I Have a Confession to Make...

evilrooster said:

This is where the rubber meets the road.

"Communicating well" is a complicated thing. There's more to it than hoping that the information you were trying to convey made it into the brain of the other person.

The language that you use allows the reader to come to some conclusions about your educational levels, your cultural background, and even, at times, your gender and character. We all do this, just as we all come to conclusions on people based on their dress and behavior in person.

Controlling your language allows you to control the impression you make on people: to be formal when formality is required, and casual when it's not. If you can do that -- if you can decide how you want to come across and make that work without being able to tell a pronoun from a preposition -- then you don't need to study grammar. But that degree of instinctive control is rare indeed.

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Yes, yes, yes,

People used language perfectly long before there were any rules of grammar, etc., and some people can do well without knowing the rules.

Yes, people communicated long before the rules, but not always successfully...

mrsvalkyrie, I'm a grammar geek. I know the terms and I know the concepts. And there is no single way to connect the terms and concepts, but people behave as if there were. For example, what is an adverb to one grammarian can be a presposition to another. What is a noun for one grammarian can be an adjective to another. When experts are amongst themselves they either duke it out with pistols at dawn, or they get together and see how they use the terms before they communicate.

When non-experts get together, they use the terms the way they first encountered them, the way they first made sense to them, etc. And they may end up with theoretical stew that doesn't really mix in a systematic manner but makes personal sense. In that case, it's a bit harder to figure out what they mean, though context usually helps.

However, terminology is not the only thing that differs from theory to theory. Concepts do, too. Different theories are better suited to different problems. And different experts have different interests.

Again, non-experts will happily pick up on that, but in a non-systematic manner. For example, some grammar theories (usually those that use "parts of speech") have one concept for "form-and-function-unit", say "adjective". Other theories divide that in two, say "adjective" and "modifier".

Again, non-experts pick up on that in a non-stystematic way, in any way that makes sense.

The real fun is, though, that people (outside of linguistics) tend to think of grammar in terms of "what you should not do". And that's where it becomes especially tricky, because people tell you to learn the basics. But as a native speaker with the ability to communicate you've learned the basics by the time you were five. Most of the "basics" are minor quibbles about details, and often they're not about grammar at all, but about style.

So if you're confused about the terms, don't worry. You're not alone. And it's not your fault. It's a jungle of terms and concepts, and the only way through it is with the help of a guide. Or with a machete.

So, if I look at the term "participle phrase" I immediately want to clarify where the person comes froms. What's the difference between a phrase and a clause? How do participles relate to adjectives? What's the difference between a gerund and a present participle? All of those questions don't have a single, predictable answer. But by answering all those questions you can gauge what the other person means when he says "participle phrase". A matter of minutes for experts. A will-o-the-wisp in the swamp for non-experts.

So what's in it for you? If you read different books on grammar, don't assume that they use the terms in the same way. They may not. If something doesn't make sense to you, it could be that there's something you've missed. But it could also very well be that different sources use an incompatible terminology/concept combo, and you're confused because you think they're talking about the same thing (when they talk about related but slightly different things).

Alternatively, just assert that you're right. Works for many out there.

bearilou said:

Everything I know about English grammar, I learned in German class.

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Russian for me. Didn't know direct/indirect object, imperative, etc until it mattered. (Or until it was gone--learned what articles were by not having them.)

Have you tried Mad Libs? Not only are they fun, they are slightly educational.

(And you can have the fairy god "toilet" turn the pumpkin into a giant "fanny", and send the princess off to the "poop".)

thothguard51 said:

Yes, people communicated long before the rules, but not always successfully...

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And today, with plenty of rules and such do people communicate successfully all of the time?

Snick said:

If you can speak and write well, then don't worry about the definitions and rules. Those are just things that were dreamed up to codify and try to justify what people say and write. The actual living language is much more important than all the rules.

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Yes. You don't need to study physics to understand that if you jump off a cliff you'll fall.

mrsvalkyrie said:

I have no idea what a noun is. Or a verb. Or a conjunction. Or a preposition. None of it.

