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Why history matters

Why history matters. From Babylon to Sweet, Tesnière, Chomsky and the National Curriculum. Dick Hudson, Henry Sweet Society, March 2011. My credentials. I'm not a historian. But I sometimes read other people's history. and sometimes remember some of it.

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Why history matters

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  1. Why history matters From Babylon to Sweet, Tesnière, Chomsky and the National Curriculum Dick Hudson, Henry Sweet Society, March 2011

  2. My credentials • I'm not a historian. • But I sometimes read other people's history. • and sometimes remember some of it. • I've lived through 50 years of intellectual history. • I know something about grammar teaching. • I'm curious.

  3. Why history matters in general • Because culture is a product of history. • just like everything else • But cultures tend to exclude alternatives synchronically. • A diachronic perspective offers: • alternatives • explanations

  4. Culture, the world and education education history past culture present minds social-isation experience the world science

  5. Why history matters in linguistics • Because linguistics is a culture. • "The distinctive ideas, customs, social behaviour, products, or way of life of a particular society, people, or period" • OED • Linguistics is part of academic culture • and has its own sub-cultures

  6. Linguistics subcultures • History reveals the alternatives, e.g.: • Language is 'out there', part of culture • or it's in the mind. • Language is unique • or it's just ordinary cognition. • Linguistics is useless • or it's useful.

  7. Is linguistics useful? • In speech pathology? • yes • In computer science? • yes • In language preservation? • yes • In education? • ?

  8. A brief history of grammar for education • Babylon • Greece and Rome • Middle Ages • Grammar schools • Sweet • Tesnière • The Dark Ages

  9. Babylon, 2000 BC

  10. Becoming literate in Babylon • The problem: • scribes needed to learn their trade • in two languages: • Sumerian (dead) • Akkadian (alive) • The solution: • analyse the languages (= earliest linguistics) • teach the analysis to trainee scribes.

  11. NB person: 1 – 2 – 3, consistently in that order!! We – you – they

  12. Greece and Rome … the text Tékhnē grammatiké (c. 100 BCE, …), possibly written by Dionysius Thrax, lists eight parts of speech, and lays out the broad details of Greek morphology including the case structures. This text was intended as a pedagogic guide (as was Panini) … • (Wikipedia)

  13. The Middle Ages • Grammar was driven by the need to teach Latin as L2. • e.g. 'insular' (Britain) grammars (7-9c) • invented parsing (9c – Luhtala 1994) • Grammar was the first of 7 Liberal Arts • Oxford and Cambridge offered a Master of Grammar degree for teachers at …

  14. Grammar schools • for teaching languages … • mainly Latin • … and the Trivium: • Grammar • Logic • Rhetoric • 'a school in which the learned languages are grammatically taught' • Samuel Johnson, 1755

  15. Sweet 1891 Practical teachers, who generally confine themselves to one book and one method, are often hardly able to realize how unsettled grammar still is. I remember once reading a paper on grammar before the Philological Society, in which I modestly advanced the view that cannon in cannon-ball was not an adjective. When I had finished my paper, an English philologist, who was also a teacher

  16. Sweet continued • got up, and told me that my criticisms were superfluous, as no practical teacher possessed of common sense would think of calling cannon in cannon-ball an adjective. Thereupon another eminent philologist, who was not only a schoolmaster, but had written an English grammar, got up, and, to the intense amusement of the meeting, maintained that cannon in cannon-ball was an adjective and nothing else .... • (New English Grammar, v)

  17. Sweet again • "until our whole system of teaching [the history of English, starting with OE] has been radically reformed, the Extension movement cannot be put on that definite footing which every true friend of education wishes it to assume." (NEG, x)

  18. And again • "one of the most direct practical uses of English grammar is that it serves as a preparation for the study of foreign languages" (NEG xi) • The Practical Study of Languages (1899) • about language teaching.

