From: Richard Allan Stauch (RStauch@worldnet.att.net)
Date: Fri Jul 27 2001 - 00:29:51 EDT
ORIGINAL MESSAGE
from doesnt matter
one thing I have learned through all this reading is that no matter how you
try there will always be disagreement i mean ask any ten gramarians and you
will get eleven different answers no i think we should each separately try a
little experiment take at random any one of the last few e-mails on this
subject make it a short one and extract all the punctuation reduce all the
upper case letters to lower case change all the numbers to words or better
yet their alphabet equivalents and then forward it to someone else you know
if that is too much trouble you have my permission to use this one
when they get the e-mail contact them separately and ask them if they
actually understood any of it count the questions raised and see if they
dont add up to a significant number you may be surprised this is why i did
not suggest you use your own post because the embarrassment can be quite
painful imagine discovering that however hard you try if it werent for
punctuation nobody would understand a word you write
what is a sentence how do we define it if we add punctuation to a text when
the author never used any have we added to the text i dont think so because
once we understand the words and the idiom of the language and add to that
the historical cultural background of the author we should be able to
translate the strings of words into the structures with which we are all
familiar just ask yourself why did i break this e-mail up into paragraphs
what is the meaning of a paragraph why are there no sentences could it be
that such a construct is a myth is it a myth to the author or only to the
reader
i once took a short course on writing for effect and i discovered that there
are universal yet unwritten rules for communication they are broad general
terms letters form words that have specific meanings words form a sentence
that carries an idea sentences group ideas into a paragraph that contains a
unified thought paragraphs group together to convey a unified message we use
as many words but no more than necessary to create the idea of the sentence
then we have as many sentences but no more than necessary to convey a clear
and concise thought in one paragraph finally we have as many paragraphs but
no more than necessary to convey a whole message
so the idea of a sentence let alone paragraph word letter et cetera are
actually abstract concepts abstraction is not conducive to the construction
of a hard scientific definition we have to step back stop trying to apply
hard and fast notions of good grammatical definition and simply read read
everything read all the grammars all the lexicons all the texts all these
e-mails and stop trying to write everything language is a human effort for
all humanity sure you should do your part of it but let everyone else do
theirs we can all be teachers but we cannot always be teaching we must not
try
richard allan stauch
long beach ca
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:37:02 EDT