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Really, it isn't all that hard. It's not like you're in charge of finding the Higgs boson in the Large Hadron Collider.

duck, n.. Any of a large family of common waterfowl.


duck, v.. The motion you make when your sister hurls a paperweight at you just because you poured ketchup on her favorite sweater.

-- Blacbird's Unabridged Dictionary, 2012 ed.

caw

evilrooster said:

What taught me grammatical terms, in the end, was studying Latin.

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You beat me to it!

I don't recommend it as a quick and easy way.

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True, but it's definitely fun!

blacbird said:

Really, it isn't all that hard. It's not like you're in charge of finding the Higgs boson in the Large Hadron Collider.

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It's not as easy, though, as you seem to think. Depending on how you think you might stumble on the fine points of a theory and become confused. Then it can be only a matter of time before it all comes tumbling down. In the recent -ing thread, you linked to OWL Purdue on participles. I'm now going to pick apart that link and analyse the potential problems with their approach. You may say it's nitpicking, but it's not. People who honestly think things through may fail to make sense of the entire system because of these niceties. They're real, and they have led notable grammars to abandon the distinction between gerunds and participles (most recently, I think the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language).

As a reminder, the links:

Participles

Gerunds: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/627/01/

OWL said:

A participle is a verbal that is used as an adjective and most often ends in -ing or -ed. The term verbal indicates that a participle, like the other two kinds of verbals, is based on a verb and therefore expresses action or a state of being.

***

A gerund is a verbal that ends in -ing and functions as a noun. The term verbal indicates that a gerund, like the other two kinds of verbals, is based on a verb and therefore expresses action or a state of being.

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So what a participle and gerund have in common is that they're verbals. They are based on a verb, and we know this because it expresses an "action or a state of being". A participle functions as a an adjective, and a gerund functions as a noun:

However, since they [participles] function as adjectives, participles modify nouns or pronouns.

***

However, since a gerund functions as a noun, it occupies some positions in a sentence that a noun ordinarily would, for example: subject, direct object, subject complement, and object of preposition.

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Now this is interesting: On their parts of speech page they say that a "noun is a word that denotes a person, place, or thing." This is different from what they say above. This is not a surprise, since they say "gerunds" are verbals and they function like nouns. That is: they're not nouns, but they take their place.

However, compare what they say about adjectives on their parts-of-speech base: "An adjective is a word that modifies, or describes, a noun or pronoun. Adjectives may precede nouns, or they may appear after a form of the reflexive verb to be (am, are, is, was, etc.)." This is pretty much the same as what they say that "participles" do.

The conclusion? They define nouns and verbs according to what they refer to (semantic definition), but they define adjectives as what they do in a sentence (functional definition). This is confusing and inconsistent. Traditional grammar has this problem.

Let's go back a bit:

Creamation in "Grandpa's cremation" is a noun. "Cremating Grandpa" is a verbal (let's not talk about the distinction between pariticples and gerunds at that point). That means that, according to the definition "cremation" is a thing, and "cremating" is process. But what is that distinction? We're certainly referring to the same real-life object, but in different ways. This may be intuitive for some people; it never was for me, and there are certainly others who don't like that, either.

So how does this work out? This gets more complicated as we read on: we find that it is the pariticiple phrase that functions an adjective: So in "Removing his coat, Jack rushed to the river," it's "Removing his coat" that functions as an adjective, rather than only "removing". But that transfers the definition of the participle as modifying the noun to the phrase and leaves you hanging. The same phrase could be a gerund: "Removing his coat was not easy for Jack." So what do we do with "removing" when all we have is "removing his coat"? We have not enough information to differentiate between gerund and participle, because it's decontextualised. And that means that "participle/gerund" are sentence functions and not word classes, here. Is there another way to interpret this?

Still, what do I make of the definition that the participle is a verbal that functions as an adjective? Did they lie? Did they mean to say that it is a verbal that occurs in a phrase that functions as an adjective? Were they careless? Also couldn't we say that "removing" in "removing his coat" functions like a verb regardless of context? You know, because it takes an object? Maybe, maybe not. This is a can of worms I'm not going to open here.

