ORLAPUBS P. ORLAPUBS L83A: ONLINE GRAMMAR OF ENGLISH IN 18 LESSONS

EIGHTEEN WEEKLY LESSONS FOR COMPETENT
AND CREATIVE TEACHERS OPEN TO RECENT
INSIGHTS CONCERNING THE GRAMMAR OF
ENGLISH AND DESIROUS OF FINDING
OUT HOW TO COACH PUPILS TO
CONSTRUCT THE GRAMMAR
SYSTEM FROM ITS FOUR
BUILDING BLOCKS

[If the reader is familiar with the following prefatory items and wishes
to skip ahead, click for the Table of Contents or the beginning
of the materials.]

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    The grammatical system presented in these pages, designed for teachers of school grammar, is based on the analyses found in Bailey, Essays on time-based linguistic analysis (Oxford University Press, 1996)--with no emphasis on theory but with no less emphasis on explanation and the aim of leading pupils to see that grammar is anything but a list of un explained rules to be boringly memorized. The present undertaking bases itself on the writer's long experience in teaching the subject--not without efforts to head off violations of the system that users of English are sometimes, or often, prone to commit.
      The aim of this presentation is to lead students on the intellectual adventure of learning how to build up the grammar system themselves from its very few elements so as to see how it works (the way building a computer goes hand in hand with seeing how it works). With this knowledge, one can understand system-conformity and in that way acquire insight into why this or that is correct or not. In this approach, one rises from "training" to education.
     Just as really understanding computers requires building one, so understanding grammar requires building one. And just as the complex system of logic can be built up from two primitive operators (negation plus either and or or --whether inclusive or exclusive) plus two modal operators--one for possibility and one for necessity, grammar can in like manner, as will be seen, be constructed from four features on two dimensions. The English grammar system also requires the descriptive features [expectative] and [desiderative]--each with a neutral value in addition to plus and minus.
     I have not found it convenient to use some technical terminology like anaphora (the relationship between a pronoun or relative adverb and its antecedent). Complementizer lumps infinitival to together with subordinating conjunctions; it falls under the higher category of functors or operators. As for the use of technical terms, it is unavoidable for obvious reasons. For centuries, school boys and girls have succeeded in learn the complex terminology of Latin (and sometimes Greek) grammar. English-teachers cannot avoid the same work. They need to rise to the occasion of making the necessity for terms clear, finding good illustrations, and explaining everything properly.

CAUTION: NO PERSON WHO IS SHY OF LOOKING UP UNFA- MILIAR TERMS IN A DICTIONARY OR WHO CANNOT COPE WITH THE JOB OF LEARNING THE TECHNICAL TERMINOLOGY--A JOB WHICH IS BASIC FOR EVERY DISCIPLINE --SHOULD ALLOW ONESELF TO GET INVOLVED IN TEACHING GRAMMAR. THAT WOULD BE A CONTRADITION IN TERMS. THIS PAGE IS FOR COLLEGE GRADUATES; IT NEEDS TO BE TRANSLATED INTO MATERIALS SUITABLE FOR DIFFERENT AGE LEVELS OF SCHOOL CHILDREN. WHAT IS PROVIDED HERE IS THE INFORMATION AND THE ARRANGEMENT AND EXPLANATION OF THE INFORMATION PROVIDED.

FOR GENERAL BACKGROUND INFORMATION, CHECK THE BOOKLETS: HOW GRAMMARS OF ENGLISH HAS MISCUED; HOW GRAMMARS OF ENGLISH HAVE MISSED THE BOAT. THE LATTER IS BEING RE-WRITTEN AND GREATLY ENLARGED; IT WILL BE AVAILABLE SOON.

Readers are invited to look at the OLP booklet Why more instruction won't mean better grammar (1992), How grammars of English have missed the boat (1997, online here), and "How grammars of English have miscued" (1998, put online here in a re-formatted and slightly revised version of the originally published version).

School grammar and linguistics have different goals and consequently different analyses. Teachers who get put off by linguistics should be advised that what follows is not linguistics (though anything in linguistics that is helpful has not been rejected because it is part of linguistics) but school grammar. The difference between linguistics and school difference merits a few words of comment.

Most of those wishing to deal with English grammar need to shift their focus, or rather their fundamental paradigm (outlook, thought world), in two ways:

1. The first need is to leave aside the idea of grammar as a LIST of RULES, etc.; one needs to adopt the idea that grammar is an integrated structure of substructures. In other words, it is a SYSTEM--something that the list mentality can hardly cope with.

