The Nuts And Bolts Of English Grammar
Dhara Lyford
This monograph is an introductory descriptive grammar of Tmpisa Shoshone, meant to provide both layman and specialist with a basic understanding of how the language works as a linguistic system. In this sense, it is intended to be a "nuts and bolts" grammar with lots of examples illustrating the most important grammatical elements and processes in the language.
In commissioning this new feature, editorial fellow Rachel Moss asked contributors: how can we radically re-imagine the writing of history? Over the next few weeks, our contributors reply with creative new methods, sources and forms that they are using to reshape what history writing can look like. This first instalment is from Will Pooley, on Radical Grammar.
Do we talk enough about sentence structure, and other grammatical nuts and bolts, the possibilities of point of view, tense, and voice? Do we we spend enough time reading historians for how they write? Not their methods, or their arguments, but simply how they put a sentence together. What does radical historical writing look like, up close?
It was entered via a pair of narrow shuttered doors of the kind swung upon by swaggering cowboys in saloons, recoiling viciously on the visitant, who needed to edge in sideways. A splendid Edwardian varnished oak seat, a top cistern with ball-and-chain mechanism and a very satisfying flush were the reward.
Wayward: to wander, to be unmoored, adrift, rambling, roving, cruising, strolling, and seeking. To claim the right to opacity. To strike, to riot, to refuse. To love what is not loved. To be lost to the world.
All of the radical historians I have mentioned do that. They bend, stretch, or even break grammatical conventions. All in the service of histories that slap their readers in the face from time to time, or take your breath away, or leave you baffled.
Will Pooley is a historian of French popular culture and folklore at the University of Bristol. His first book Body and Tradition in Nineteenth-century France appeared in 2019. He is also the co-author of Creative Histories of Witchcraft (2022) and is now writing a history of witchcraft in France from 1790-1940.
1. It is only and entirely addressed to matter of what is taught in primary schools -apart from when I refer specifically to 'secondary'. It follows from this that this discussion is about what is suitable to be taught to under-11s, and what is the priority that it be taught to under-11s as opposed to other subjects in general or other topics to do with language. For under-11s.
'Suitability' is a matter of child development. Education has long decided that some things are too 'hard' for primary aged children to get hold of: eg algebra, quantum physics, metabolism of the liver, tectonic plate shifts, genetics...(please feel free to put in any other subjects you know of).
'Other topics' is a matter of why 'grammar' (which is mostly about 'sentence grammar') is thought to be more important than other kinds of knowledge about language eg why and how do we write and talk in different ways for different 'genres' and different kinds of people? Why do we do this? What is dialect? Has language changed? How? Why? Why do people speak English in many different ways around the world? How do we choose what to write, how do we choose how to write? Where do we go to find these different ways? Can we imitate these different ways?
As this 'grammar' is sometimes put forward as being the 'nuts and bolts' of writing, how come some people can write without knowing it? Are there other 'nuts and bolts'? I teach the grammar of writing stories. This involves me teaching, for example, openers, cliff-hangers, reveal-conceal, story cogs, point of view, interiority, how to convert 'being there', pre-figuring the climax, red herrings, flashbacks, flash forwards, narrative voice(s), use of previous texts ('intertextuality') etc etc. I'm only mentioning this as an example of how 'grammar' of sentences is by no means the only way to look at the 'nuts and bolts' of what we read or say.
2. It is vital to remember that this 'sentence grammar' was not brought in because Michael Gove - or anybody else - thought that it was a good idea for reasons that it was the best thing to be taught! It was brought in for one reason only: to assess teachers. This is stated quite explicitly in the Bew Report of 2011. This was on 'Accountability and Assessment' - not on language. They were looking for a way to assess teachers. They decided that 'grammar' has 'right and wrong' answers (it doesn't) and so that would do as a way of assessing teachers because a) teachers would teach it, b) children would be examined on it, and c) the scores could be put on a graph which would show that this or that teacher was good, OK or bad. That's why this grammar was brought in to primary schools.
The government then hired some 'grammarians' to dish up the grammar to teach and test. They did. One grammarian lobbed in 'fronted adverbial' which was a strange one for many of the grammarians and linguists, who by and large had never used the term.