All of this can be inconsequential. Generations of grammarians had no problems with it. But more structural thinkers (and I'm one) do have severe problems with that. It's confusing.

Fine, what's next: Oh, yeah: What's the evidence that

"Removing his coat" in "Removing his coat, Jack rushed to the river," is actually modifying "Jack", as they claim? What if I claim that it's an adverbial that gives us the manner in which Jack rushed to the River? Is this based on semantic plausibility? What about this sentence:
This is sort of similar to the above, except that the subject of the verb is no longer implied, but explicitly expressed. Does "having removed his coat" now modify "Jack", even though it looks a lot like a subject? Huh? Does the entire phrase now modify "I"? I doubt it. But wait. Phrase? If "Jack" is now a subject, is this maybe not a phrase at all, but a clause?

If so what, exactly, is the difference between a phrase and a clause? And how does that figure into the entire discussion? Do I have to decide whether something is a phrase or a clause before I can even tell as what it functions which is necessary for determining what kind of verbal it is in the first place?

I'm going to stop here. People have probably stopped paying attention by now, anyway. The thing is that what sounds easy and simple isn't necessarily easy and simple. If that mess makes intuitive sense to you, you're lucky. It never did to me. I went through school without understanding the difference between adverbs and prepositions. Had to go to university to find out.

Sure, few people will have problems to identify the nouns and verbs in sentences like:
But who knows what that looks like if you lose the plot, or if it never made sense in the first place. Please, please, please don't assume things are easy because it makes sense to you. Sure, it's simple. And answering tests correctly doesn't seem that hard, either (mrsvalkyrie says she aced English, after all). But, you know, if that sort of stuff makes no sense to someone they're not necessarily stupid. It's possible that they're looking at it from a different angle than you. Or that they're seeing problems you're unaware of.

Snake oil salesmen these days sell books grammar. Beware. (And, no, the OWL folks are not sanke oil salesmen. They know what they're talking about; they're just simplifying and try to gloss over the diffucult stuff that would only confuse their students. But some students notice that stuff anyway, and in that case...)

I'm sorry if this all confusing and makes things worse rather than better, but I don't really like it when people make things more simple than they are and then use that to make others feel stupid. It is complex. The reason that few people actually get confused by that sort of thinking is exactly because it's entirely unnecessary to know this sort of theory stuff to use language. So, yeah, if you're interested you're welcome to think this through. If you're not, just guess what the people in power want to hear and go with that (whether it makes sense or not). And don't feel bad for not getting it. It's really not as simple as everyone says.

This thread is great and gives a good insight into the different types of writers out there, so props to the OP.
I too have issues with the technicalities of writing. My grasp of the English language is through a life-long love of reading. English class didn't interest me unless it was a creative writing assignment or a reading assignment.
I have this fear that (if I ever get published) I'll have an awkward phone conversation with my editor when he/she starts talking verbs and nouns etc, lol.
But in general, my ears and eyes are quite sharp and well trained in picking up grammatical errors (note the emphasis on 'in general' ). Maybe not in a text-book way, but certainly something a little more organic. I believe there are more ways than one to learn the art of writing, each suitable to the individual.
So don't feel bad. You sound like you know what you're doing.

Dawnstorm,

One of the dangers of knowing something too deeply is that one becomes focused on edge cases, which are complex and interesting -- endless fodder for picking apart and discussing. Unfortunately, they're also intimidating, confusing, and not representative of the level of understanding that most people need to function.

Most writers are somewhere between "The cat sat on the mat" and the trench warfare of semantic/functional grammar. What they're looking for is a set of labels to apply to linguistic concepts they already have in their heads. These labels will sometimes be ambiguous, sometimes overlap, and sometimes have gaps between them. And they won't always precisely match the ways that other people use them.

But the labels do exist, and do generally match concepts that native speakers of Indo-European languages will already have. They're not, for the vast majority of situations that writers encounter, nearly so fluid, confusing and messy as you're making them out to be. It's useful to know that there is complexity underneath the Schoolhouse Rock simplicity, so that if the surface layer doesn't work you can go deeper and understand the compromises and approximations that underlie it. But sometimes the surface layer is a sufficiently functional approximation.