2. The second presupposition required is the understanding that English, like new languages generally, is mixed. It's grammar comes from a Romance language: old French; and its sounds come from Germanic Anglo-Saxon. See Ch. 10 of the writers' ESSAYS ON TIME-BASED LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS (Oxford University Press,1996). The total A-S component of our current English vocabulary has been claimed to be only 28%. The inflections are mostly Anglo-Saxon, and French functor words (prepositions, etc.) ARE often, but not always, calqued [translated] by Anglo-Saxon vocabulary. Since, however, the majority of the ordered sound rules are really morphological, and since Romance, the sound rules are largely Romance. (Both parent languages had -th in the third-person singular of their "present tense"--which is not in current English what you've been taught; a few sound rules derive from Anglo-Saxon

Note that words and sounds can be freely borrowed; structures cannot (other than very simple ones like Rules--schmules). While English has invented a few structures, much English usage is French-derived. A very simple but telling example is "That's me" with "C'est moi." When Marilyn Monroe, seeing her picture in the newspaper exclaimed (according to pseudogrammar) "That's I!" it was meant to sound ridiculous. Our usage is not that of Anglo-Saxon (erroneously called Old English, though its grammar hardly resembles that of Middle English, except that subjunctive uses were surprisingly similar in Anglo-Saxon and Old French; of course, the subjunctive has been replaced by four or five other modalities in current English, as the following grammar will show in the second part: L83B).

Inst.-Prof. Noam Chomsky, the originator and most insightful practitioner of linguistics as it is known today, speaking of "the conflicting conditions of descriptive and explanatory adequacy" (in New horizons in the study of language and mind [Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 8]), contrasts two kinds of adequacy; but he could well have distinguished two kinds of explanation--the kinds suitable for linguists and cognitive science and the kind relevant to school grammar (hereafter SG). Academic disciplines should be explanatory, not laundry lists of topics--or rules. On the same page, Chomsky recognizes a difference between "the familiar graical constructions" (which "are taken to be be . . . artifacts, useful for . . . description, but with no theoretical standing") and explanations that contribute to the theory of the cognitive faculty of language that is central in his thinking. He continues, ". . . the rules are decomposed into general principles of the faculty of language" [emphasis added]. On the following page, he says that "the main task [of his enterprise] is to discover and clarify the principles and parameters and the manner of their interaction, . . ." I suggest that this task is not, however, what the grammarian (in contrast with the cognitive scientist) is to pursue.

There are two kinds of explanation--the kind appropriate for SG and those required in a minimalist linguistics approach. In "It was necessary that it not arrive late" we account for the absence of the inflection -s on arrive, as well as its neglect of time sequencing (its failure to be past following a past form in the main clause) and the absence of do before not by treating the sentence as a variant of "It was necessary that it should into arrive late" with deleted or virtual should--which we can indicate by replacing should with $: "It was necessary that it $ not arrive late." In "We shipped them their materials a different way," we account for them and a different way by putting the virtual preposition (annotated as @) before them, indicate a virtual "to them" and "in a different way." We explain why those who never say "Me gave she her paycheck" but who quite naturally say, "John and myself (or me) gave she and he their paychecks" with the gramamtical theory of reversals in marked environments (something needed also in figure-and-
background aspects of cognitive science). We explain the difference between "the job for them to finish up on time" and the "task of their finishing up on time" involves two considerations--role of job as the object of "to finish up" and the difference between the infinitive construct and the gerund construct. (Note that for is virtual in "She required 0 them to be finished on time.") That the infinitive is "marked" because of its volitional-purposive role, lacking in the case of a gerund, explains the different import of the two expressions. But it explains the difference between the default expressions "their being watched" and "for them to be going to get seen," as opposed to the settle notion of "for them to get watched" and of "for them to be going to be being seen." The infinitive generally has a purposive import lacking to a gerund. But contrast "their intention to be accepted as competent"; and "their intention of getting accepted as competent"; to be accepted is purposive, while getting accepted is not--it can even be factual, as in "Getting accepted there is what they achieved."

--pairing (Chomsky's merge): Modification (and determiners; cf. apposition [see table below]) and predication (topic+comment with an agent); these pairings can form a unit that pairs with something else
--moving or displacement: From That Tracey has been elected is likely: "Tracey is likely to have been elected" [RAISING]; or From a posited [(For) little to have been seen] seems: Little seems to have been seen [DISPLACEMENT] or else: There seems little to have been seen or better: There seems to have been little seen [additional displacement with prothetic there].

