Chronicle article on sentence diagramming

[Wilson Gray]

"Hypercorrect," you say? According to whose prescription?

-Wilson

On 5/15/09, Matthew Gordon <gordonmj at missouri.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Matthew Gordon <gordonmj at MISSOURI.EDU>
> Subject:      Chronicle article on sentence diagramming
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> There's a kinda interesting piece in the Chronicle of Higher Ed (5/15/09)
> about a sentence diagramming class at Trinity College. The tastefully
> understated name of the class is "Constructing Thought," and it is/was
> taught by Lucy Ferriss, a novelist and literary scholar. Of course the
> diagrams in question are the traditional Reed-Kellogg type. The appeal of
> the course is attributed to the fact that it offers "finite, ordered
> solutions" and thus an alternative view on English to what some students
> have gotten from their prior education, which is some cases allowed them to
> write with "invented spelling."
>
> Anyway, the article describes a diagramming contest that the class held and
> the teacher is got help in judging it from the author of the textbook she
> used. So she notes," it isn't just my doing the judging." I thought this was
> a nice hypercorrect use of possessive (my) before an -ing form.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


--
-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org