I don't really like it when people make things more simple than they are and then use that to make others feel stupid. It is complex. The reason that few people actually get confused by that sort of thinking is exactly because it's entirely unnecessary to know this sort of theory stuff to use language.

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No one in this conversation has called anyone else stupid. Mrsvalkyrie has called herself stupid, but I think it's clear at this point that no one agrees with that evaluation. I sincerely hope that she doesn't either, because it isn't true.

Sometimes the common vocabulary of linguistic discourse doesn't stick in people's heads, even though they can write perfectly good English prose (mrsvalkyrie, I'm lookin' at you). That's OK -- I can't remember numbers to save my life. That doesn't mean I'm stupid, and having to look up what a pronoun is doesn't make someone else stupid, either.

And sometimes people (like you, Dawnstorm) need to know the intimate, intricate details that make up the whole, and need to understand and question the assumptions that make up the approximations that others use unthinkingly. That's not stupid either, and fie on anyone who has called you so in the past.

But I don't think that's msvalkyrie's challenge right now, and I don't think your solution is going to help her problem. If anything, I'm concerned that you've made things more intimidating and confusing. And that's not necessary; I suspect she needs two things:

1. To trust and develop her natural ear for the language. Read good English prose. Figure out which things you write sound that good and clear. Ask others which variant of the same sentence works better. Develop that side of linguistic understanding which doesn't rely on labels.

2. A good, solid reference grammar, online or off, to look up terms when they get used at her and to dig around in when she needs to talk about language to other people.

mrsvalkyrie said:

blacbird--

Of course it's not that hard... if you can learn no matter how you're taught and no matter how incompetent your teachers are, or if you don't have a learning disability, or if you're just never taught to begin with, or if you're a super-genius who can absorb every piece of information you've ever been given in your entire life and then some.

Unfortunately, some of us aren't that. I know the definitions. But if I was given a sentence and told to pick out which words were what, no way.

I suppose I could analyze each and every sentence I write in the hopes that they are correct according to every grammar book there is, and then if there are conflicting opinions, go with the book that sold the most copies.

Or I could just sit around feeling stupid for even asking because if it's that easy, then maybe I have no business even using the English language if I can't differentiate between verbs and adjectives.

Well, that settles it. Spanish it is!

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Don't feel stupid for asking: it is very difficult. Mind if I say why?

Take black's 'duck'.

The duck was shot by the man.

Break it down:

The (article) duck (noun) was shot (verb phrase) by (preposition) the (article) man (noun)

But how exactly does that help you? What affect has it created? Should you care what's been created and how you've made it work?

Here you run into the problem of learning that noun, verb, adjective, they're just minor classifications, and it won't help 'describe' what's going on in the sentence.

e.g., what is going on in that sentence?

You have a noun, it's at the beginning of a clause, so sense says it equals subject, right? And yet something has done something to the duck, which, for a subject, that's a little strange: the subject is usually the doer: the duck flew, the duck quacked, the duck runs away from orange sauce). So where's the subject? And if the duck isn't the subject, what is he?

Here's where it gets complicated.

To most 'the duck' is the object. We know that because the sentence is in passive voice (the man shot the duck (is active)). So we have: the duck was shot by the man.

But now, 'object' isn't really the best way to describe 'the duck' (It's not in object position, so should you call it object?). How exactly would you describe it?

'The duck' has moved to subject position, so yes, it's a subject and 'was shot' still verb phrase, but the gunman -- what do you call him? He's not an object: here's not having something done to him, and he's certainly not the subject anymore. So what do we call his position? by a man, he has shifted into a by-phrase (or left out altogether) and becomes the named/unnamed agent.

So how would you describe the effect that creates? You struggle to understand because the positions are moving around in the clause, so other terminology bar noun verb, traditional subject v object reasoning is complicated. You take more classifications into account:

By moving object (the duck) to subject position you reduce the focus of the agent (the man) on the action (shot): ergo Passive voice. (Why? Maybe because you don't who exactly shot the duck (male, female etc), so, as a writer, you give focus to the duck and leave the reader guessing.)

