The Noun Game

[Dennis Baron]

There's a new post on the Web of Language:

The noun game: a simple grammar lesson leads to a clash of civilizations

Everybody knows that a noun is the name of a person, place, or thing.
It's one of those undeniable facts of daily life, a fact we seldom
question until we meet up with a case that doesn't quite fit the way
we're used to viewing things.

That's exactly what happened to a student in Ohio when his English
teacher decided to play the noun game. To the teacher, the noun game
seemed a way to take the drudgery out of grammar. To the student it
forced a metaphysical crisis. To me it shows what happens when
cultures intersect and children get lost in the tyranny of school.
That's a lot to get from a grammar game.

read the rest of this post on the Web of Language:  http://bit.ly/weblan
____________________
Dennis Baron
Professor of English and Linguistics
Department of English
University of Illinois
608 S. Wright St.
Urbana, IL 61801

office: 217-244-0568
fax: 217-333-4321

http://www.illinois.edu/goto/debaron

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