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Traditional Grammar - Assignment 1
James Madison University
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Instructions: After doing the assigned reading, answer the following questions.[This assignment will be marked only as
an acceptable or unacceptable effort.]
- From your own writings or your own speech, list three examples of sentences, words, or
phrases that others have flagged as being problematic usage of English.
For each one, try to figure out how the sentence or other form is "broken."
For example, do you seem to have made a descriptive grammar error? A prescriptive grammar error? Does the problem perhaps
instead arise from something other than grammatical rules
about the structure of English sentences, such as concerns about style, about choosing a word with the wrong meaning,
connotations, or level of formality, about clarity of thought, about relevance to subject, about spelling, etc.?
Obviously, I do not necessarily expect you to identify any particular grammatical rules at this point in the course, but
be as specific as possible!
- What is one grammar question you have that does not involve one of these examples? Why is it a grammar
question rather than a usage or punctuation question?
- Complete exercise 7.2 on page 197 of the Greenbaum and Nelson textbook. What does this tell you about our use of
grammatical forms in ordinary conversational language versus in writing and in other planned language situations?
What is one specific example of what you notice?
- After reflecting on the meanings of the word "grammar" as they are described in the Greenbaum and Nelson textbook, write a short (one or two paragraph) response to the following statement:
"Some native speakers of English do not know English grammar." In what ways (or under what definitions) can this statement be true and in what ways (or under what definitions) MUST it be false?
