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Last Updated: August 1, 1999
Amethyste
1946
Tamara
de Lempicka
(1898-1980)
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# 6:
Random Observations
on the Teaching of Grammar |
This "essay" is not an essay; rather it is a repository
of notes and short observations that may eventually be worked into other
essays or instructional material.
Perhaps the main problem with both the teachers
of grammar and the grammar textbooks is that they attempt to feed every
grammatical concept, and every grammatical rule into students' heads --
there to be registered, remembered, and left in unused dust. Consider,
for example, the word "save" in the following sentence from Isaiah Berlin's
The
Sense of Reality:
The concept of vocation --Beruf -- which is central
to Lutheran social teaching, is retained and exalted in the romantic philosophy,
save that the source of authority is now not God or nature, but the individual's
concern for his freedom to choose his end, the end which alone fulfils
the demands of his moral, or aesthetic, or phiolosphical, or political,
nature. (183)
I know of no grammarian or grammar textbook which will help students unravel
the syntax of such a complicated sentence. Within the KISS Approach, because
of the two appositives ("Beruf" and "end"), a full understanding
of the syntax requires that the student be proficient at Level Five. But
even at Level Three (Clauses), the student will be presented with a problem.
"[T]at the source of authority is now not God or nature" is clearly a subordinate
clause, but how does it function? In front of this clause, the student
finds "save." What is "save"? It is not listed among the prepositions in
the KISS Instructional Material. But
any student who has been taught to think (instead of simply remember) should
easily see that "save" here means "except." It thus functions as a preposition
with the clause as its object. The following "but," however, does not function
as a preposition for the simple reason that it does not mean "except."
Instead, this "but" joins two subordinate clauses, both of which function
as objects of the preposition "save," and the second of which is partially
ellipsed:
"save [that the source of authority is now not God or nature,] but [*it
is* the individual's concern for his
freedom ...." |