Re: grammar tricks

[Margaret Clark <clark@uhdux2.dt.uh.edu>]

Very nice, Anne -- thanks. I'm looking forward to digging this up. Your 
teaser about phrase trees making more sense backwards makes me think that 
learning styles are perhaps a factor in apprehending these punctuation 
issues -- but I want to look at the stuff you mention before I mindlessly 
speculate any further.

Thanks!

Margaret
clark@dt.uh.edu

On Mon, 25 Nov 1996, MULLIN ANNE wrote:

> Margaret asked for a reference re: deep structures and punctuation -- 
> I'm drawing on my impressions from Victoria Fromkin and Robert 
> Rodman's "An Introduction to Language" (Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 
> 1983) which was used in a linguistics class I took in '83 at the U. 
> of Maine from Paul Bauschatz (yea, Paul!!!) -- these impressions 
> (really deep, as you can see) were confirmed in using Klammer 
> and Schultz ("Analyzing English Grammar "-- Allyn &Bacon, 1992) for 
> the course in intro to grammar that I taught last year.  The thing 
> is, when you do the phrase trees (which, BTW, I find make more sense 
> backwards, but that's another issue), you can see  what elements are 
> hanging off  what other elements, and you can then see where the 
> punctuation goes to separate what would otherwise be confusing. 
> But there is undoubtedly a far more scientific explanation (something 
> seismic and tectonics-y, I'm sure) to get at what're really down 
> there. 
>  
>