Is a unified terminology possible for grammar?

LAGB

September 2012

Why now?

• Grammatical analysis is part of the National Curriculum for England– has been since 1990– but even more so in the draft revised NC for

English

• In principle, grammar is learned in English

• then used in foreign languages

But …

• Secondary English teachers learned no grammar at school or in HE.

• So confusing terminology is a double problem:– for teachers– for pupils

Learning from history

• 1911: report of the Joint Committee on Grammatical Terminology

• Part of a big argument.

• See John Walmsley 1988– available on our website – google <lagb education committee>

The protagonists

• Edward Adolf Sonnenschein (1851–1929)– unified terminology for all (IE) languages– pro consistency

• Otto Jespersen (1860-1943)– every language described in its own terms– pro evidence

• Main differences: case and mood.

The debate

• Unified terminology offered "practical as well as scientific advantages, and it brings English at once into line with Latin, Greek and German" (Sonnenschein, 1914)

• "The rules have to be learned by rote by the pupils, for they cannot be understood." (Jespersen, 1924)

Sonnenschein on cases

Sonnenschein's English Grammar (1902)

Jespersen

• "… case is a purely grammatical (syntactic) category and not a notional one in the true sense of the word … No wonder, therefore, that languages vary enormously, even those which go back ultimately to the same ‘parent-language.’ Cases form one of the most irrational parts of language in general." (Jespersen, Philosophy of Grammar, 1924:185-6)

Nesfield (against Sonnenschein)

An academic debate?

• Sonnenschein wrote The Soul of Grammar (1927) in order to– "demolish the arch-enemy Jespersen"

• Maybe Sonnenschein was fighting for the survival of the Classics in schools, as the basis for all language teaching.– Compare modern languages today?

So what happened?

• [it is] “…impossible at the present juncture to teach English grammar in the schools for the simple reason that no-one knows exactly what it is…” (Board of Education 1921: 289-90).

• "linguists, currently 'squabbling among themselves' (Wilson 1969:157) 'will have to compose some of their differences before their science can be of direct assistance to the teacher' (Thompson 1969:7)

And now?

• Grammar teaching died, but Government wants to revive it.

• Linguists could help the revival.

• But how?– Could the LAGB produce a unified glossary for

use by schools?