So, you may start with a noun, but it means little in the wider picture of things: it's complex. The more you dig, the more complexity increases.

I understand dawns's frustration. I'm not at his level, I don't know the majority of the theorioes available (Don't talk to me about Bakhtin 'cuz that dude goes waaay over my head). And I prejudice: I'm a functionalist at heart and have little patience for traditionalists (bad science for any language learner).

If I could simplify language down into noun, verb, adjective: I'd be one rich buddy. I take solice in the fact that greats can't decide -- and then blame them for my confusion.

And if you choose one good reference grammar, just remember that it is just 'one good reference grammar'. Others will vary, so any language discussion will be open to debate from those other sources. And in that case, just be consistant with what you know (an editor will come along and question you later, followed by a proofer, and then you are allowed to throw your hands up in the air and scream no more )

Good luck to you, mrsvalkyrie.

I've never 'parsed' a sentence in my life or broken one down in diagramatic form.

I think I'm in exactly the same boat as you, except that I do know what a verb and an adjective and a noun are, and I also know the difference between the subject and the object of a verb. But the names of tenses? I have no idea.

To be perfectly honest, beyond the basics I haven't a clue about most other grammar terms and if I post any answers regarding such things I have to look everything up first - and doublecheck it. My main grammar reference has been good old Strunk.

Folk who know all the grammar terms and understand them and apply them have my admiration, but not knowing all that stuff doesn't make me feel stupid.

Only yesterday I saw another critter comment upon the overuse of conjunctions in some fellow's sentences. I wasn't sure what he meant so I googled 'conjunctions' and hey presto! I now think I follow all that coordinating/correlative/subordinating conjunction stuff, but before that it was simply use these things as and when they 'felt' right. I'll still follow the 'feel' of sentences, but it's always good to learn a little more.

Welcome to the club.

evilrooster said:

1. To trust and develop her natural ear for the language. Read good English prose. Figure out which things you write sound that good and clear. Ask others which variant of the same sentence works better. Develop that side of linguistic understanding which doesn't rely on labels.

2. A good, solid reference grammar, online or off, to look up terms when they get used at her and to dig around in when she needs to talk about language to other people.

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This. Right. Here.

We learn our native language as tiny children, by listening to speakers around us and by them correcting our mistakes. ('I runned across the lawn.' 'No, sweetie. You say "I ran across the lawn."')

Once we've absorbed our native grammar, we can use it quite effectively without studying any of the rules. This is the point Snick is trying to make.

But if someone wants to be a professional writer, they have to get some grasp on the rules so that they can effectively make changes requested by editors. They don't have to completely master the rules, but they do need to esablish a base of knowledge so that they can look things up if they're not sure what the editor is talking about.

For example, when editing a colleague's work recently (I work as a tech writer for my day job), one of my comments was, 'It's not clear in this sentence what the pronoun "it" is referring to.' I'm expecting the writer -- someone who's getting paid money for their writing skills -- to know what I mean. If she has to look it up, that's fine; I don't care how she figures out how to fix the problem, but 1) she better fix it correctly and 2) it will save her time and effort in the long run to know what pronouns are and what their function is.

As another example, in the edits for my upcoming novel, the copyeditor made a couple of changes that were incorrect. If I didn't know the rules, I might've accepted those changes; since I do know the rules, I was able to stet my original and explain why in a comment. (The editor replied with, 'Oops! I can't believe I did that!' Hey, we all have occasional brain farts. ) Hence, knowing the rules ensures that something that's right stays right and doesn't get broken.

Which is why I said earlier that you don't need to master all the rules. But you need to be able to look up what you don't know, and to do that, you DO need a basic understanding of the basics.

mrsvalkyrie said:

blacbird--

Or I could just sit around feeling stupid for even asking because if it's that easy, then maybe I have no business even using the English language if I can't differentiate between verbs and adjectives.

Well, that settles it. Spanish it is!

