Re: off topic: Grammer Question

["Michael Edwards" mje@xxxxxxxx]

[Marc:]

>My mother is writing an English Grammer guide, targeting 10 - 15 year olds.
>It was a request from a family member who felt that there was insufficient
>focus placed on grammatical education.

   Judging by the errors you increasingly see in print in recent years that
would have been truly scarce when I was a boy in the late 1960s, I would say
that that feeling was quite accurate.


>The guide is a small (about 30 pages) condensed booklet that covers most of
>the building blocks of English grammer.

   I would be interested to read it. I'm one of those sad people who so need
to get a life that I actually enjoy reading books of that sort.


>Consider the following sentence
>"He knocked on the big green door"
>while it is the same as "He knocked on the green big door", this is not the
>way you would articulate it.
>What gramatical rules govern the order of adjectives? Are there any?
>(alphabetical?!?!) or is it basically a case of language knowledge?

   An interesting and subtle question. (I would definitely say not
alphabetical order.) Certainly some orders of adjectives feel right and some
don't; but I don't recall ever having read any actual rules governing this, even
though I've read quite a few books of the sort that *would* cover this if there
were any rules. In some cases, I feel that adjectives referring to more general
or generic qualities might come first, and the most specific or detailed ones
might came later - but even that's only my attempt on the spot to formulate a
rule of thumb. And I'm not sure there's any clear sense in which "big" is a
more general adjective or quality than "green".
   So I don't really know - but I know whether something sounds and feels
right or not.
   A related question is whether the adjectives should be separated by commas
or not - either with or without the commas can be right, depending on the
situation. I feel it might depend on whether one of the earlier adjectives was
qualifying the noun or one of the later adjectives; and it might also depend on
whether the qualities described by the adjectives were more or less independent
of each other, and just occurring together, or whether they were closely related
or dependent on each other.
   Again, I'm not sure, and am just speculating off the cuff. But such
questions have always interested me. (I once wanted to be a writer, but it
never happened, for a variety of reasons - so I guess that's why such things
have always interested me.)


>(if so, how is it taught?)

   I can't even speculate on that one - I have no teaching knowledge. My
method of teaching anything is to explain it as clearly as I can, in a logical
order starting from basics and going on from there, and being prepared to repeat
it and elaborate on it if necessary, and assuming that the person is rational
enough to comprehend and absorb that.
   But I suppose, if it were as simple as that, teaching would not really be
such a specialized profession, and almost anyone of reasonable intelligence with
sufficient knowledge of the subject would be able to do the job. I suspect that
this is not in fact the case, though. (I do recall once attempting to give a
couple of people piano lessons, and not having any great success at that,
although I presumably did know the subject to the necessary level.)


>If anyone is interested in 'proof-reading' it, I can arrange a copy to be
>emailed to you.

   I would be interested to read it, and am willing to offer comments if they
are wanted. Can I assume any e-mailed copies would be in one of plain-text,
XyWrite, or H.T.M.L. formats? (I ask because I can't easily cope with M.S. Word
format - I don't own a copy of Word, and have no plans to get that bloatware,
either.)

             Regards,
             Michael Edwards.