Modern Grammaroffice: BUS 207A

Modern GrammarOffice: BUS 207a

Dr. John Harrish: 903-566-4985

ENGL 3375.001 w: 903-565-5701

Fall 2016email:

Office Hours: MWF: 10:05-11:15

TTh: 10-10:50

Required Texts/Materials

Of the following books, only the first is required in a specific edition (and hence only Kolln and Gray is on sale at the bookstore). The Harbrace handbook has become exorbitantly expensive in its latest edition and has not significantly altered its content for ten editions or so, while Strunk and White is a timeless classic reprinted in numerous forms. You may buy either of these latter two books in any edition or format (within the restrictions noted). Referring to assignments in them must obviously be done without reference to page numbers, which may present a slight challenge; but we should also discover several points of interest in contrasting the contents of different editions, especially in the case of the Harbrace.

Martha Kolln and Loretta Gray, Rhetorical Grammar, 7thed, (Boston: Pearson, 2013), ISBN 978-0-321-84672-3

John C. Hodges, Mary E. Whitten, Winifred B. Horner, et al.Harbrace College Handbook, any edition since the seventh in 1972 (New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, first published in 1941).

William Strunk and E.B. White, The Elements of Style, any edition (various publishers: first published in 1920).

Course Description

The course begins with grammatical essentials and steadily moves to more stylistic considerations. Some diagramming and other classical techniques of grammatical analysis will be employed initially. Later students will be exposed to more “cutting-edge” and controversial notions of acceptable usage. At the semester’s end, in a final paper, they will stake out a position regarding whether grammar should uphold convention against popular trend or whether, on the contrary, grammatical “rules” must always follow as closely upon the heels of trend as possible to preserve their validity.

Course Objectives

This course is designed not simply to give the student a broader and deeper understanding of the logic of grammar through analysis of such relatively advanced matters as participles, verbal aspect and mood, and pronoun cases. The specific rules governing proper usage may, of course, pass into and out of vogue, especially in a language spoken as widely as English around the world and in an age when communication is under such pressure from high-tech delivery systems and playful trends. An acquired knowledge of basic linguistic structures and their underlying rationale, therefore, must be accompanied by some sense of how far the rules of English should yield under today’s extraordinary strains and challenges. We shall not strive to reach a single answer on so important an issue, but rather to uncover an answer with which each of us can live in good conscience, individually, as an English majorand/or teacher of coming generations; for as such, we are the designated custodians of the language’s future.

Student Learning Outcomes

Having completed this course, the student will be able to identify and describe all the major elements of an English sentence in a conventional manner. The student will also be able to break any standard sentence into some sort of diagram that coherently reduces these major elements to a hierarchy or priority. At the same time, the student will achieve a degree of awareness of the fluidity of standard templates in non-standard or dialectical English such that he or she can identify how and where particular words or phrases depart from the paradigm. Finally, the student will be able to present a reasoned case, based upon his or her own values as well as upon formal study, as to whether grammatical convention should enjoy superiority over popular usage or popular usage should prescribe the rules of grammar.

Student Rights and Respnosibilities

An updated statement may be found at See also the end of this syllabus.

Methods of Grading

The class is divided into several units, since it seems to me that a “modern” or “cutting-edge” understanding of English grammar is impossible without some reference to the conventional or classical understanding. Furthermore, since the material in each of these units varies in the kind of cognition it requires (from the geometrically logical, as Pascal might say, to the vibrant and functional), methods of evaluation will also change to suit the subject. You will therefore be doing different kinds of writing as well as completing different kinds of testing. Of the graded activities below, only Class Participation is ongoing rather than one “chapter” in the semester’s book.

The following components are presented in order of their chronological appearance during the semester.

Class Participation (20%): Physically coming to class is critical. I expect you to recognize that you will not have the necessary information to complete your work successfully if you skip classes. It is likely, however, that some of you will have unavoidable obligations, academic and otherwise; and illness is always an unwelcome but very real complication of daily life among crowds of people. With all such factors taken into consideration, you should still be able to make three quarters of our meetings, by any reasonable estimate. I am therefore reserving the right to fail any student who misses more than eight classes. If a particularly pressing situation of some sort develops, I would appreciate knowing about it as soon as possible.

That’s the negative side of CP: absences and their consequences. From a positive angle, strong attendance will of course count in your favor. Yet I expect an A for this 20% of the grade to reflect more than mere physical presence (which, if perfect, would at best earn you a B). “Participation” means playing an active, productive role in our group activities, class discussions, work on the board or the overhead projector, and so forth. Though I have no mathematically precise formula for determining such performance, I can fairly reckon it on the basis of notes that I keep (renewed after every meeting). I am eager to reward those who assist me in making the class run smoothly, and I can do so through this portion of the grade.

Quizzes over Rhetorical Grammar (15%): The Kolln/Gray book and Harbracewill form the basis of our review of classical or conventional grammar, which review will itself be the springboard for the rest of the semester. We will spend about a month working through related chapters in these two texts; yet since I have not required the purchase of a specific edition of the Harbrace, we will use our various editions together in class, and no homework assignments will be made in this text.

As a way of encouraging you to keep up with class-by-class assignments in the Kolln/Gray, on the other hand, we will routinely begin each session with a quiz over the chapter studied during our previous meeting (which will give you ample opportunity to ask questions and review). The typical quiz will likely feature some multiple-choice, true-false, and other objective questions, together with a sentence or two which you will be expected to clean up grammatically. These exercises should consume no more than ten minutes.

Comprehensive Grammar Test (15%): After having worked through bothRhetorical Grammarand The Harbrace College Handbook, you should have a strong grasp of conventional grammatical terms and rules. Taking these two texts together is sure to prove somewhat challenging, since the former attempts a “holistic” approach that combines grammar fluidly with writing while the latter breaks down issues and imposes subject-categories in a narrowly logical manner. At the same time, the disparity between the two need not create dissonance. I believe the two methods will prove to overlap in a way that will provide a very secure foundation.

Our exam over the cumulative experience of the two works will consist of your correcting sentences from a list of examples that we will have put together during the class’s first weeks. Not every sentence on the list, that is, will show up on the test—but nothing will show up on the test that isn’t on the list (which will be steadily updated on Blackboard as we proceed). There should be no unpleasant surprises awaiting you on such a transparent test. Keep good notes and listen in class… and you can’t go wrong!

Diagramming Sentences—Homework + Test (15%): For generations, children in our culture (including your professor) were reared on diagramming as a means of learning English grammar. If you have taken a linguistics class, you have probably learned some modification of the classic structural dissection-tree. I do not myself fully understand some of the fine points of the most common system for diagramming in current use. My intent is not that you should learn that or any other system by rote, but simply that you should learn to break down the elements of sentences graphically. We will develop our own “common sense” style of diagramming sentences during the semester (to which I will willingly permit some degree of personalization). My technique is based upon logic and has sufficient benefits that it deserves a few weeks of our time.

When finished with this unit, we shall once more have an in-class test over the material. Yet since our test will be drawn mostly or entirely from examples used in homework assignments, I intend to base a third of the test grade (or 5% of the semester grade) on completion of those assignments. I won’t collect your paper at any point, because you will write all over it every day during class (or so I hope). Instead, I will simply check as class begins to see a) if you have a paper, b) if you have attempted all sentences assigned, and c) if your attempts show a reasonable amount of thoroughness. Papers will be graded on a scale from 0 to 5.

Taste and Style—Homework + Test (10%): This is a somewhat ambitious unit in the class, inasmuch as I have never taught its matter in a “yes and no” fashion… but let’s face it: some of the most reverend rules you were ever taught from grade school on up concern judgments of taste more than logical issues; and as such, the rules may be entirely respectable in certain settings but pompous and crippling to the creative impulse in others. We will use brief sections from all three of our texts to attempt to identify some of these areas where formal writing raises a warning sign, but where more informal or artistic writing demands free passage. Our study will both specify the rules and emphasize the circumstances in which they may properly be relaxed. At this point, too, we will at last return to the essays that you hammered out on the first day of class. The objective is not to humiliate anyone, but rather to identify some of “gray area” stylistic qualities that may suit certain objectives or audiences while proving unsuitable for others.

The test itself will again be a composite. I will quickly examine your homework and assign a 0-to-5 grade based on the criteria explained above. The resulting figure will represent 3% of the 10% total. Then, on the actual test, I will ask you to identify the supposed errors in snippets of writing (drawn from samples reviewed in class, and also—especially—from your earlier essays) and to suggest under what conditions, if any, the “gaffes” might be permissible.

Grammatical/Stylistic Analysis of Text Displaying Eccentric Usage (10%): Toward the semester’s end, you will complete a thorough analysis of an English dialect modeled by an “eccentric” text. I have chosen J.M. Synge’s Playboy of the Western World and Amos Tutuola’sPalm-Wine Drinkard as two of the sample texts. (I haven’t decided on a third: perhaps R.S. Stevenson’s Master of Ballantrae.) I will introduce you to excerpts from these works (for all three are quite long) and ask you to select a single one of them for your analysis. This should be a paper of about 750 words. It should essentially accomplish two ends: a) catalogue the chosen text’s grammatical/stylistic “irregularities” and b) defend such oddity on the basis of what it does for the text artistically.

