Traditional Grammar Research Articles

Malta: Recent Developments in the Field of Secondary Education in Malta

Abstract When, in 1970, the government introduced secondary education for all on a selective basis by keeping the traditional grammar and secondary technical schools and introducing new general secondary schools, the main current of enlightened opinion, including that of the Malta Union of Teachers, was against selectivity. Dr. John Cameron of the University of London Institute of Education, who, as a Unesco expert, planned the reform, himself had stated that the introduction of a selective system of secondary education for all was a temporary measure which should lead to the introduction of non-selective comprehensive secondary education for all. This system was introduced in 1972.

Traditionalism Versus Structuralism in Linguistics and Literary Studies

I. Traditionallinguistics Under traditional linguistics I understand a kind of linguistics that was the most common (roughly) between the mid-nineteenth and the mid-twentieth century. Its representatives can basically be labelled as historical linguists (neogrammarians), philologists, traditional grammarians, dialectologists and phoneticians. Its most important characteristics (as I see them) were: (1) To be worthy of academic study linguistics,1 called 'language science' ('spdichwissenschaft' in German or 'sprakvetenskap' in Swedish) or philology, should be historical. This meant that changes over time were central. Even when a problem could be studied without history some reference to an earlier state was desirable. Although in some studies there was little or no reference to other stages of the language, the study was still respectable because it dealt with some older stage and not with present day language. Strangely enough various points in time were not always clearly distinguished. Interesting, perhaps curious, facts in the living language were 'explained' by saying what they had been at an older stage of the language: the present fact a is an 'old' b. However, no attempt was made to elucidate how a was related to other contemporary forms so that an insightful synchronic description could be achieved. For instance, the(e are a small number of words in Swedish with a puzzling -u. However, laymen as well as linguists thought the problem solved if one stated that it is an 'old genitive'

The Semantics of Direct Object a in Spanish

has been called (Gili Gaya, Bello, Real Academia Espafiola),2 distinctive a (Ramsey),3 and most frequently a (Sole and Sole as well as most pedagogical grammars).4 The ambiguity of form is best expressed by Stockwell, Bowen, and Martin who speak of the use of preposition as marker . . . called personal a.' The syntactic anomaly of form appears to take precedence over its semantic function when Goldin terms it the meaningless a6 and Ramsey states that the preposition as sign of direct object has no force as preposition and conveys no meaning, but it is now more often mere grammatical device.' In this paper it will be shown that, regardless of syntactic variation of direct object a,' great deal of semantic unity underlies its use. Specifically, it will be argued that direct object in Spanish carries an invariant that is present in each and every use of form, and concomitantly, that its absence before direct object carries an equally invariant within systematic semantic structure of language. The analysis begins with consideration of notions of syntactic occurrence and meaning provided by several traditional grammars. All of these agree that DO is obligatory before proper names of peopleg:

Parasitic gaps and adverbial clauses

This paper shows how the occurrence of parasitic gaps in preposed adverbial clauses and licensed by a subject trace can be used in determining the type of adjunction of such adverbial clauses. The sometimes very subtle grammaticality judgments are supported by some evidence from traditional grammars.

A Decade of Morphology and Word Formation

to the internal structure of words. This article will comprise a review of that work. My review pretends neither to complete­ ness nor to impartiality. I have tried instead to take what seem to me to be the important developments and form them into a reasonably coherent picture of the field as it stands. Those I have omitted may enjoy the revenge of history. Morphology is one of the oldest concerns of linguistics. The term morpholo­ gy was coined in the early nineteenth century to refer generally to any science whose main object is form; the first specifically linguistic use dates from this early period and unlike many other terms its meaning has not changed signifi­ cantly in the interval since. Morphology was central to nineteenth century linguistics for two reasons. First, traditional gramm ar, out of which modern linguistics grew, had been morphologically based, as all of us know too well who have learned their Latin declensions and conjugations. Second, the comparative method of historical linguistics, which provided the most spectacular successes of nineteenth cen­ tury linguistics, which indeed made linguistics into a respectable modern

