The Noun Game

[Benjamin Zimmer]

Hi Dennis,

This would be great for the Visual Thesaurus. Mind if I recycle it?

--Ben


On Sat, Oct 24, 2009 at 7:19 PM, Dennis Baron <debaron at illinois.edu> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Dennis Baron <debaron at ILLINOIS.EDU>
> Subject:      The Noun Game
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> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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> 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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> read the Web of Language:
> http://www.illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage
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