C. Faulkner on the Possessive Antecedent Proscription

[Lesa Dill]

Oh, by the way, I never had freshman composition either.   Ha!  I wonder how many of
the now linguists in the country clepped out of it.

"Bethany K. Dumas" wrote:

> >I'm not sure.  I do remember his covering that.  When we went over usage, we
> >had a series of lengthy tests with all sorts of constructions.  (I still use
> >those in my grammar class to show the narrower interpretations of correct
> >usage--something students are completely ignorant of.)  Those constructions are
> >on those old tests.  I also think that  he discussed the error when he talked
> >about their needing to be a possessive case subject idea with gerunds (a
> >concept much more debatable than he allowed).  Since the possessive functioned
> >with repect to the gerund only, further references in the sentence needed to be
> >to the idea represented in the gerund and not to something modifying that
> >gerund.
>
> That sounds like him!
>
> As I told Arnold earlier, I never had freshman English - so when I arrived
> at graduate school and was to teach freshman English, I took Claude's
> course (400) in how to teach freshman comp. He did his best to keep us a
> day or two ahead of our students.
>
> The thing I most remember from that semester and freshman English was that
> I taught a young football player 5 days a week - I was teaching "X"
> (remedial) English, and the poor guy had to come to a MWF class and also
> a TR lab with me. His name was Tommy Brasher (sp?), and he later played
> pro football.
>
> Bethany