The concepts “rule” and “norm” in linguistics

In his article ‘Zum Inhalt des Normbegrufs in der Linguistik’ (1977), Hartung sketches the sociolinguistic uses of the concept of “norm” and the use of this concept in STRUCTURALIST, TRADITIONAL, and FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR. He focuses on the concepts of “norm” of H. Paul, F. de Saussure, L. Hjelmslev, E. Coseriu, and of B. Havránek, M. Dokulil, and F. Daneš (the last three being from the Prague school). The notion is not used in ‘theoretical’ linguistics.

Remarks on rhythmic stress in Modern Hebrew

In Biblical Hebrew, the tendency for rhythmic stress was primarily manifest in stress retraction, which moved word-final stress to the preceding syllable so as to avoid ‘stress clash’ with an immediately following word-initial stress, subject to certain restrictions. It was discussed in detail by the traditional grammarians of Hebrew; recent generative accounts include Prince (1975) and McCarthy (1979). In Modern Hebrew, the tendency for rhythmic stress can be realized in a variety of ways, of which stress retraction is by no means the commonest.

A Synthesis of Grammar and Literature through Verb Study

People cry out for a return to and, with English classes, what most people understand as basic is the study of traditional grammar. Critics cite the decline in writing abilities of high school students and college freshmen, suggest that too much emphasis has been placed on thematic approaches to literature, and argue that grammar has been ignored. Many professors claim that high school English teachers are doing their job. Some colleges have instituted classes in remedial composition for freshmen and have separated the study of literature (except for the essay) from the study of rhetoric and composition, often creating separate desciplines. Many high school teachers are disgruntled because they feel that colleges have not provided responsible leadership. Attempting to follow the work of college linguists, many secondary teachers dismissed traditional grammar, only to find that some linguists offered only descriptive methods never intended to transfer to teaching principles, while other linguists supplied methods too difficult for ordinary classroom use. Compounding that, high school teachers find themselves, as do many college teachers, trying to provide what they believe may be students' last experiences with literature. We believe there are methods of using sound elements in the traditional approach to grammar and rhetoric which can be integrated with insights of newer linguistic techniques. Realizing that both of us were teaching honors students, one in high school and one in college, we proposed a dual study to test a method that proceeds through literature and keeps the study of grammar in context. Students would analyze verb forms to effect a synthesis of basics and literature. Such analysis involves students in true basics, examining the function of language in a sophisticated and enjoyable context and communicating insights in expository essay assignments. Students would gain insights into the function of tense, voice, and mood, an activity which leads to a synthesis involving other forms of speech: verbals, including participles, gerunds, and infinitives; adverbs; and, most importantly, the relationship of sentence parts, such as the subject-verb relationship. Moreover, the students would extend their insights into comprehension of literary techniques like points of view, characterization, and tone, culminating in understanding the world view of the author.

Recherches sur les constructions imbriquées relatives et interrogatives en français By Juhani Härmä (review)

