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AUTHOR,'

PUB 17-VrimiOr I

Toulirsson sr ter rigidDeveloping aild devouring tia arsWar TES12p.; Paper presented at the AnWestern College 'Reading esoclaBeech, Callforwais; Hatch 16-19, 1 78)

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MRS TRIM 11F-SO4-40 1C-$1.61 Plus loststege;-DESCRIP/ORS CospositAot SkilLs (L.iterarry; egErtglist Instruction ;11,8-xpositori Writing ; Eicher Edu&at-ion; Kernel-

Sentencem; Language 'Development; 'I easusesentTetbnieuess ',Sentence Coebining: Sentesce Structure s*S Anti 2: Tekohing Tecindqxsets; *writing -skille

-St uden se abilities LS,eariputatrlost brad Conte 1 ofsyfrtaz ea y be increased. thr,oagi a sequence of instmuctlors invaalliAgthe nee of Isareiegets tensed Vor-Semritence Practica;-,*11 lionsense- Sentences Practice, 1, and ",Syntacti c Pttiter:ling PracticeTte final step in the Anstruction seaguesice is to sake the syntactfce*erc*ses pertinent to students, writing by haying thee a,pp_ly 'Meselessons to t heir s to ideal exp ositery eseig meats . To deter refineiitether or not students have natured in tkeix use of uritter eyntaiseveral te-thods -lay be used: clause kengtlt suboirdlnatton irdlcestypo. of sulondination, and alit lesagth, std.- imdices ofseentence-combining transform-tic:1m. Methods Such as incidence .ofusage errors and length of sentences are not as eaLuable. Tte lostuSefil_ index is leingth of r-ntlit (Minimal lexulneil Unit) Aimee it iseasy to count, simple to use, objective, and demonstrates a clearptogressior toyard_.-maturit in syntactical control. (FL)

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DEVELOPING AND WASURING NATURPSYNTAX

by paarbara Tani 1 riSOn, University of Cal ifornia, Irvine'and Hard a Straehley, Univer'sity of California, Berkeley

The -inEterecrional aim be discussed is thi. paper i the

facilitation of increased coatro , flexibility, and complexity of4

- students' syntax;

exploration

discussion of this aim will be followed by an

uMber of methods{ determining wheber

thh am has been met. Before students a provided with exercises

to develop their syntactic, control, it is advisable

an awareness of the knowledge of syntax implicit in their use of

language. The teacher then may capitalioe on a basis linguistic

them to gain

skill that IS learned implicitly as laagUage is learned; if students

gain cootcimusneas of their use of this skill they realize that

intentional control syntactic patterning further refines a skill

that otherwi se remains at a less effective, subliminal level. This

initial instructional approach is based on:Chommicy's designation

between,"performance and "compet " in linguistic skills

(Choinsky, 1965); specifically, the introductory devices to be

delineated employ students' basic competence levels in order to

develop their performance levels. The diectepancy between an

ability to recognize and understand correct: syntax

and:Us/her inability to employ maiure syntax c be made useful.

As students extend conscious control of their competence they are

able to develop increased facility with syntactic 'patterns in the

written perfOrMance.. A

Presgu ex izt_tmt Age ible filinIner to, Notivete liadts

Students may achieve-imariedinprovement in vocabuleri, and in

oiganliational'and i batorical tec iques, but still employ only an

elementary level of syntax. The consequence

of fluidity and. complexity of students' ezp

relational subordination and mcidification

of this is the impediment

on. The subtle inter-

80 made po Bible by --

mature syntactic patterns are d to students who caziwield Only

simple arraftgements. Students often acknowledge this sense of

limitation in talking bout their writing; the possibility of

increased-facility in the communication of. difficult ideas serves

self-motivation

selves with practicer

A presentation

'rude

Yntax.

have to

to elicit students' as; fausss

begin to involV. them-

Sentence Practice" serves

t syntactic knowledge. When

presented with a ce,disorgsnized into an a-syntactic pattern

in the following, tudents note the crucial infl6ence that syntax

exerts in

threw and pieces crowd the all shouted of wine whistling up the then

ring bull

ordering words` into sensible relationships: Ex. 1) "time

and keeping bottles into bread down liether cush=ions the."