Besides nominals (alternatively, substantives; single words are called nouns), modifiers (adjectives, adverbs), and verbs, there are substitutes (pronouns and pro-adverbs like here, then, so, thus) as well as various connectors (conjunctions, prepositions, preverbs, and postverbs).

To pretend that the most complex system a person ever acquires can be treated "simply"--say as a laudnry list of rules-- betrays a lack of insight. It also fails to see that a plenitude of inflections goes logically (and often in reality) with a simpler syntactic system; conversely, the simpler the inflectional system, the more complex the syntax has got to be.

     UNDERLYING ASSUMPTIONS: TREATING KIDS AS SPONGES OR PARROTS RESULTS IN A STRUCTURELESS SET OF UNEXPLAINED RULES TO BE BORINGLY MEMORIZED. SINCE THAT IS FAR FROM BEING WHAT A GRAMMATICAL SYSTEM IS--THE MOST COMPLEX SYSTEM ANY NATIVE-SPEAKER EVERY INTERNALIZES--IT'S DOOMED TO THE FAILURE IT HAS ALWAYS MET WITH.   THE PEDAGOGICAL OBJECT SHOULD BE AN INTELLECTUAL ADVENTURE OF DISCOVERY CREATED BY GUIDING PUPILS TO DEDUCE OR INFER (WHEN PROPERLY GUIDED) HOW TO BUILD UP THE GRAMMATICAL SYSTEM OF ENGLISH OUT OF ITS FOUR BASIC BUILDING BLOCKS (THREE ON THE "HORIZONTAL" DIMENSION OF PREDICATION; ONE ON THE "VERTICAL" DIMENSION OF MODIFICATION).
     KIDS OF ANY INTELLIGENCE CAN DEDUCE WHAT "ONE" (SINGULAR) AND " MORE THAN ONE" (PLURAL) (THE CATEGORY OF GRAMMATICAL NUMBER) ARE.   AND THE SAME IS TRUE OF THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN SUBJECT AND OBJECT NOUNS--THE PRIMAL FORM OF A NOMINAL.   VERB COMPLEMENTS (OBJECTS AND PREDICATE COMPLEMENTS) CAN BEST BE TAUGHT WITH SUCH PRONOUNS AS HAVE A DIFFERENT DEFAULT FORM FOR WHAT GOES BEFORE A VERB IN NORMAL WORD ORDER AND WHAT FOLLOWS. IN ENGLISH, AS IN FRENCH, OBJECTS AND PREDICATE COMPLEMENTS ARE LIKE IN THE PRONOMINAL FORMS FILLING THE TWO ROLES. (THE WORD ORDER OF QUESTIONS, PREDICATIVE ADJECTIVES, CLEFT AND CLOVEN SENTENCES, ETC. CAN BE INTRODUCED LATER, ALONG WITH DO-SUPPORT WITH CERTAIN NEGATIVES. )   A YOUNG CHILD CAN EASILY LEARN WHAT MODIFICATION IS--BROWN DOG, WHITE DOG OR MOVE SLOWLY, MOVE QUICKLY). IT IS ONLY ONE STEP FURTHER TO UNDERSTAND HOW A PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE, INFINITIVE (PHRASE), OR ADVERBIAL CLAUSE CAN MODIFY A VERB OR ANOTHER MODIFIER . . . JUST AS IT BUT A STEP TO SEE HOW PRONOUNS, GERUNDS, AND INFINITIVE CONSTRUCTS CAN FILL THE ROLE OF A NOUN--MORE GENERALLY: A NOMINAL   IN THIS WAY, THE STRUCTURE OF GRAMMAR CAN BE BUILT UP BY A CHILD. THE TRICK IS TO PRESENT THINGS IN AN WAY AND SEQUENCE THAT CAN TRIGGER THE CHILD'S DEDUCTIVE ABILITIES.   IT IS REALLY A MATTER OF ANALOGIES: MOVE NOW : MOVE AT THIS TIME : MOVE WHEN YOU HEAR THE WHISTLE.
      WHILE TRADITIONAL TERMS ARE BEST KEPT WHERE APPLICABLE, THEY SHOULD NOT BE CLUNG TO OTHERWISE. THE WAY GRAMMARIANS HAVE IMPOSED LATIN OR GERMAN CATEGORIES UNSUITABLE FOR ENGLISH GRAMMAR LIKE CASES AND TENSES IS DEPLORABLE, AS IS CATEGORIZING CERTAIN PARTS OF SPEECH LIKE THAN AS WHAT THEY WOULD BE IN OTHER GRAMMAR SYSTEMS. IT EXPLAINS WHY GRAMMAR HAS FALLEN INTO THE STATUS IT HAS.   THE LIST OR POSITIVISTIC MENTALITY HAS BEEN AS BIG A PROBLEM IN GRAMMATICAL ANALYSIS AS HAS BEEN THE SPONGE OR PARROT APPROACH TO TEACHING. NOTE THAT IF TECHNICAL TERMS OUGHT NOT TO BE PROLIFERATED, IT IS INADVISABLE IN ANY DISCIPLINE TO USE EVERYDAY WORDS FOR TECHNICAL VOCABULARY, SINCE KIDS LEARN WORDS AS THEY ARE.   (SEE LESSON 23 FOR THE INAPPROPRIATENESS OF CALLING PROGRESSIVE MODALITIES "CONTINUOUS TENSES.") LEARNING SOME TECHNICAL TERMS REQUIRES A RECOGNITION THAT NO EXACT STUDY CAN DO WITHOUT SOME TECHNICAL TERMS. THIS APPROACH USES NO MORE THAN NECESSARY--AND MOSTLY STICKS TO TRADITIONAL TERMS WHERE ADEQUATE. TEACHING THEM WILL REQUIRE A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF PATIENCE AND DIDACTIC TALENT. BUT NOTHING OF A PERMANENT NATURE IS GAINED BY FAILING TO PROCEED IN THIS MANNER.   WHY TEACH "HELPING VERBS" WHEN A STUDENT WILL LATER HAVE TO LEARN AUXILIARY VERBS OR AUXILIARIES? WHY TEACH "LINKING VERBS" WHEN A STUDENT WILL LATER HAVE TO LEARN COPULAR VERBS OR COPULAS? AT SOME POINT, THERE IS LIKELY TO BE CONFUSION OVER WHETHER THE NEW AND OLD TERMS REFER TO THE SAME THING OR NOT. THE LONG AND SHORT OF IT ALL IS THAT THOSE WHO HAVE TRIED DISPENSING WITH TECHNICAL TERMINOLOGY HAS FOUND IT MUCH MORE COMPLICATED TO DEAL WITH GRAMMAR THAN THOSE WHO HAVE JUST BITTEN THE BULLET AND LEARNED THE TERMINOLOGY.

