The Joy Of American English Grammar; (1)
If you are reading this, you probably fall into one of two groups -- those who love grammar, and those who hate it. The first group is small; if you're part of that one, you're likely to be reading for one of these reasons:
1. You're a linguist, and everything about grammar fascinates you.
2. You teach grammar, and there might be something here that would be useful to you.
If you hate grammar, however, you belong to a group as numerous as the poor. [If you're a grammar teacher and you nevertheless fall into this second group, admitting it is a courageous act.]
Let's take a brief look at the typical life history of Someone Who Hates Grammar. Johnny or Mary Grammar-Hater is born without knowing how to speak, read, write, or understand any language. This is the normal condition of an infant human being. However, having been born with a human brain, the infant is also born with the ability to learn at least one human language. [Infants also appear to have the ability to learn several languages at once, with almost no trouble. For simplicity's sake, we will stay with the child who learns just one.]
By roughly the age of twelve months, Johnny and Mary Grammar-Hater have begun to speak their native language and to understand a lot more than they can say. By the time they are roughly five years old they will have extracted from the mass of yakkety-yak around them all the essential rules of the grammar of their own language, and they can speak it and understand it just as any adult can. [This doesn't mean that they know as many words as the average adult, or that they can form as complicated a sentence as the average adult; and they may still say "wabbit" or some other item of that kind. But they know the basics of the grammatical system, and can use it for communication.] At which point, in these United States, we begin teaching them the grammar of their language. That is, we begin teaching them something they already know.
This doesn't have much to recommend it. We wouldn't take the same children and try to teach them to walk or to breathe, but never mind that. What makes it worse is that not only do we teach Johnny and Mary Grammar-Hater something they already know, we insist on teaching it in a way that often contradicts or makes irrelevant a large part of what they already know.
The children, whose tolerance and good sense are astonishing, manage to go on speaking and understanding their native tongue. Often they manage to learn to read and write it as well. But however they manage these things, wending their torturous way through Language Arts, they acquire one predictable characteristic. They learn to hate grammar, and in far too many cases they also learn to hate everything remotely connected with grammar -- for example, reading and writing. [Stewart Brand, of the Whole Earth Catalog, has aptly said that the only thing college did for him was give him the ability to hate things in French as well as in English.]
Hating it as they do, Johnny and Mary suppress most of what they are taught, which is why we have to teach it over and over again every single year. [Remember that we only have to teach them how to tell time once, and telling time isn't something they knew before we started teaching it.] They have to suppress it, because if they remembered it they would endanger their ability to talk and understand their language, not to mention the faint toehold they have on reading and writing it.
The few things Johnny and Mary don't suppress, and which I can usually get them to regurgitate for me in a classroom, can be quickly listed. With very few variations, they go about like this:
1. A verb is an action word, except there's something called a helping verb that isn't.
2. I never learned any grammar until I took French (or Spanish or Latin or Chinese or whatever).
3. The main thing about grammar is to put one line under the subject and two lines under the predicate.
4. A noun is a person, place, or thing.
5. The subject is the doer of the action/what the sentence is about/either the first noun you come to or the second.
6. Three things I don't know anything about are gerunds, participles, and infinitives, and they matter a lot.
7. A pronoun is used in place of a noun.
8. Diagramming sentences is really important, but I can't do it.
9. English has six tenses, or maybe it's seven.
10. Every sentence has to have a subject and a predicate.
11. A preposition is a very short word.
12. Never split an infinitive.
1. You're a linguist, and everything about grammar fascinates you.
2. You teach grammar, and there might be something here that would be useful to you.
If you hate grammar, however, you belong to a group as numerous as the poor. [If you're a grammar teacher and you nevertheless fall into this second group, admitting it is a courageous act.]
Let's take a brief look at the typical life history of Someone Who Hates Grammar. Johnny or Mary Grammar-Hater is born without knowing how to speak, read, write, or understand any language. This is the normal condition of an infant human being. However, having been born with a human brain, the infant is also born with the ability to learn at least one human language. [Infants also appear to have the ability to learn several languages at once, with almost no trouble. For simplicity's sake, we will stay with the child who learns just one.]
By roughly the age of twelve months, Johnny and Mary Grammar-Hater have begun to speak their native language and to understand a lot more than they can say. By the time they are roughly five years old they will have extracted from the mass of yakkety-yak around them all the essential rules of the grammar of their own language, and they can speak it and understand it just as any adult can. [This doesn't mean that they know as many words as the average adult, or that they can form as complicated a sentence as the average adult; and they may still say "wabbit" or some other item of that kind. But they know the basics of the grammatical system, and can use it for communication.] At which point, in these United States, we begin teaching them the grammar of their language. That is, we begin teaching them something they already know.
This doesn't have much to recommend it. We wouldn't take the same children and try to teach them to walk or to breathe, but never mind that. What makes it worse is that not only do we teach Johnny and Mary Grammar-Hater something they already know, we insist on teaching it in a way that often contradicts or makes irrelevant a large part of what they already know.
The children, whose tolerance and good sense are astonishing, manage to go on speaking and understanding their native tongue. Often they manage to learn to read and write it as well. But however they manage these things, wending their torturous way through Language Arts, they acquire one predictable characteristic. They learn to hate grammar, and in far too many cases they also learn to hate everything remotely connected with grammar -- for example, reading and writing. [Stewart Brand, of the Whole Earth Catalog, has aptly said that the only thing college did for him was give him the ability to hate things in French as well as in English.]
Hating it as they do, Johnny and Mary suppress most of what they are taught, which is why we have to teach it over and over again every single year. [Remember that we only have to teach them how to tell time once, and telling time isn't something they knew before we started teaching it.] They have to suppress it, because if they remembered it they would endanger their ability to talk and understand their language, not to mention the faint toehold they have on reading and writing it.
The few things Johnny and Mary don't suppress, and which I can usually get them to regurgitate for me in a classroom, can be quickly listed. With very few variations, they go about like this:
1. A verb is an action word, except there's something called a helping verb that isn't.
2. I never learned any grammar until I took French (or Spanish or Latin or Chinese or whatever).
3. The main thing about grammar is to put one line under the subject and two lines under the predicate.
4. A noun is a person, place, or thing.
5. The subject is the doer of the action/what the sentence is about/either the first noun you come to or the second.
6. Three things I don't know anything about are gerunds, participles, and infinitives, and they matter a lot.
7. A pronoun is used in place of a noun.
8. Diagramming sentences is really important, but I can't do it.
9. English has six tenses, or maybe it's seven.
10. Every sentence has to have a subject and a predicate.
11. A preposition is a very short word.
12. Never split an infinitive.