you cannot reasonably
compare
an orthography to other languages is a fact about the outside world, not about
English grammar. If we amend the original sentence to read "... other
orthographies"
we have not changed its grammatical structure, but the problem is gone.

> I doubt that an awareness for this kind of errors can be trained by
> teaching but logic and stylistic.
Should "but" read "about"?

Again, I can't see how it's a grammatical problem, or how your teacher teaching
you to watch out for it amounts to grammatical tuition.

> >* If I'm forgiven for a possibly amusing anecdote, I once had a gymnasium
> >essay downgraded on the grounds it used "too advanced language"; it was to
> >be written as for inclusion in a youth magazine, and my teacher felt it
> >was too tough for the typical reader of such. My protests to the effect
> >this was an insult to the literacy of young people were rejected.
>
> Isn't it the teachers who are responsible for the literacy of young
> people... :(
Well, assuming she was right, this particular one teacher was not responsible
for the literacy of the average youngster, still less in a position to do
anything
about it. One might of coure also question whether getting all/most youths to
the level of literacy necessary to understand the text in question is a sensible
use of state funds. My personal answer would be yes, but in the end it's a
question of a boundary line that has to be drawn at some more or less arbitrary
point.

                                     Andreas