3. So, setting aside the issues of a) this is for primary schools and b) it was only ever brought in for purposes of assessment of teachers, let's look at problems with this kind of 'grammar' and what schools are asked to do with it.
a) It's based on the idea that language can be described in terms of 'classes' and 'functions'. For old fashioned people like me who learned much of this stuff at secondary school when I was doing French, Latin and German and later 'Old English' or Anglo-Saxon as it is often called, we used to use other terms for this. 'Classes' we called 'parts of speech' and I don't remember that we did call 'functions'. I think we used to say, 'what are they doing in the sentence?' I think. Sentences are classified (simple, complex etc) but mostly linguists steer clear of classifying paragraphs and chapters, though secondary teachers will know much better than me that they now have to teach PEP paragraphs and the like. These are prescriptive requirements for how a paragraph must be written in order to get marks in an exam. Other paragraphs not permitted.
Are there any problems with the 'classes'/'functions' way of describing language? The main problem is that we can often only determine the class by looking at its function. Analogy: we can do anatomy of the heart and say, 'those are the valves'. But we can only know they are valves if we see the things doing what valves do: opening and closing to allow or not allow flow. It's the same with language. We can only say that this or that is a noun or a verb or an adjective when we see it doing what nouns and verbs do! That's because words can act in different ways, depending on the context and use.
The word 'proud' is mostly an 'adjective'. In 'Romeo and Juliet' Juliet's father says to Juliet, 'Proud me no prouds'. In that sentence 'proud' is doing the job that a verb would do AND a noun. We can only know that in the context of that sentence. So we can't say 'proud' is an adjective. We have to say, it all depends on what it's doing.
Further, the terminology of these classes and functions is misleading, particularly for young people new to the idea of terminology and particularly if they themselves are being told to be accurate about language! So here are some classes again: adverb, adjective, noun, verb. Here are some functions: subject, verb. What?! So the word 'verb' is both a class and a function? A noun can be a subject, and a verb can be...er...a verb. Brilliant.
c) Then there are structures. Some people call this grammar, some call it 'syntax'. Some people call them both. I was taught the following structures: words, phrases, clauses, sentences. (Other uses of language were not usually taught us as grammar eg rhetoric, conversations, chapters, novels, political speeches, essays even though they could be as these all have grammars too and could be taught and learned as part of learning how to write - which I think is one of the objectives here isn't it? )
We were taught that verbs come as 'finite' or 'non-finite'. Here is a finite verb in a sentence: 'Trump left the White House'. The word 'left' is the finite verb. It's called a finite verb because, they say, it helps to make a 'complete sentence' in this context. It can also be changed to 'might leave' or to 'is leaving' or to 'has left'. Verbs change. However, these finite verbs are mostly (not always!) made finite when they have a 'subject' written into the sentence. Here it is 'Trump'. So in a way, the verb is 'Trump left'. And indeed when French children learn the verbs they say anyway, they sing out eg (in French) 'Je suis, tu es, il est, nous sommes, vous tes, ils sommes'. 'I am, you [when you're being familiar] are, he is, we are, you are [polite and plural], they are.' This is called 'conjugating'.
Ok so, phrases, we were told don't include 'finite verbs', clauses do. We then divided up sentences into these phrases and clauses. We then gave the phrases and clauses names. Phrases, they told us could be 'adjectival' or 'adverbial'. If they were adjectival they described nouns. If they were adverbial they described verbs, they said. At one level of this classification of clauses were 'main clauses and 'subordinate clauses'. Subordinate clauses had another system of classification: they could be clauses 'of' something eg of 'time' or they could be 'conditional clauses' or 'concessionary clauses' or 'relative clauses' etc.
(Reality check: these were all taught to us at secondary school. Not primary school. At primary school we were taught at most, nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions and prepositions. This was then tested at 11 as a way of deciding whether you could go to grammar school or not. Most - not.)
Most of this looks all neat and tidy but any time spent reading about grammar and syntax, you soon come across arguments over terminology and indeed whether this or that way of chopping up sentences makes sense. You might know of examples yourself.
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