It is common for students to attribute "meaning "" or --e ntle'value

°nil), to the lexicon of a sentence, since they can define easily the

words in the sentence. As tudenti grapple to make sense of a dis-

ordered sentence they recognize that the syntactic order is as

significant to meaning as the individual words, and in fact is

tial to semantic value. After students twee attempted to re-.

order the words themselves into a mesn --ful order, proQide them the

corrected version of the non-sentence: "Keeping up whistling, the

crowd shouted all the time, enethrew pieces of bread down into the

-ffishions ant leather vine bottles "" In our Tine,

Zoreinforce syntactic :understanding and to aid the transfer

impliclt knowledge into explicit practice, exercise termed

"Nonsense - Sentences Practice "" is useful. In this exercise,

observe the direct inverse of the previous exercise this practice

offers sentences with correct syntax, but without _recognizable Words:

Ex. 2) "Tomas brillig, and the sllthy toves/Did gyre and gimble in the

Thejabberwock.. e whiffling through the tulgey voodt And

burbled as it came" ("Jabberwocky," Lewis Carroll). The syntactic

pattern i.s emphasized by the employment n_ ease words. Students

recognize that they can decipher more __caning", tore 'interchange

d relational interaction, from these nonsense words than from the

disordered sentence of easily recognizable words in Ex. 1. The

further advantage of this exercise is that students can le grammar,

and practice recognizing parts of speech, more effectively than

ordinary sentences. They recognize the subject and predication, the

modifying phrases and cfauses,,,theAubordination of sentence elements,

being forced to address only the grammatical relationships without

nouns, verb acting as rkera to guide them; thus increased

ivity to purely grammatical interchange and syntactic patte

is reinforced readying stud

patterning.

Trai

actual ,practice iu syntactic

of Competence into Performance:

A brief session co

tactic_Patertini

-tactic rearrangement provides the initial

g

step into syntactic patterning. The same nonsense-sentence demonstrates

how the syntactic units can be shifted and rearranged: Ex. 3) :13urbling

as it the Jabbe through the lulgey wood."

Students may experiment with them own nonsense-sentences by writing

and rearranging them. Lest Skeptical instructors feel that this ex-

erogee is somewhat whimsical or ontlandith, it is useful to remether

that. when students encounter new words in thei_ reading, or attempt

to employ unfami.liar vocabulary intheir writing, they experience a

situation very similar to this encoanter with nonsense-sentences,

"Syntactic Patterning Practice" is one of the develdpmental ex-

ercis that should be emphasized 4 instruction 'After being presented

word definitions, examples, and recognition-practice of,the,four kinds

of sentence (detailed explanations of phrases and clauses

ial ), students will begin syntactic transformations. The

should first provide an example of, and

0%.sentence, or syntactic unit:

E. 4: The storm brewed ominously

Then add a prepositional uni

Exr 5: The storm brewed ominous

Then add modification.

Ex. 6: Throughout the night/desert.

is assent-

instructor

ask them to write, a kernel

y over the desert.

he storm brewed ominously /over the

Then add a second independent clause:

Then

Ex. 7: Throughout the night the storm brewed ominously over thethe desert/and concerned inhabitiants began to evacuate

the area:\

add a subordinate clause:

Students

St Throughout the night the storm brewed ominously over thedesert; the concerned inhabitants began to evacuate thearea when hurricane warnings were broadcast.

should repeat thin transformational sequence beginning with

a new kernel unit each time until tb gain facility in adding syn-

lexibility in rea-

d Secombin S ud nts St istic Develofinent

The final application necessary to make syntactic exercises

pertinent to students ' regular writing activities is to have them

apply these lessons to their standard expository assignments. At this

stage they should employ their omn syntactic pattern_ ( ;t may be

advisable to provide an exemplary sequence of sentences that can be

recombined and embedded. See Sentence Combining, W. Strong, 1973

for numerous examples.) Students should attempt to combine and

arrange the synta c units .within, sentend s for more subtle and fluid

ordering of ideas; further, series of shorter, broken sentences should

be embedded and recombined into more complex syntactic arrangeMents.

By employing their own past written work as a basis for syntactic

-exercises, studentstransfer their previous practice-with syntactic

patterning to their own,styl)ti performance, thus effecting direct

development in their on Ling effort.