This is not a research project, though you may employ useful sources. Its focus is on your ability to pick out and analyze non-standard details in a pattern of usage. My objective for the exercise is to stress that even the most conventional of rules may be broken on occasion (or consistently, as in these cases) if a special effect is being sought. A skilled artist, for instance, may use eccentric or exotic syntax or phraseology to assist him or her in transporting the audience to a strange new world.

Paper on Formal Versus Popular Usage as Basis for Grammar (15%): The previous assignment will somewhat overlap with a broader discussion of the “standard/sub-standard” or “proper/improper” grammatical polarities as the semester concludes. Our eccentric texts may indeed give you further food for thought as we raise and discuss several issues. (“I come for to see the priest,” one of Synge’s characters might say; and what do you make of the use of “they” with “someone” to avoid gender specification?) We will go well beyond our three excerpts, however, in seeking out controversies to examine. Much material on the Internet can assist our discussion; and the classic Strunk & White book, Elements of Style, will certainly give us a headstart to identifying the formal or classical polarity of the debate, since it was first published in 1920. I see that MS Word has just red-lined my “headstart” above… or should I say “redlined”?

I want you to find your own “comfort zone” here. When should we stand up and declare a certain pattern of usage wrong, and when should we throw in the towel and say, “Well, everybody’s doing it… so it is now officially acceptable”? Like the previous essay, this is not a research paper in any strict sense, although you may of course refer to other sources and indeed should draw several illustrations from online and/or from other texts. To repeat: while the eccentric text that you chose to analyze in the next-to-last essay may reappear in this one as illustrative matter, you will need many more examples of “marginal” usage as you build your case.

Of primary importance is the quality of you logic. How do you knit your examples together? Where do you draw the line of propriety, and why have you drawn it there? How would you handle the charges of elitism and snobbery that inevitably greet attempts to exclude; or if you avoid excluding odd expressions altogether in a spirit of egalitarianism, how do you defend your tolerance of divergent habits when the fundamental purpose of language is to be understood by others? The whole endeavor is distinctly Aristotelian, in that you will move inductively from specific cases to general conclusions about your material (like a scientist). You will necessarily answer numerous philosophical questions before you finish, and probably some whose presence you never imagined to be lurking in a class on grammar.

This paper’s length should probably reach 1,000 words. It may be longer, if you wish.

Schedule of Assignments

Material to be covered in a given class meeting appears first in each entry below. Then homework (HW) assignments are clearly marked at the end of the entry. These are to be prepared for the following class. Significant assignments and events are bolded. Notice also that our subject matter divides into three essential parts.

Grammatical Basics (Rhetorical Grammar and Harbrace)

August

30Introduction to course; write 500 word essay in class on topic, “What is the greatest problem faced by the

world today?” (for use much later). Homework: finish essay and read chapter 1 in Rhetorical Grammar.

September

1Class discussion of content in RGch. 1, quiz at next meeting (terms on p. 17). In-class study of Harbrace,

chapters 1 and 4 (“Sentence Sense,” “Adjectives and Adverbs”). HW: prepare for quiz and read ch. 2 in

Rhetorical Grammar.

6Quiz over terms on p. 17 (multiple choice and correcting sentences); discuss RGch. 2. In-class study of

Harbrace, chapter 5 (“Pronouns and Case”). HW: prepare for quiz (terms on p. 35) and read RGch. 3.

8Quiz over terms on p. 35; discuss RGch. 3. In-class study of Harbrace, chapter 7 (“Verbs”). HW: prepare

for quiz (terms on p. 50) and read RGch. 4.

12Census Day.

13Quiz over terms on p. 50; discuss RGch. 4. In-class study of Harbrace, chapter 3 (“Comma Splices and

Fused Sentences”). HW: prepare for quiz (terms on p. 78) and read RGch. 7 (SKIP 5-6 for now).

15Quiz over terms on p. 78; discuss RGch. 7. In-class study of Harbrace, chapters 20 and 23 (“Exactness,”

“Sentence Unity”). HW: prepare for quiz (terms on pp. 136-137) and read RGch. 8.

20Quiz over selected terms on pp. 136-137; discuss RGch. 8. In-class study of Harbrace, chapter 2

(“Sentence Fragments”). HW: prepare for quiz (terms on p. 157) and read RGch.9.

22Quiz over terms on p. 157; discuss RGch. 9. In-class study of Harbrace, chapter 12 (“The Comma”).

HW: prepare for quiz (terms on pp. 177-178) and read RGch. 10.

27Quiz over terms on pp. 177-178; discuss RGch. 10. In-class study of Harbrace, chapters 14 and 17 (“The