Chronicle article on sentence diagramming

[Joel S. Berson]

Wilson's comment, I think, is what I thought also
-- more context.  "My doing the judging" could be
not only hyper-correct, but correct:  "My doing
the judging was unusual; usually I have an apple pie of my own entered."

Joel

At 5/15/2009 11:23 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
>
>I kinda had an iinkling in the back of my thinking cap that a major
>part of the context was either missing or was motivated by
>me having misunderstood the point. :-)  But you never know.
>
>-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
>
>
>
>
>
>On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 10:55 PM, Laurence Horn
><laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> > ---------------------- Information from the
> mail header -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> > Subject:      Re: Chronicle article on sentence diagramming
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > At 10:40 PM -0400 5/15/09, Wilson Gray wrote:
> >>"Hypercorrect," you say? According to whose prescription?
> >>
> >>-Wilson
> >
> > I don't think the claim is that "my doing the judging" is *always*
> > hypercorrect, but that it is in a context like this one, where it
> > means "it isn't just me [who is] doing the judging".  "Me doing" is
> > not a constituent here.   Cf. "It wasn't just {me/*my} eating the
> > cookies, it was all of us" or "It's {me/*my} (here) knocking on your
> > door."  Presumably, the teacher saw the "me doing X" sequence and
> > auto-corrected it to "my doing" without noticing the local context.
> >
> > LH
> >
> >>
> >>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
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
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>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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