Indices of Ma :turity in Written Syntah

The authors feel that this sequence of exercises presents aped=

ogically sound method for encouraging maturity of written syntax. Some

tors nay desire to evaluate changes in their students' syntact-

le performance; others may desire to explore information on the devel-

opment of'written syntax further. This portion Of the paper is de-

voted an exploration of methods for determining whether or not

students- have "matured" in their use of written syntax. Methods

`include these which relate to bringing grammatical usage under control,

those which relate to increasin

those which explore extent. -d type

orasentence-comblaing traamforattions.

usage Errors as Index

tactic subdivisions,

nation, and those based

Umagwepors are a traditibnal but invalid method s of determining

.yrktac _-urity. First, there i a large subjective component on

any determination of what is to be cOasidered-Scceptable usage (pool-fi

y, 1974), so that classification becomes rather arbitrary. In add-a.

ition, students developing their writing ski s are cons aatly,bring-

ing new, pOtential sources of flexibilitk Co,

structures. It is possible that a low rate of

is syntactic

rs reveals

failure to incorporate new, more mature syntactic ategies. high

rate may accompany new syntactic experiments which will cult in in-

creases syntactic control. The total language compete' in the

student's repertoire may riot be revealed by his performance at any

particular tine; many stude when waked to "reread and edit" papers

d will correct thosei errors;for sentence and/or usage errors,

fi

the students are not increasing their competence, but their performance.

Clause Length _as an Index

Another traditional measure easing increasing comple

and maturity of language use is mean nuns er of words per clause. Re-

cent research indicates that clause length can be used as a easbre

of growth, but that the lengthening odours with "glacial slowness" in

the early grades (Hunt, 1979. Harrell. 1957). Nevertheless, as stud-

ents move through the grades they do write longer clauses (Hunt, 1965,

1970; O'Donnell. 1968; O'Donnell et al,' 1967, from their data computed

by Hunt).

Extent --d T a of Subo- nation a% Indic-

Exploring extent and type of subordination as indices for syatac

is maturity is based on the rationale that change43 aocu due to the

development,of ability to think in a different and more mature tanner

about the relation* between veil() concepts being considered,--as.well

[

as due to the deveopment cE ability to control syntactic strucfurd

Subordination allow the writer to explore more complex propositions

with a more coherent ization. Hunt (1965) proposes a ratio of

al clauses (subordinate. and mein) to main clauses as a measure of

extent of subordination.- This and other subordination counts have

shown distinct increasesvith4tareasa in grada,levelIDautertan,

1970; Frognst

O'Donnell, at al,

also changed over

333 Harrell, 1957; LaBrant, 1933; McCarthy, 1946;

1967). The proportion of each type of subordination

time, with an increase in number of noun, adject-

Dial, and adverbial claUses (Harrell, 1957; Hunt, 1965; 1970; laBrant,

1933).)

dentence length as an Index

Sehtence length as ari indek of maturi while apparently use-

'ful, suffers form issues both of definition and of application.

searchers h e not always defined sentences by the same "rules"

(O'Donnell, Griffin, 6 Norris, 1967). Hunt's definition of "whatever

the write puts between a capital letter and,a period or other terminal

Mark" solves this lefinitional problem, but leaves open the question

of how to deal with dipcourse abounding w11 sentence fragments, such

as that of fourth grade students who tend to run together, what would

,otherwise Be considered many sentences without puriCtuation and oftn

even without coordination. Because of these problems, the tendency

for sentences to lengthen over the grades is obscured; the most im-,

nature writers- who fail to recognize and co ol.basic syntactic

divisionb, will receive the 4ghest score on this index of maturity

S

The rationale for, use of mean number of sentence- shining trans-

formations is based onithecirles of tranaformational gramme . Braun

and Klassep (1973) measured syntactic maturity by a method "essentially

Of reversing the ,normal generation cf a sentence... (and Vigatifying)

the frequency and complexity of transformations employed in producing

a sentence.. p. 315). The use of sentence-combining transformations

does increase over time, but Hunt,(1970) notes that it is not just the

increase in use of, sentence-combining constructions which characterizes

older writers, it s also the use of a wider variety of such trans-

formations.

