Common Sense and Terminology

Abstract

In spite of numerous suggestions' and recurrent discussions, the bewildering profusion and confusion of conflicting and overlapping grammatical terms used in the teaching of German2 are still unresolved problems in our profession and in language teaching in general. This confusion is not surprising when we remember the diverse origins and ages of the most frequently used terms in the inventory of our grammatical terminology. Roman grammarians translated Greek terms and adapted them to Latin, yet not always correctly. Accusative, for example, is a two-thousand year old mistranslation.3 The advantage of Latinbased terminology is its internationality, but many terms are not descriptive enough and have become fossilized, as, for instance, from Latin articulum meaning 'little joint.' While the terms continued to be used, grammatical theory underwent a number of changes. 18th century grammarians, for example, considered the (< Latin nomen'name') as the most important part of speech (therefore it is das Hauptwort, Nennwort, Dingwort and capitalized in German), but today we view the (< Latin verbum 'word') as the core of German syntax. Another source of terms used in German textbooks are English translations of German coinages, primarily of those by Jacob Grimm (17851863) who created, for example, the dichotomy of stark 'strong' and schwach 'weak' to name classes of verbs as well as types of nominal and adjectival inflections. These terms were contradictory from their very inception: Strong verbs are characterized, among other features, by len/ at the end of the past participle, while weak denotes nouns and adjectives inflected with /(e)n/.4 Thirdly, structural, applied and generative linguists have suggested numerous words during the last fifty years, such as (noun) determiner, limiting word, primary and secondary adjective declension or verb phrase and noun phrase. These terms have, however, only been sporadically used in textbook descriptions of German morphology and syntax. It is not surprising that teachers and students alike are frustrated in such a terminological labyrinth. This article is a plea for another attempt to improve and streamline the grammatical terminology in German pedagogy. In a society where scientific investigation and electronic communication predominate, outsiders of our profession may, with some justification, accuse us of being steeped in tradition, unscientific and incapable of describing our own professional field: language. Inside our profession, communication is quite often hampered by the lack of agreement on the most appropriate terminology. We readily accept the fact that the German language has changed during the course of its history as is evidenced by glossaries for relatively recent works, such as those by Goethe. We also, even if