Why is there any need for a new approach to grammar? Aside from the fact that many "grammar rules" were invented in idle moments, by parsons and school-teachers who have not been linguists, there is two related primary reason why grammars have gone astray. The first is that functor words do not get borrowed. However the evidence gained from languages being born shows that functors are among the first words to be borrowed from the language of the underclasses into the structure of the language of the over- classes. This is in no small degree demanded by the social situation, since new languages come into being in situations where more than one language is in use.
--Secondly, basing the classification of a language on etymologies rather than structures makes no sense. (But even if one did, the French-derived words in English vastly outnumber the Anglo-Saxon words; the functors of French are, however, often calqued [translated] with Anglo-Saxon words.) [Except for inflections, there are few truly productive Anglo-Saxon formatives in English: -ness, -ly, and arguably instrumental-agentive -er (which is ultimately from Latin), though the comparative inflection -er is Germanic; both Old French and Anglo-Saxon had third-person singular -th. Occasionally productive are -hood and -scape.) While nothing is more borrowable than a word--functor word or any other--, only the simplest structures (e.g. "Grammar-shmammar!") are generally borrowable across languages.
--Thirdly, if one assumes a false history, one will try to interpret the grammar structure in terms of an alien grammar--precisely what grammarians have been doing for so many centuries. One must remember that when a scholar has done work that turns out to be wrong, one is often reluctant to acknowledge that one's scholarly life has been somewhat wasted. It is generally true that advances come from creative young scholars, who have not yet invested a lot of their emotional being in a discredited approach.

We start with the two building blocks: Lessons 1-3 introduce the "horizontal" dimension of grammar--predication and what it involves: subject, predication, optional complement (which can be an object or a predicate complement); Lesson 4 introduces the "vertical" dimension of modification of and by the different parts of speech. The other chapters simply present what items can serve as a predicator, nominal, modifier, or operator (on which see Lesson 7).