T-Unit Length as n Index

The T-unit, a nickname for "Aiinimal Terminal Unit", was defined

by Hunt as "one main clause plus any subordinate clause or non-claus

structure that Is attached to or embedded in it...c_-utti,ng a passage

into T-unics will t7 e cutting it into the shortest units which it is

grammatically allowable to punctuate as sentences. In this sense,

)it is minimal and terminable" (Hunt, 1970, p. 4). He feels that IL

unit length is better than single indices such as average length of

main clauses or i crease in number of subordinate clauses, becalise it

"preserves all the subordination achieved by the student, and all his

coordination between words and phrases and subordinate clauses," but

devalues the coordination between clauses which makes fourth grade

icing immature. Hunt also reports that there was co ete agreetent

of identification of T-units "so long es the judges were. confronted

Al well-formed sentences either declarative or interrog tive." A

large number of studies using, T-unit length have verified 1.ts

ability to show evidence of maturation-{Braun IClassen, 1973('Brya_

1971; Dauterman, 1970; Hunt; 1965; O'Donnell et IL 1967). We must con-.

clude with O'Donnell at al that T-unit length i. ndeed. a i valid

indicator of development of. Syntactic contrOL-':

SUMMARY

This paper has attempted to provide a sequence instruction

which may result in increasing students' abilities in aanipula-

tion and control or syntax. It has also attempted to provide an over-

view of methods which may enable the instructor to determine the

effects can student writingof instruction in syntactic flexibility./-

Evidence from this review implies that a number of measures may pro

vide clues about the maturation in con col of written syntax: clause

length, subordination indices, type .of subordination and unit length,

indices of sentence-combining transformations. Other methods,

such as incidence of .usage errors and -length of sentences, are _ot as

valuable. Certainly the index presently most useful to the teacher

assessing change and maturation in written syntax is length of T-unit

since it is easy to eount, simple tb use, objective, and 'demo rates

a clear progression 'toward maturity'in syntactical, control.

fi

10

REFERENCES

Allen, J.B.P. S.P. Corder. Pa .e

Oxford. University Press, 1975.lied linguistics London:

Braun, C. and B. Klassen, A transfromational amilySis of written tarntactic.structures of children representing various ethno-linguisticcomMunities. Research in the'Teaching of Eh fish, 1973, 7. 312323.

Bryant, T.L.L. Language achievement of fifth, eighth and eleventh gradestudents as determined by ana analysis of written compositions.(Doctoral dissertation, North. Texas State University, 1970)`.:Dissertation Abstracts e ational, 1971, 3'1, 5024A.(Order No,71-8664)-

Chomsky, N. pacts of the theory of syntax. Cambridge: 1.T. Press

Danterman, F.P. The syntactic.structures employed do a, sample of narr.ative writing by secondary school students, '(Doctoral dissertation,The Ohio State University, 1969). Dissertation Abstracts Inter-national, 1970, 30, 4434A-4435A. (Order No. 70,6757).

Frogner, E. Problems 'of:Sentence structure in pupil's themes. EnglishJournal, 1933,,22, 742749.

Harrell, L.E. Jr. A comparison of the development of oral and writtenlangUage in schqpi-age children. Monographs of the Society forResearch in Child- Development, 1957, XXIT (3. Serial No. 66).

Hunt K.W. Grammatical structures written at three grade levels. NationalCouncil of Teachers of En fish Research Re ts, 1965 (N0.3)

Hunt, K.W. Syntactic maturity in schoolchildren and adults, Monographs-of theSocie for Research in Child Develo men_ 1970, 35(1,Serial No. 134).

LaBrant, L.L. A study of certain language developtents of children ingrades four to twelve, inclusive. Genetic Psychologr_Monovaphs,1933, XVI(5).

McCarthy, D.A. Language development in children. to L. Carniichael(Ed.),.A manual of child psyqhp1sly. New York: Wiley & Sons, 1946, 1954, 492630,

O'Donnell, R.C. An objective measure of structural complexity in child-ren's writing. Paper presented at a meeting of the EducationalReseirch Association 1968.

O'Donnell, R.C., W.J. Griffin & R.C. Norris. Syntax of kindergarten andelementary school children. National Council of eachers of En -fishResearch Reports,' 1967, (ND. 8).

Poo ley, R.C. !moiling_ English usage. New _York.- Appietort-aentury-,Crofts; 1946

rang, sentdn e-combinin .New Yorki ndom Hoses 1973.: