In this book, Stroik and Putnam take on Turing's challenge. They argue that the narrow syntax – the lexicon, the Numeration, and the computational system – must reside, for reasons of conceptual necessity, within the performance systems.
AUTHOR: Hancock, Craig TITLE: Meaning-Centered Grammar SUBTITLE: An Introductory Text SERIES: Equinox Textbooks and Surveys in Linguistics PUBLISHER: Equinox YEAR: 2005
Edward McDonald, School of Asian Studies, University of Auckland
SUMMARY
Craig Hancock's ''Meaning-Centered Grammar'' is a course in English grammar from the viewpoint of teaching writing, developed over the course of five years at the college level in classes, and ''aimed largely at English teaching majors'' (p.1). Hancock explains his overall goal as follows (p.1):
''Against the grain of my discipline, which has continued to think of grammar as a banal subject tied to archaic and banal teaching practices, I went in search of an approach to grammar compatible with meaning making approaches to reading and writing. The working premise has been that form and meaning are organically interconnected, that word choice and word arrangement are not neutral carriers of a pre-existent meaning, but a deeply important part of the meaning making enterprise.''
Hancock links his approach to many of the traditional concerns of ''composition'' and ''aesthetics'', and makes a useful comment on naive versus professional understandings of the writing process where notions of grammar are usually invoked (p.1): ''Traditionally, grammar choices have been choices of 'correctness' or 'style'; for more experienced writers, revision is essentially a movement towards meaning.'' In this context, Hancock identifies as his basic question ''whether this functional notion of form could be extended to grammar'' and describes the current textbook as ''a decade long positive answer to that question'' (p.1).
Chapter 1, ''Rethinking grammar,'' clearly shows the results of that decade long active pondering on the role of grammar in teaching writing, and provides a well-judged and highly approachable discussion of such issues as ''grammar is not error'' and ''a sentence is not a complete thought.'' Chapter 2, ''Basic principles of grammar,'' is again a clear and consistent overview of the basic kinds of evidence -- word order, inflection, function words -- that we draw on in recognising grammatical distinctions. Chapter 3, ''Elements of the simple clause,'' then introduces the basic word classes, using a framework very close to that of Quirk et al. (1985), i.e. what would most probably normally be categorised -- with a certain lack of recognition of Quirk et al.'s original contribution -- as ''traditional grammar.''
Chapter 4 introduces the basic insight of systemic functional grammar, as represented in Halliday (1994), that clause structure may be divided up among three different meaningful structures, from the point of view of, as the chapter title has it, ''Context based meaning in a sentence.'' Concepts from this text-based approach of systemic functional grammar are also drawn on in Chapter 6, ''Transitivity: clause as representation.'' The more traditional form-based approach to grammar is utilised in Chapter 5, ''A closer look at verb phrases;'' Chapter 7, ''Verbs as adjectives, nouns, and as heads of non-finite subordinate clauses;'' Chapter 8, ''Coordination and compounding: appositional phrases;'' and Chapter 9, ''Finite subordinate clauses.''
Chapter 10, ''Grammar and writing: punctuation,'' moves into more typical writing territory in explaining the use of punctuation to clarify structure. Chapter 11, ''Grammar and meaning in longer texts,'' uses the grammatical framework introduced in previous chapters on two short (despite the chapter heading) texts: a poem by Robert Hayden, and an extract from an autobiography by Richard Rodriguez. In addition to the main discussion and demonstration of grammatical analyses, each chapter also contains ''section exercises'' giving the student practice on short single sentence analyses, as well as a ''chapter practice,'' usually on a text extract.
EVALUATION
A good textbook is the hardest thing to write. Despite a strong tradition of academic snobbery that would see textbook writing as the ''easy'' alternative to producing, say, an academic monograph, exactly the opposite is in fact the case. The writer of a monograph can usually depend on more or less fixed conventions of genre, and a clearly defined readership with whom s/he shares an enormous amount of background knowledge and presuppositions, as well as clear criteria for what counts as success, criteria which draw on and are constantly reinforced by the whole academic process of reviewing and critiquing across a range of forums.
The textbook writer operates with almost none of these comfortable certainties. S/he can assume little or no common background with the potential readership, and thus a much stronger pressure for the textbook to stand or fall on its own merits, not only as a whole but at every step of the exposition. In most cases, s/he will be working across at least two different registers, that of the disciplinary field or fields, and that of the pedagogic process. In many cases, s/he will also be negotiating between different theoretical perspectives on a subject, not able to deal with disagreements directly, as in a monograph, but only indirectly in choosing explanations and attempting to derive some sort of working consensus out of what is often a Babel of competing claims.
