[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Could their love of Shakespeare elicit a desire to return us to his color-fully chaotic grammar and usage?(The New York Times Book Review, October 25, 2005)Depending on your take, this is pedantry or it is stewardship of thelanguage.It reminds me that anyone can write a bad sentence; andanyone can slip up in his or her grammar and usage.In days past, wehad astute editors to save us; some of us, if we are lucky and find goodpublishers, still do.But this is much less reliably the case than it wasonce.In this respect, too, our times are perhaps becomingShakespearean again.Try thisCan you say what s wrong in each of the cases Simon points to?You may have to check a dictionary and style manual.But none ofthem is too arcane.I confess I had always understood that happens worked as a good translation for one of the meaningsof transpires.sentencing 49Sound sentencesGrammar hasn t been taught in most schools in Australia, where Ilive, for over a generation.It s a good thing it s not important! It snothing more, after all, than the way we describe the way our lan-guage works  that complicated system of sounding signs we useevery day of our lives.So I guess there s no need to teach it beyondelementary school.They stopped teaching grammar, it was once explained to me,because too much emphasis was being put, it was thought, on theformal aspects of language and not enough on the creative ones.Thatmay have been right.And anyway, the argument went (and it s true,as far as it goes), we pick up 80 percent of what we need to know aboutsentences by listening.My boy is proof of that.But writing is both creativity and discipline; it is freedom withinbounds.You need to know the constraints in order to know how to befree within them.And then there s the other 20 percent (that youcan t pick up just by listening)  the finer points.How were we goingto learn those?So we let grammar slip from the curriculum.And forty years on welive with the consequences.The teachers who might teach it knowtoo little to even begin.Though it s true that you learn most of whatyou need by living inside the language, still, you don t know what itis you know.You have no language to speak of the system and itsparts.You cannot name your mistakes when you feel you have madethem; nor, therefore, can you fix them.When your car with its fancyengine  which is to say, when your sentence  breaks down, there snot a thing under its hood whose function you understand, whosename you can name.You couldn t even talk usefully to the mechanicwho came when you called, if there were such a person.Even if you learned at school more grammar than most of my com-patriots, it pays not to forget it.Making sentences is most of whatwriting is about, and grammar s going to help you make them soundand true and various.Without grammar on your mind, you fall outof the habit of thinking structurally about sentences.You think aboutwhat they re trying to mean, but not enough about how well each of50 writing wellthem and all of them hang together.You stop working at the infra-structure of what you re trying to say  or sing.A footbridge badlymade will fall, and so will a sentence.The consequences of the secondmay be less deadly than the first.But still: neither, shoddily con-structed, will carry the traffic it s made for  the people or themessage.The other thing that happens in the absence of grammaticalwisdom is that we hold fast to the few syntactical half-truths wevaguely recall from somewhere or someone.Try thisCan you say what s wrong with these sentences? Can you then fixthem?1 The plentiful streams and rich farmland of southeasternPennsylvania has given the region a legacy of watermills largerthan any other part of the United States.2 He has a style so unique it just may carry him to the champi-onship.3 Neither the software nor the hardware have been thoroughlytested.4 Three double bedrooms (one with study), lobby, eat-inkitchen, south-facing sun room, separate dining room, reno-vated bathroom, and balcony comprise the accommodations.5 Two paperback copies should be mailed to every contributor,not the hardbacks.6 The voracious opposition of the Iraqi insurgents had so farresulted in a thousand deaths among the US-led coalition.7 The winner of several prizes for poetry, Ashley s books includePine and The Problem with Prose.8 Advice to seniors; ask the driver to wait till you sit down; andsit down as fast as you can.9 She tells me she saw you and I at the play last night [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]