BOOK NOTICES 237 Recherches sur les constructions imbriqu ées relatives et interrogatives en français. By Juhani Härmä. (Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae , Dissertationes humanarum litterarum, 20.) Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1979. Pp. 303. FM 60.00. This book deals, first synchronically, then diachronically, with cases of double embeddings in French, where the first level is a relative clause or a question, and the second level an object clause. Examples are la maison que je crois que Marie habite 'the house I think Mary lives in' ; Quepenses-tu que nous devrionsfaire? 'What do you think we should do?'; Dis-moi ce que tu veux que nous fassions 'Tell me what you want us to do.' These constructions appear only with verbs of 'propositional attitude' (croire, penser), declaration (dire), perception (voir, sentir), wish (vouloir), or appreciation (regretter , être content). In these constructions, the first connector's function is not in the clause it directly introduces, but in the second embedded clause; the second connector is merely a 'void' complementizer. H first reviews the position of traditional grammarians on this question, then accounts for the phenomenon in terms of WH-movement. Then he introduces a set of constraints on that transformation (he examines works by Ross, Chomsky, Cattell, and Horn), more or less covering most of the unacceptable sentences. But H's main concern is the related 'construction subjective', apparently composed of a relative clause embedded in another relative clause: L'homme que je vois qui vient est mon voisin 'The man I see coming is my neighbor.' However , by analogy to the preceding structures, one would expect "L'homme qui je vois que vient, if it is true that the first connector bears the grammatical function and the second connector is only a link. This relative clause is in fact an object clause. The surface form qui may be explained by a generalization of a rather adhoc transformation originally proposed by Gross and Kayne for attributive relative clauses; qui appears instead of que by a rule which seems specific to French, stating that a finite clause must have an expressed subject. In fact, the transformation has a diachronic background. Using an enormous corpus of Old and Middle French, H shows that, from the 12th century on, wavering occurred among three constructions, que ... que, que ... qu'il, and que . . . qui. The first disappeared in the 16th century, because of the need for a clause to have a subject . The que . .. qui construction has also tended to disappear or become marginal since the 17th century—probably because of the strange plurality of the functions ofqui, concurrently complementizer and surface subject. This syntactic monster has now been replaced by looser constructions : the infinitive with verbs of perception (l'homme queje vois venir), the parenthetical construction (l'homme qui, je crois, vient), or the dont ... que construction for the other verbs (un homme dontje sais qu'il est capable de tout). H's book is remarkable because of his comprehensive knowledge of synchronic and diachronic syntax. He is completely at ease among the dustiest German dissertations from the end of the 19th century, as well as the most recent and technical works. Although at first sight one may suspect a discrepancy here between syntax and philology, H's book is one of the most successful endeavors to bridge the gap. I can think ofno better example ofa work treating a specific syntactic problem in depth. [Jacques M. Julien , University of Texas, Austin.] L'inversion dans la subordonnée en français contemporain. By Kerstin Wall. (Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis , Studia Románica Upsaliensia , 30.) Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1980. Pp. 179. Kr. 66.50. Dealing with verb-subject inversion in subordinate clauses, this book is essentially a statistical confirmation of Le Bidois's L'inversion du sujet dans laprose contemporaine (1952) and Blinkenberg's L'ordre des mots en français moderne (1969). Starting from a corpus based on 30 novels and 30 newspapers from the 60's and 70's, Wall draws the following conclusions: (1)Inversion is favored when the subject is longer than the verb, and when the verb itself is semantically 'weak'. Blinkenberg is criticized for neglecting the former parameter, Le Bidois for neglecting...

Een Receptie-Woordenboek Voor Beginnend Leesonderwijs

For some language (e.g. Latin, Russian) learners need to acquire only one skill: Reading. This article proposes a learning method for beginning reading in a foreign language wich consist of a dictionary in which lexical and grammatical information are combined. The working of this Dictionary Search Method is demonstrated. With the help of a search-algorithm, learners may, quite independently, grasp the meaning of authentic texts. As lexicon and grammar are fully combined in the reading (or learning to read) process, there is no risk of a gap between formal language knowledge and the application of it. From psycholinguistic literature we know that the reader needs less grammatical information than the writer or speaker. Traditional pedagogic grammar reflects the production oriented language knowledge. This is demonstrated by comparing fragments of a reception- and production-oriented language knowledge. In designing reading courses in a foreign language we have to consider this fact which is further clarified by some examples from different languages. Another very important fact to be considered is the level of conceptual knowledge the reader has of the subject. Thus a course for highly specialised learners may well be very different from a course for beginning students, concerning the amount of formal language knowledge to be learned. The integrated dictionary offers all the necessary grammatical information. The learners themselves decide on the parts they use and acquire.