L83A
STRUCTURAL LESSONS	FORMS AND THEIR USAGE
1. PREDICATION; FUNCTORS 2. COMPLEMENTS 4. MODIFICATION--ADJECTIVAL; DETERMINERS; THE GENITIVAL POSTPOSITION 5. MODIFICATION--ADVERBIAL 6. MORE ON HYPHENS; WORD ORDER; APPOSITION; VOCATIVES; IMPERATIVES; EXCLAMATIONS 7. PREPOSITIONAL PHRASES FOREGROUNDING, STRANDING, AND PIED-PIPING; POSTVERBS AND PREVERBS 9. EMBEDDED CLAUSES I-- ADVERBIAL SUBORDINATE CLAUSES; ALSO UNEMBEDDED QUESTIONS	3. PERSONAL & OTHER PRONOUNS--SUBSTITUTES FOR NOMINALS 8. VERB MODALITIES I-- EXOCHRONOUS (TIMELESS) AND POSTERIOR MODALITIES 10. COMPARISON FORMS OF MODIFIERS
L83B
11. VERBIDS I--GERUNDS AND PARTICIPLES; ABSOLUTE CONSTRUCT 14. SUBORDINATE CLAUSES-- EMBEDDED ADJECTIVAL CLAUSES 15. VERBIDS II--INFINITIVE CONSTRUCTS; CAUSATIVES AND CONTRACAUSATIVES; RAISING 16. SUBORDINATE CLAUSES III--EMBEDDED NOMINAL CLAUSES; EXTRAPOSITION 18. CONDITIONAL SENTENCES; SURREALIS CLAUSES; WISH, WOULD PREFER, &c	12. VERB MODALITIES II--PASTS, ANTERIORS, AND PRETERITIVE GOT 13. PASSIVES, CONTRAPONENTS PRETERITIVE HAVE GOT 17. VERB MODALITIES IV-- MODAL VERBS, PURPOSE CLAUSES, AND JUSSIVE AND HORTATORY USAGES
L83C
APPENDIX A: VIRTUAL WORDS AND CLAUSES APPENDIX B: WHERE PIED-PIPING AND STRANDING PREVAIL APPENDIX C: PROCESSUAL MODALITIES APPENDIX D: USING WORDS

     The terms nominal (or substantive) and modifier are used as cover terms including not only words but phrases, clauses, and infinitive constructs. This makes clausal functions, for example, obvious in a way they would not otherwise be. Thus, some purpose clauses beginning with that are nominal (objects of a causal verb like ensure), while others--having so or in order preceding that--are adverbial and hence modify the verb of the clause that they are embedded in. The strategy should be to use obvious methods to get students to deduce gerunds and some subordinate clauses are simply nominals, how participles, prepositional phrases, and some subordinate clauses simply modify something in the clause that they are embedded in. A student should end up intuiting how complex structures are built up of nominals and modifiers--and infinitive predicators. Exclamations and vocatives and the co-co-ordinating conjunctions and and (n)or (along with [n]either) pose few problems--other than that some think that they should use nor where it is inappropriate.  I have omitted exosystematic constructs such as truncated prohibitives like "Not to be alarmed!" or "Not to worry!" and imprecatives like "The hell you are!" and "In a pig's eye there aren't." Also unmentioned in what follows is the ironic use of ain't, as in "Tell me it ain't so." (Amn't [pronounced amunt] is still heard in Irish English.)
     In various instances, the grammar can best be understood by establishing a virtual word or construct. See Appendix A. This is no mere artifice; it is not an artifice serving as no more than a fudge, for in many instances the virtual item can be present rather than absent; e.g. should in should-deletion. The purpose of virtual (deleted) words or constructs is to make an otherwise opaque structure transparent and system-conform. In the case of should-deletion, it allows us to explain three or four oddities that the misguided "subjunctive" explanation utterly fails to accomplish; with should-deletion, these oddities are system-conform. Advanced learners can also deal with the irrealis nature of infinitive constructs and the way they take modal predicates when they function as subjects of a predication.   (Irrealis force indicates what is possible or expected or what is necessary or desired--including what is not possible, expected, necessary, or desired.)   An irrealis verb modality (exochronous, anterior, posterior--including direct and indirect imperatives and prohibitives [negative imperatives]) contrasts with the neutral force of a gerunds and deverbative nouns like movement, happiness, ability, congratulation, etc. Other matters like apposition and absolute constructs are not hard to grasp. They can be fitted into the overall pattern of the grammar. It is a bit stranger with sarcastic "Says you!" and "Says I!" The -s, evidently borrowed form the third-person singular verb ending, has be converted into a marked ending for the foregoing exclamatory usage.
     The emphasis should be on structures rather than on side-issues, however intrinsically important; e.g. comparison (modifiers with -er or more and -est or most; also with less and least) and the like.
     A good schedule is to work on a lesson four days a week and then have a test on Friday along with a talk about something undemanding but of interest to the pupils--like the daughter languages of English in the Pacific, Africa, and the Caribbean--the last two used chiefly by persons living in islands or land-locked countries whose populations are predominately of African descent.