Re: Harvard Pres: Women Lack Ability In Math, Sciences

From: David (doberman_at_fields.com)
Date: 01/21/05 

Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2005 00:57:45 GMT

Jo Schaper <joschapern4ospam@2socketdot.no5net> wrote:

> As a honest-to-god former writing major, I both feel your pain, and
>won't defend the entire diagramming thing. Diagramming was an exercise
>forced on English by 'the classicists', specifically by grammarians and
>rhetorics scholars, who attempted to civilize the barbaric tongue by
>applying a mixture of Latin and Greek grammar rules.

Actually, a great deal of the parsing craze of the 1960s & '70s was
the result of innovations in grammar studies: linguistics went
structural, & Chomsky & others developed transformational-generative
grammar, which identified the same (relatively) few basic sentence
structures in all aspects of language.

You can even see these effects in terminology; the Latinate-derived
terms like "nominative," "accusative," "genitive" & "dative" were
replaced by "subjective," "objective," "possessive" & . . . well,
"indirect object case."

The most important thing kids learned in those days was not to show
their genitives on a first dative.

>The best way to understand English grammar is to learn another European
>language (or even a computer programming language which is above machine
>or assembly language) where you need the rules to form coherent
>statements AND you have never heard the language spoken before.

I think you're putting the cart before the horse (although I believe
you if you say it worked for you). In general, the more thorough your
background is in the elements & terminology of English grammar, the
easier you slip into a new language -- assuming you're learning its
grammar. 

--
Pas de lieu Rhône que nous.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Related languages (Re: A China-Sumer connection)
    ... > language in everyday use that heh, ... between pidgin and creole must be based on grammar. ... grammatical in any of the versions of English that I know. ... There are three distinctions that speakers make: ...
    (sci.archaeology)
  • Re: Related languages (Re: A China-Sumer connection)
    ... > language in everyday use that heh, ... between pidgin and creole must be based on grammar. ... grammatical in any of the versions of English that I know. ... There are three distinctions that speakers make: ...
    (sci.anthropology)
  • Re: Related languages (Re: A China-Sumer connection)
    ... > language in everyday use that heh, ... between pidgin and creole must be based on grammar. ... grammatical in any of the versions of English that I know. ... There are three distinctions that speakers make: ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: I confess
    ... though I'm fairly good at grammar, in casual conversation I say things ... Correcting and bashing are two different things. ... the entire "English community" (you know, ... and since when is language something you can decide? ...
    (rec.games.computer.ultima.dragons)
  • Re: Related languages (Re: A China-Sumer connection)
    ... >> language in everyday use that heh, ... > distinction between pidgin and creole must be based on grammar. ... "I'd gone out to the store" is proper English to say what I did ... They can learn to say words, but not communicate. ...
    (sci.anthropology)