The Finnish Possessive Suffixes

A distinctive feature of Finnish morphology is the possessive suffixes, which are found not only on possessed nouns, but also on adjectives, postpositions, and untensed verbs. Traditional grammars have taken the view that these suffixes arise through a rule of agreement with a genitive specifier, which may be subject to subsequent deletion rules. This paper shows that they are not agreement markers, but rather clitic allomorphs of the reflexive pronoun. X-bar theory is used to formulate rules governing their distribution.*

Two Medieval Critics of Traditional Grammar

Summary The converging criticisms of traditional grammar undertaken by Anselm of Canterbury and Boethius of Dacia involve their deprecation of the roles of usage and experience and their expulsion of substance from adjectival meaning. However, usage, experience, and fact turn out to be relevant in completing the truncated functors involved in their interpretation of adjectival meaning. The identification of these functors in terms of Leśniewski systems and the categorial indices described by Lejewski serves to determine the status of their critical enterprise in general and of the modi significandi in particular.

Woleaian reference grammar By Ho-Min Sohn, with the assistance of Anthony F. Tawerilmang, and: Palauan reference grammar By Lewis S. Josephs, with the assistance of Masa-aki Emesiochel, Masaharu Tmodrang, and Helen Wilson (review)

REVIEWS733 operating in both possible directions (e.g. PPN *n > Hawaiian /n/, PPN *n > Colloquial Samoan /?/). Schuhmacher notes the existence of such cases, but seems not to appreciate the difficulty they present for the theorist. 20. The format of the volume is photo-offset (from typescript), but superb editing has eliminated the disadvantages commonly associated with that format: it is intelligently and attractively arranged, and extraordinarily free oftypographical errors. Thereis an indexto languages and languagegroups (linguisticand geographic) referred to in the text. REFERENCES Chapín, Paul G. 1974. Proto-Polynesian *ai. Journal of the Polynesian Society 83.259-307. Dempwolff, Otto. 1922. Über Entstehung sekundärer Tonhöhen in einer Südseesprache . Vox 57-62. ------. 1934, 1937, 1938. Vergleichende Lautlehre des austronesischen Wortschatzes. 3 vols. Berlin: Reimer. Dyen, Isidore. 1965. A lexicostatistical classification of the Austronesian languages. (IJAL, Memoir 19.) Baltimore. Foley, James. 1970. Phonological distinctive features. Folia Lingüistica 4.87-92. Hohepa, Patrick. 1969. The accusative-to-ergative drift in Polynesian languages. Journal of the Polynesian Society 78.295-329. Pawley, Andrew. 1966. Polynesian languages: a subgrouping based on shared innovations in morphology. Journal of the Polynesian Society 75.39-64. ------. 1967. The relationships of Polynesian outlier languages. Journal of the Polynesian Society 76.259-296. ------. 1972. On the internal relationships of Eastern Oceanic languages. Honolulu: Bishop Museum. [Received 2 August 1977.] Woleaian reference grammar. By Ho-min Sohn, with the assistance of Anthony F. Tawerilmang. (Pali language texts: Micronesia.) Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1975. Pp. xii, 316. $11.00. Palauan reference grammar. By Lewis S. Josephs, with the assistance of Masa-aki Emesiochel, Masaharu Tmodrang, and Helen Wilson. (Pali language texts: Micronesia.) Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1975. Pp. xviii, 556. $9.00. Reviewed by Sandra Chung, University of California, San Diego These two works are fair representatives of the Micronesian volumes recently published by the University of Hawaii. Like most ofthe others, they were written at the University of Hawaii as part of a government-sponsored project to describe the languages of Micronesia. The languages with which they deal are geographically close, but differ considerably in linguistic structure. Sohn's grammar describes Woleaian, a Nuclear Micronesian language which is spoken, with dialectal variation, in the western Caroline Islands southeast of Yap. (Sohn actually limits himself to the dialect spoken on Woleai Atoll, a group of islands whose present population is less than 600.) Josephs' grammar describes Palauan, a language spoken by some 12,000 people in the Palau Islands and in a community on Guam. Like Chamorro, 734LANGUAGE, VOLUME 54, NUMBER 3 (1978) it appears to be more closely related to Philippine languages than to the other languages of Micronesia, and is usually classified as Western Austronesian (Bender 1971). Both grammars were written by linguists with the assistance of native language consultants, and they are intended to serve a dual purpose: to describe these languages for general linguists and, at the same time, to introduce native speakers of Woleaian and Palauan who are not linguists to the structure of their own language. This is not an easy task. While books directed toward linguists may well be useful to the general public, and vice versa, there is no particular reason to suppose that the needs of the two audiences will coincide. Further, it may not always be obvious, e.g. to the linguists, what the needs of the other audience are. This means that, for a grammar to address both linguists and native speakers while still preserving its integrity as a book, a certain amount of compromise and guesswork is inevitable. As I do not speak either of the languages in question, my perspective on these works is necessarily limited to that of the general linguist. Viewed from this perspective , Sohn and Josephs appear to have taken rather different approaches to the task ofwriting for linguists and non-linguists, and their success is in correspondingly different areas. Sohn's grammar of Woleaian seems directed more toward the non-technical reader. It is organized like a traditional grammar, with chapters devoted to speech sounds, orthography, word classification, word formation, sentence patterns etc. Throughout, its focus is on the structure of the clause and its parts; complex sentences...