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No! Si tu puedes! (Uh, or is it lo puedes hacer...tu...puedes hacerlo...damn poop balls I don't know espanol)

Don't feel stupid for asking. Some things are easy for some people. Some things are hard for others. I'll echo what others have said. It seems you have the most important thing--a natural feel for the language. And that will only improve with more reading and writing. It helps to know the parts of speech, to be able to shred things apart and have a conversation about what parts aren't working etc, but I think the other type of "knowing" is more important. As evilrooster and Terie say, if you can look it up and use it when needed, and function otherwise, I think you'll do fine.

I'm a very fast study when it comes to stupid and useless facts. I can tell you from memory the general accepted reasons for why the Qing dynasty collapsed. But I'm useless at translating something more abstract or something in my head into real or tangible things. Or, God forbid, doing anything at all with my body. When it comes to the practical stuff, I'm a dumb as a stump that's been pooed on by a diseased bird.

I remember a couple years back when I was trying to learn to tie a slipknot. A slipknot is pretty easy. It is not complex. There are like two or three twists of the wrist and you're done. It took me an hour. And even then, it was a fluke. When I tried to do it again, it took another half an hour. I was drilled constantly after that by an overzealous German knot aficionado, and still most of the times I got it right were by chance. It was incredibly embarrassing (this was all in public, by the way).

A lot of us have come up against things that our brain responds to with a stentorian NOPE NOPE NOPE. It's okay.

*nod nod*

Here's what I do: when people point out a grammatical mistake (especially one that pops up more than once in my work), I work hard at understanding that rule and changing that specific habit.

This is very targeted learning, so it might help you. Just focus on your worst grammar habits, one at a time.

-----------

As for whether you need to know all the rules, there are some who will say yes and some who will say no. Personally, I think that if your writing isn't suffering and you're willing to fix your bad grammar habits individually, it doesn't matter if you know what a noun is. I think you need to write first and later fix what you know you're getting wrong rather than spend a ton of time trying to understand all the rules, especially if trying to straight-up learn them doesn't stick.

mrsvalkyrie said:

Thank you to everyone for your responses. I truly appreciate everything that you've all said.

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I think the thing I would most want you to get from this conversation -- you and many other people, here and elsewhere -- is that not understanding any given approach to grammar does not make you stupid.

(It's true that my sig talks about "markers of stupidity", but my sig is satire about head-thumpingly wrong style advice!)

Different people have different cognitive styles, and thus different approaches to language. That's all process. That can vary. Whatever gives you good prose -- whatever makes a good product -- is what you should stick to like glue.

The terms are just ords for concepts that you have been using reasonably well. The terms are mutable, and there are at least two sets of terms for the same things, which can make learning grammar difficult, if one gets switched from one set to another. And just make it more amusing, the people who define such things change the definitions from time to time; that gives then job security (and sme chuckles), while it really frustrates students.

mrsvalkyrie said:

On the other hand, I haven't had a cigarette in a while (trying to quit, finally) and I was pretty tired, so everything coupled together left me a bit irritated.

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Nothing like addiction withdrawal and tiredness to make a person low. I get pretty self-critical when I'm feeling that way, too (not from quitting smoking, since I never started, but I have chronic Seasonal Affective Disorder. You could say that every winter is Sunlight Withdrawal.) So I kinda know how you feel.

I'd say go do some writing and worry about this stuff when you're a little more physiologically on top of things.

Also -- go you on quitting!

mrsvalkyrie said:

Here was one of the example sentences where you were supposed to pick out the pronouns and pronouns/adjectives:

"I have written some poetry that I myself don't understand."

I knew both 'I's and 'myself' were pronouns... 'cause it said so. Turns out, 'some' and 'that' are pronouns, too. Fancy that.

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This is a great example of what Dawnstorm & Fallen were saying earlier up thread. In this example, there is no way I'd call 'some' or 'that' pronouns. I'd call 'some' a determiner and 'that' a conjunction. I don't see anything in there to label an adjective at all.

Point is, there's no one right answer to stuff like this. Even people who've studied grammar for decades will argue over the best way to analyse a phrase or clause. If you want to delve into it then do so, but you might end up with more questions than answers. Which can be super fun, but maybe not particularly helpful as a means to an end.