In this book, Hancock has attempted the difficult task of blending insights from rhetoric and the teaching of writing with terms and descriptions from the two linguistic traditions of traditional grammar and systemic functional grammar, the latter in the form set out in Halliday (1994). There are some areas in which he has succeeded brilliantly. The opening chapter, ''Rethinking grammar,'' deals with the whole thorny issue of knowledge about grammar and its relationship to writing in a more thoughtful and comprehensive way than any other similar publication I am aware of, and does so in an eminently sensible and approachable tone that seems ideally suited for its readership.
It is when the textbook moves into introducing an explicit framework for grammatical analysis that it loses me to some extent. One of the reasons for this is what reads to me like an exegesis that seems not to be able to see the descriptive wood for the analytical trees: though I must acknowledge that I am not, of course, the sort of reader for whom the book was designed, and for whom such a close concentration on detail may be helpful and supportive. On this point, I must also defer to Hancock's decades-long teaching experience and his five-year trial of this particular textbook with students.
But another more serious reservation comes from Hancock's attempt to combine terms and analyses from traditional grammar and systemic functional grammar. The grammatical commentaries on two texts given in Chapter 11 are very typical of the sorts of analyses systemic functional grammar was designed to carry out, and are obviously inspired by its example; but these ''meaning-based'' analyses themselves, to quote from the book's title, are done largely in terms of the categories of traditional grammar, whose largely ''form-based'' nature proves resistant to such an application. As a result, what the reader is left with, it seems to me, is a descriptive apparatus centred not in meaning, but in form, and a naive reader might be forgiven for concluding that the whole battery of terms from systemic functional grammar is an ''extra'': a confusing and redundant add-on to the ''real'' nitty-gritty which is traditional grammar.
A comparison with a textbook that attempts a similar sort of blend for the same sort of readership should illuminate this criticism. Graham Lock's ''Functional English Grammar'' (1996), is as the subtitle makes clear ''An introduction for second language teachers,'' and like Hancock's work draws on both traditional grammar, in the form put forward in what Lock terms ''the indispensable'' reference of Quirk et al. (1985), and systemic functional grammar. In relation to the latter, Lock explains that ''because this book is intended for teachers rather than for linguists or text analysts, I have felt free to adapt, reinterpret, and use selectively'' (Lock 1996: xiii) insights provided by scholars working within that theory. In my opinion, he succeeds brilliantly in this task, because he not only has a deep understanding of the overall aims of systemic functional theory and what a systemic functional type of analysis is designed to show, but because he has obviously thought hard about the needs of his target readership and has tailored his material to that audience.
While Hancock is equally clear on his target readership, his understanding of systemic functional theory is perhaps less deep, and in terms of its overall aims throws it into a surprising and rather uneasy cohabitation with generative grammar, as he explains in the ''Preface'' (p.2):
''Generative grammar has generally shied away from pedagogical application, but has deeply established the truth that we are all innately wired for language, that language is learned rather than taught, that a language rich environment is the most important catalyst for language acquisition, that all human dialects are equally rule-driven, equally capable of rendering the world. The goal of this book is to bring that unconscious grammar to conscious light and to explore ways in which effective writing works in harmony with that natural language.''
I suspect many generative linguists would be surprised at Hancock's attribution to them of the idea that a ''language rich environment is the most important catalyst for language acquisition'', since that is the very thing they tend to dismiss as of little importance, with Chomsky on record as claiming that ''language development really ought to be called language growth because the language organ grows like any other body organ'' (Chomsky 1983), developing naturally rather than being taught; while Krashen's whole argument (e.g. Krashen 1987) against the need for explicit teaching about language rests on a similar assumption.
The idea of language as ''rule-driven'' is obviously and admittedly taken from generative grammar, and also resonates strongly with the concerns of traditional grammar -- a linkage that is of course the result of borrowing by generative grammar from traditional grammar not the other way around; but it seems to me to sit uneasily with the book's overall aim of encouraging writers to develop their own voice, something that systemic functional theory's conceptualisation of ''language as resource'' supports much more closely. Hancock's reliance on traditional grammar thus traps him, it seems to me, in a world-view that the whole thrust of the book is continually trying to argue against. Furthermore, his own ''case against'' traditional grammar seems to tempt him beyond what a textbook like this can practically achieve (p.2):
''One principal role of the book is to equip someone to participate in a public discussion of grammar, and for that reason I have tried to hold to as much of the traditional terminology of grammar as possible. Anyone wishing primarily to avoid error in the traditional sense of the term would still be well served by the much deeper and wider understanding offered here. A good deal of prescriptive grammar is highly questionable, even dysfunctional, and wider understanding gives us the insight necessary to make informed judgments.''
