[EDLING:605] RE: Spanish question follow-up

[Debra Myhill]

Hi
Re:  the comma splice/run-on sentence in British Standard English.

All the English examples you give in the last email would not be regarded as
acceptable here, particularly from a literacy teaching perspective.
Students would have these highlighted and teaching would try to show that a
full stop (or sometimes a semi-colon) was needed.

A study of secondary school writers here in the UK in 1999 found (amongst
other things) that comma splicing was a characteristic of C grade (average)
writers.  A grade writers were much less likely to comma splice whilst in
the weakest writers absence of punctuation altogether was the main problem.

I'm not aware that newspaper journalism here uses comma splicing, but I will
look more closely - but I don't think that in formal public writing, it is
accepted here.   It is seen most commonly in less 'checked' writing such as
local leaflets; flyers and parish magazines etc.

Hope this helps!

Debra Myhill
Professor of Education
University of Exeter
School of Education and Lifelong Learning
Heavitree Rd
Exeter EX1 2LU
Tel (01392) 264767
e-mail D.A.Myhill at exeter.ac.uk






-----Original Message-----
From: owner-edling at ccat.sas.upenn.edu
[mailto:owner-edling at ccat.sas.upenn.edu] On Behalf Of
sicola at dolphin.upenn.edu
Sent: 27 January 2005 06:17
To: edling at ccat.sas.upenn.edu; penguists at babel.ling.upenn.edu
Subject: [EDLING:603] Spanish question follow-up

Hi again,

Thanks to all for your thoughtful responses. Not to belabor the point, but
in
retrospect, I wonder if my example ("I am a lawyer, it is a good job"/"Soy
abogado, es un buen trabajo") wasn't overly simplified.

Here is an example from a student's paper. Translated, would this be
"formally
acceptable" in written Spanish, or has it crossed the line into "run-on" as
it
appears in English?

"When I was in the middle of my career, I started to work in a Public
Notary,
in that job, I was the assistant of the Notary, it was very interesting and
hard job, because I have to go to many important meetings and advise a lot
of
people, and sometimes when I have to go to the University to take my classes
I
was very tired or I was late or I couldn't get there because of the work,
but
with the time I got just to it."

(Later in the same essay:)

"The company had many small companies and has all types of marketing stock,
like for an example Restaurants, Bars, Real Estate Companies etc it was a
big
challenge, so I last there around seven months, in the mean time, I was
looking for a course of English out of (my country), and I found a ELP
program
in UPENN, that's why I'm here studying, but before I came here, I have to
quit
my job."

Is this degree of association still "officially standard"? (NB: I don't know

that I consider newspaper journalism to be a good yardstick by which to
measure "formal/standard writing," though it is "professional writing" so to

speak, at least in English.) Does Spanish have no such principle as a
"run-on
sentence"? If it does, but these aren't examples thereof, can someone
demonstrate what one would look like?  If run-ons as such are officially
standard, I'll concede the point, wave my white flag and accept this as
today's "you learn something new every day" token.

Thanks for humoring me on this,
Laura
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