  19. Meanwhile, in our schools … Nesfield, 1898

  20. and in the USA Reed and Kellogg, 1877

  21. still in 2011 1aiway.com/nlp4net/services/enparser/

  22. Verdicts on sentence diagramming • Gertrude Stein: • "I really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than diagramming sentences." • Google: • "I hate sentence diagramming" • 239 examples • "I love sentence diagramming" • 1180 examples

  23. Tesnière • Éléments de syntaxe structurale (1959) • to simplify grammar for didactic purposes. • Criticised traditional grammar • Formalised dependency grammar • But very similar ideas existed in 19c Germany • Introduced a new diagramming system • Did he know about Reed and Kellogg?

  24. Stemmas

  25. So what? In the Good Old Days, • schools took syntax seriously • some linguists tried to help • some schools accepted the help • some schools did their own thing • but schools really needed expert help.

  26. The Dark Ages in the UK1900-1990 • Grammar research died after Sweet • Grammar teaching deteriorated and died in English: • removed from O-level c 1965 • 'Grammar-translation' replaced in foreign languages by 'Communicative' approaches • GCSE is grammar-free

  27. Linguistics since the Dark Ages • Linguistics lost contact with schools • schools didn't want historical linguistics • but still taught 19c grammatical analysis • linguists lost interest in schools • But 1960s: Quirk and Halliday saw the need for linguistics in schools • influenced schools and educationalists • but (in general) not linguists

  28. Chomsky 1991 • "You're a human being, and your time as a human being should be socially useful. It doesn't mean that your choices about helping other people have to be within the context of your professional training as a linguist. Maybe that training just doesn't help you to be useful to other people. In fact, it doesn't."

  29. The Rebirth of school grammar? • Governments asked how to teach about language in English teaching. • 1921: Newbolt Report • 1975: Bullock Report • 1988: Kingman Report • 1989: Cox Report • 1990: the National Curriculum • for English (revised 1995, 1999, 2007, 2011)

  30. English (writing, KS3) Language structure and variation The study of English should include …: a. the principles of sentence grammar and whole-text cohesion, and the use of this knowledge in pupils’ writing b. variations in written standard English and how it differs from standard and non-standard spoken language …

  31. What is sentence grammar? The principles of sentence grammar and whole-text cohesion: These should include: • word classes and their grammatical functions • the structure of phrases and clauses and how they can be combined to make complex sentences (eg through coordination and subordination) … • the use of appropriate grammatical terminology to reflect on the meaning and clarity of individual sentences.

  32. Foreign languages Learning languages gives pupils opportunities to develop their listening, speaking, reading and writing skills and to express themselves with increasing confidence, independence and creativity. They explore the similarities and differences between other languages and English and learn how language can be manipulated and applied in different ways. The development of communication skills, together with understanding of the structure of language, lay the foundations for future study of other languages and support the development of literacy skills in a pupil’s own language.

  33. BUT • How can teachers teach grammatical analysis if they were never taught it? • Result: school leavers know less grammatical terminology now than in 1986. • For instance, …

  34. A new BA French student, 2009

  35. Three failures of history • Governments failed to see the effects of grammar-free schooling on teachers. • School teachers failed to see the need for grammar (and linguistics). • Linguists failed to notice schools: • in their teaching. • in their research.

  36. Towards a happy ending? • The Linguistics Olympiad • 2009: 600 pupils, aged 12-19 • 2010: 1200 pupils • Easy: 10 Abma sentences with translation • translate new examples both ways • Harder: 10 Tangkhul, 10 unordered translations

  37. Responses • From schools: great enthusiasm • 80 schools • including ambitious independent schools • From linguistics: great enthusiasm • 20 volunteer markers • £1K per year from LAGB, BAAL and PhilSoc • Maybe this is a bridge, at last?

  38. So what? • Education needs linguistics. • for analyses, ideas, descriptions • Linguistics needs education. • for dissemination, i.e. IMPACT • for future students (and researchers) • History tells us that the 20c split is abnormal.

  39. A future linguistics • Bigger (compare maths). • Teaching relevant to school teachers. • Research relevant to education, e.g. • school-age language development • relations between speech and writing • effects of teaching on language development • methods for teaching grammar

  40. Thank you • These slides can be downloaded from: www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/talks.htm • More on the Olympiad: www.uklo.org

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