The ability to ''participate in a public discussion'' -- in an informed way, that is -- requires a very sophisticated cross-theoretical understanding of the aims and applications of traditional grammar, presumably in this case as critiqued by systemic functional grammar; and not only is this something which seems to me of questionable value for the intended readership of this textbook, it is something for which the book itself is not really able to provide a good model, since it does not clearly delineate the scope of these two kinds of grammatical description. (A realistic and hard-headed approach to the uses and benefits of traditional grammar as regulating a common written standard can be found in Trask 2001). Here again, Lock's work provides a much clearer and more useable framework, introducing the traditional framework of Subject Predicator (''verb'') Object and so on, but reinterpreting it, a la Halliday, in semantic terms, and then adding further layers of analysis in terms of Transitivity, Theme and Rheme, and so on, which fill in aspects of English grammar highly relevant to teaching or learning writing but on which the traditional framework is largely silent.
Another textbook which, though for a readership of students rather than teachers, in my opinion succeeds much better in mediating between grammar and writing is Carolyn Hartnett's ''Meaning First'' (2000). While it takes a much more directly writing-focused approach than Hancock's book, as its subtitle ''A Functional Handbook of Fifty Ways to Polish your Writing'' indicates, like Hancock it is clearly informed by a systemic functional approach. Here, however, the systemic functional influence is completely absorbed into the rationale and organization of the book, with chapters, for example, on ''Packing Information in Sentences'' (basic clause structure), ''Relating to the Reader, the Time and the Truth with Verbs'' (tense and modality) and ''Making Your Writing Friendly to Readers'' (information flow). Thus any linguistically naive reader can make use of -- and evaluate the usefulness of -- Hartnett's textbook completely on its own terms, and without needing to take anything on trust.
Hancock is obviously enthusiastic about the benefits of using functional grammar to inform traditional grammar, but it seems to me his textbook needs further clarification of its descriptive framework in order to make it more directly useable by his readership. If I may be forgiven for citing my own work, my account of developing a functional text-based grammar for Chinese (McDonald 1999) documents how difficult the process of development can be: I too had to come to grips with the problem of Chinese ''traditional grammar'' -- similarly adapted from the tradition of Latin grammar but in this case only from the end of the 19th century; and for me too the initial versions spoke more directly to linguists than students, and an enormous amount of tweaking and tinkering and serious rethinking was necessary in order to create an autonomous framework for pedagogical needs. So I must not been understood to be criticizing Hancock for ''dumbing down'' systemic functional grammar: as I mentioned earlier, ''dumbing down'' is exactly the opposite of what goes on in the case of textbooks such as this, at least if we are talking about the amount of hard thinking and writing required from the person developing the textbook. We all know that the best teachers are those who handle their knowledge lightly and ''make it seem easy'', but we also all know that this is truly a case of ''the art that conceals art.'' If I say that Hancock has made a good start, I hope that doesn't come across as patronising, but simply as a recognition of the difficulty of the task he has set himself.
REFERENCES
Chomsky, Noam. 1983. Things No Amount of Learning Can Teach. Noam Chomsky interviewed by John Gliedman. Omni, 6:11, November 1983. [http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/198311--.htm]
Halliday, M.A.K. 1994. An Introduction to Functional Grammar. 2nd edition. 1st edition 1985. London: Arnold.
Hartnett, Carolyn G. 2000. Meaning First: A Functional Handbook of Fifty Ways to Polish Your Writing. Superior WI: Parlay Press.
Krashen, Stephen D. 1987. Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall International
Lock, Graham. 1996. Functional English Grammar: An Introduction for Second Language Teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McDonald, Edward. 1999. Teaching Grammar through Text: an integrated model for a pedagogical grammar of Chinese. Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers Association. 34.2, 91-120.
Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik. 1985. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman
Trask, R.L. 2001. Mind the Gaffe. The Penguin Guide to Common Errors in English. London: Penguin
ABOUT THE REVIEWER:
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Edward McDonald has taught language, linguistics, and semiotics at the
National University of Singapore, Tsinghua University Beijing, and
currently at the University of Auckland. His Ph.D. research was on the
development of a functional text-based grammar of Chinese, and he has
published on pedagogical grammar in Language Sciences and the Journal of
the Chinese Language Teachers Association (JCLTA).