Uncertainty as a function of grammatical class size

The results of this study strongly suggest that the parts of speech system in traditional grammar may serve an important function in the human coding process. A significant and positive correlation was found between coder's uncertainty for specific parts of speech in a coding task and the number of word types available for their selection in each part of speech class. This finding suggests that the parts of speech system, rather than being an arbitrary classification system imposed on language students by grammarians, may function as a type of preverbal filter system in the encoding process of translating ideas into verbal messages.

Grammars and Teaching

PURELY THEORETICAL considerations aside, what difference does it make which grammar the English teacher uses? Why isn't traditional tried and true as it is, as good for pedagogy as the newer grammar? Each provides a framework for discussing language. For composition classes, especially, one would think that's all that's necessary. Having taught college composition before and after intensive study in linguistics, I have had much experience in teaching via preand post-transformational grammars. Unlike the math which serves only to explain the old, the new grammar, henceforth termed transformational or T-G, illuminates the workings of language in ways impossible with the old. The explanatory powers of grammar are not only superior to traditional models, but T-G is simpler. Furthermore, the grammar provides a potent teaching methodology as a natural outcome of its mode of analysis (see below, and Chaika, 1974). These are not trivial concerns in college classrooms, for recent research (Krashen, 1973) suggests that, after puberty, language learning cannot be effected without overt explanation. As noted in Chaika (1974), learning to write may be akin to language learning. It is disheartening, therefore, to hear English teachers claim that linguistics has nothing to offer rhetoric, or that, if grammar must be taught at all, it makes no difference which. What is ironical is how often those unimpressed by the revolution in syntax are the very ones who have had a course or two in current theory. Apparently the esoteric polemics of many such graduate courses are of little practical value. Indeed, people in English have been known to become downright hostile to linguistics after such exposure. Yet, polemics about the intricate details of abstract theories aside, the fundamental insights of current syntactic models offer efficacy for teaching rhetoric superior to traditional grammar. Therefore the polemics in this paper are confined to grammars as they pertain to teaching writing. The following offers what has worked for my composition students as well as for teachers-in-service who have enrolled in my writing workshop. Briefly, by T-G grammar I mean one that recognizes deep as well as surface structure, with transformations from a basic sentence [NP + VP + (Adverb)]'

Social class and the speech of four year olds: the effect of intelligence.

