Leaving this question for now, I wish to speak of two things: one is on grammar (a lost art); and the other is something I heard on the radio (NPR).
When teaching grammar to many students, I found it interesting how few of them knew their parts of speech. I am speaking of high school students. It seems as though the confusion brought about in university and in teaching colleges by these "new ways of thinking" have made it unnecessary and impossible to teach grammar. Realising that linguistics is the new lover (thank you Bloomfield and Chomsky), it must be realised that no one, other than the "experts", uses linguistics to judge what is spoken or written; no one at schools, at work, with whom you are speaking or in correspondence uses linguistics to say that you have an incomplete sentence, that your verb and noun do not agree in number, etc. They do use their knowledge of grammar.
Grammar is the art of making a sentence complete and fitting. It is an art that comes naturally from our natural ability to speak. Every language has a grammar. Not all grammars are the same, but all have one. A few things that each has in common is that all have parts of speech and way of arraying (syntax) these parts of speech into a and in a sentence. Every grammar has these two principles: parts of speech and syntax. It is from these that every grammarian (this is anyone judging the sentence making of someone) judges the sentences. Here is a notion that is lost: grammar firstly belongs to speech and secondly to the written sentence. So, no matter whether a people have a written alphabet or not, they have a grammar. This is also why the art of punctuation belongs to writing and not speech. The art of pausing belongs to speech.
This means that naturally all who speak have a beginning way to judge speech. What one does when learning grammar in school is give names and definitions to these natural principles and to use them knowingly when judging a sentence, rather than just instinctively.
There are three arts of speech (I might even say four, but some might argue the fourth belongs more to music than to speech): grammar, logic, and rhetoric. The first of these is essential to an educated person, for it is through this door that the other two are introduced and the rest of the arts and sciences are introduced. It is the beginning.
I exhort teachers to learn grammar again so they can teach it. You do not have know it as Martin of Denmark or Thomas of Erfurt knew grammar, but learn it. There is a wonderful book on English grammar (I have seen it in print again; this is due to its beautiful order and the knowledge of the author). The author's surname is Nesfield. Find it; bring it back into practice. Bring back the teaching of grammar, and you will bring back into being a population of educated students. Learning and teaching Latin and Greek would not do any harm.
Enough on this for now. The item that I heard on the radio is this. Scene: a street in Paris with Starbucks and other American like businesses, and then onto another street with a Parisian cafe, and a voice over telling us that the French artists and philosophers have been replaced by American and Japanese tourists.
My first thought: nothing has changed by the substitution.
When teaching grammar to many students, I found it interesting how few of them knew their parts of speech. I am speaking of high school students. It seems as though the confusion brought about in university and in teaching colleges by these "new ways of thinking" have made it unnecessary and impossible to teach grammar. Realising that linguistics is the new lover (thank you Bloomfield and Chomsky), it must be realised that no one, other than the "experts", uses linguistics to judge what is spoken or written; no one at schools, at work, with whom you are speaking or in correspondence uses linguistics to say that you have an incomplete sentence, that your verb and noun do not agree in number, etc. They do use their knowledge of grammar.
Grammar is the art of making a sentence complete and fitting. It is an art that comes naturally from our natural ability to speak. Every language has a grammar. Not all grammars are the same, but all have one. A few things that each has in common is that all have parts of speech and way of arraying (syntax) these parts of speech into a and in a sentence. Every grammar has these two principles: parts of speech and syntax. It is from these that every grammarian (this is anyone judging the sentence making of someone) judges the sentences. Here is a notion that is lost: grammar firstly belongs to speech and secondly to the written sentence. So, no matter whether a people have a written alphabet or not, they have a grammar. This is also why the art of punctuation belongs to writing and not speech. The art of pausing belongs to speech.
This means that naturally all who speak have a beginning way to judge speech. What one does when learning grammar in school is give names and definitions to these natural principles and to use them knowingly when judging a sentence, rather than just instinctively.
There are three arts of speech (I might even say four, but some might argue the fourth belongs more to music than to speech): grammar, logic, and rhetoric. The first of these is essential to an educated person, for it is through this door that the other two are introduced and the rest of the arts and sciences are introduced. It is the beginning.
I exhort teachers to learn grammar again so they can teach it. You do not have know it as Martin of Denmark or Thomas of Erfurt knew grammar, but learn it. There is a wonderful book on English grammar (I have seen it in print again; this is due to its beautiful order and the knowledge of the author). The author's surname is Nesfield. Find it; bring it back into practice. Bring back the teaching of grammar, and you will bring back into being a population of educated students. Learning and teaching Latin and Greek would not do any harm.
Enough on this for now. The item that I heard on the radio is this. Scene: a street in Paris with Starbucks and other American like businesses, and then onto another street with a Parisian cafe, and a voice over telling us that the French artists and philosophers have been replaced by American and Japanese tourists.
My first thought: nothing has changed by the substitution.
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