In the first experiment reported in this study, four year old children from middle and lower class homes were matched in pairs according to their non-verbal intelligence test scores, and their speech was compared with that of a similar group of four year olds in a second experiment, who had not been matched for intelligence. Speech was elicited from the children in both experiments by the use of a picture strip technique, and analysed according to traditional grammar. Few social class differences emerged in the speech of the first group of four year olds, but in the second experiment a social class difference was found in the use of adjectives, even when verbal intelligence was controlled for statistically. A significant difference found in the use of nouns in the second experiment was found to be due to intelligence differences between the two social class groups, and the frequency of the use of nouns, pronouns, and adverbs was found to be correlated with verbal IQ. The lack of correlation of speech variables with verbal IQ in the first experiment was attributed to the narrowness of the IQ range, which resulted from the experimental matching of intelligence. It is suggested that differences in verbal intelligence do affect the speech that children use, and care should be taken not to confuse this variable with that of social class when studying the speech of young chldren.

A High School Teacher Surveys College Grammar

SPURRED ON five years ago by a state program which required the teaching of Roberts' transformational grammar in grades one through seven and then again in the ninth grade of junior high schools, and by my belief that the linguistic approach is philosophically sounder than traditional grammar, our English department at Miramonte High instituted an eclectic program of the new and the old grammar on the ninth grade level. We retained the old because our teachers could not agree on a complete break. We did, however, add a Guthian approach on the tenth grade level, using Guth's American English Today for that grade. Three years later I reviewed the results of our decision and decided the situation needed further study. Our students were doing no better and many expressed dissatisfaction with the dual system; teachers were dissatisfied; several parents had questioned our using Roberts at all; and I myself wondered if our eclectic program was necessary and effective. I wondered what relationship our grammar program had with the expectations of the colleges which our students enter. Furthermore, I was aware of the fact that the language of the CEEB and ETS tests was (as it still is) drawn from the older grammar. Finally, I wondered if college instructors really used the language of the new grammar in their classes and in their comments on students' papers, or if they were still using the old. With such disturbing thoughts, in December of 1972 I sent a questionnaire to the English departments of forty-seven colleges and universities which our students enter. The questionnaire consisted of the six questions which follow, and, in addition, I asked for comments.

Homonymy in the English verbal paradigm

Modern structural grammars of English have typically postulated much less homonymy in the verbal paradigm than traditional grammars — partly because of a shift from the word-and-paradigm model, partly because distinctions overtly marked in one verb are no longer necessarily carried over into the paradigms of all verbs. This paper defends the traditional practice of extending to all verbs the mood distinction phonologically marked in he was versus he were, but argues againts analysing the latter as the past tense counterpart of he be. The distinction of are versus be is likewise generalised, but the concordial distinctions of am versus are and indicative was versus were are not.

Old English case and grammatical theory

This paper examines a number of recent attempts to explain tha data of Old English case. We show that neither government nor grammatical functions, nor a combination of the two, can account for the data. We examine the use of government and functions by traditional grammar, and find a great distinction between the theory of traditional grammar and the practice of traditional grammarians. The latter, itself inadequate, points to the inadequacy of the theory. Chomsky's and Lyon's attempts to appropriate the traditional functions are rejected. Finally we show that Fillmore's ‘case grammar’ cannot handle the Old English data, and suggest that the theory has fundamental weaknesses.

One Subjunctive or Two?

tongues, Spanish has a formal contrast in its verb system between two modes, indicative and subjunctive. Though the forms vary, they are in such a tight paradigmatic relationship to each other that there can be no question of the internal unity of either mode: tenga is the same, in this respect, as alce, and sali the same as tuve. Given a clear-cut formal opposition, one expects to find-and traditional grammar 'thought it had found-a clear-cut semantic opposition as well. The indicative was the mode of reality, of reporting; the subjunctive was the mode of the inner light, of such things as desiring and approving or rejecting. Against -the traditional view of one subjunctive, Anthony Lozano' has advanced the theory that there are two, d:stinguished by the features [+optative] and [+dubitative]. Traditional grammar was guilty of overemphasis on surface structures and little regard to deep structures in its failure to perceive the essential difference between them.