Rolling

Rolling
Location
India
Birthday
December 21
Bio
was a Teacher, now an ordinary 42 year old discovering life away from home. INTJ. loner. -------------------------------------------------- loves the open sky, birds, words, being who she is, travelling, people -------------------------------------------------- leads a simple mostly uneventful life, writes rarely, doesn't watch TV at all or read fiction anymore, reads blogs all the time: cover to comment thread to archives...

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MARCH 23, 2009 9:10AM

and why on earth should Grammar matter?

Rate: 13 Flag

adult woman: why indeed.... because we are humans I guess...

little girl:  what do you mean because we are humans? you mean animals  are animals merely because they dont have grammar?bah...

adult woman: I actually think they do you know? even plants and cells and every other thing in the world that can be clubbed under the 'system' category. they would all have a set of rules - some conventions they adhere to to practice 'being social'?

little girl: o stop! I abhor RULES. they are limiting, they tie you down, they repress, can  make you regress and kill your CREATIVITY!

adult woman: (smiles indulgently, tenderly brushes her hand over the agitated child's head) it does?

little girl: yesss! YES! It DOES, does, does, does.

adult woman: so what is creativity, baby?

little girl:  dont call me baby! am ten years old!

adult woman: O, ok, sorry... so whats creativity -

little girl:  making new stuff. creating something that didn't exist before. giving something a completely different , competely newlook.

adult woman: whew! er....are you sure you are ten?

little girl:  of course I am. what do you think - am lying?

adult woman: o-o, no not all....just meant you sounded so sure, so mature - you sounded like one of my ninth graders.

little girl: (doesn't smile)

adult woman: O well, so creativity is making something new - taking stuff beyod what is expected, jumping borders, stretching way beyond the lines,  is it?

little girl:  yes, I think so...(not sure whats going on) ... well kind of

 

adult woman:  hm. so how do you do it?

little girl: what do you mean? you walkup to those lines and pull them asunder and give it a new shape. simple.

adult woman: and how do you know where the lines are? how can you tell?

little girl:  what?

adult woman: you got to know where your lines are - where the limits lie before you can actually jump them or recreate or reinterpret or remove them, right? 

little girl:  why would I not know?

adult woman: point is HOW do you know? what tells you? what TOOL do you use to gauge the depths, the extent of your borders, your space? and what do you use to get there? to find your way around the maze of unintelligible gibberish of sound and words ?

little girl:  grammar? rules? is that what you are getting at?

adult woman: well, not exactly... just wanted you to see they are not rules really. or at least not the kind that dominates. your rules are basically CONVENTIONS people have agreed upon to make better sense of each other and what you mean to say. some things are always discounted anyway when people are able to make sense.

child: but whyyyyy???? what's the point ? 

 adult woman: to make it faster and easier to communicate.  so if you know what to think of when someone says for instance "Your" - there can be nothing after that pronoun but a noun or a gerund to make sense. if it starts with a "your" you know instinctively from your bilt in sense of grammar that it has to be "your some thing" , could be "your face" or "your ranting"....can never be "your big-"

I mean look at me struggling with Gujarati here? if I had to mug all possible sentences - instead,  if I knew the conventions I could generate them on my own without having to depend on you ... I wish to avoid learning by heart......I want grammar because I wish to be independent - because it is human to respect agreed upon conventions...want to be as human as I possibly can...

child: you do have a big mouth don't you?  do you hate me or what? you know what?  you are boring and you are growing old and you dont fit in and am leaving you...bye..and I dont want to see you soon...

adult woman:  o wait please .... well, if that saves me time and labour and makes my life a bit easier, why not? I mean if you can fly, why would you want to walk.....and Ithink you said creativity is that unique ability to forge ahead finding a way out of the limiting spheres and showing the world what is beyond? ...to see the beyond dont you  need to  walk upto the fences they built around you with the rules?... but suit yourself... am indeed getting old... would wither and die soon too... but since am the adult here,  am going to be myself and wait for ya right here where you are leaving me kid....in the meanwhile have a nice time....explore....

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grammar, language, conventions, communication

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This is profond. I agree almost completley with "the child." Accept I woudnt' have just leaved at "the end." I woudv'e pataintly showed the english Teacher the air of her ways. And, the kid was dumb to clam she or he was 10. Lyeings' never a good pollicy.
Cindy Ross
March 23, 2009 09:24 AM
I agree completely. Before you bend the rules, you need to know what they are.

Cindy - I'm not sure if the writing in your comment is a joke or not.
Julie Tarp
March 23, 2009 09:38 AM
Editor and inner creative child perhaps????
Interesting.
I know the boundries and choose to mock and disregard them at times.
Spelling? pure dyslexia. :P
kitehlips
March 23, 2009 09:54 AM
I could at times agree with the child here, and at times, I agreed with the adult. Overall, I do feel there have to be "conventions," because without them, we would descend into gibberish. "Not THE you Are One. ARE Not ONe The You. You are not the one."How would you get your point across? But it is fun and necessary to experiment and break these conventions.
DeliaBlack
March 23, 2009 10:06 AM
Cindy, see? "somethings are discounted anyway" I could follow what you said, the Child is sitting there trying to figure you out because she doesn't know enuf yet to figure out your creative use of spelling @ Accept, Lyeing, pataintly, profond....the porr kid thinks they are new words and she is trying to lug that heavy dic in here - hey! leave it alone! use yar head instead, come on, what d you think Cindy here means? Look at the structure....come I wd show you how not to be dependent on that dic....;)

Julie, you do realize that poor child's pain, right?

Kiteh, you can , bec you are empowered in the knowledge of the rules maybe? to use distortion as musical statement, they surely had to master the guitar first or do you think bec they cdnt is why they started using these - its been a question I have never been able to resolve entirely
Rolling
March 23, 2009 10:14 AM
A lovely lesson in common sense. Thank you.
Jeremiah Horrigan
March 23, 2009 10:26 AM
I have a friend who, due to circumstances, missed a lot of schooling and never took grammar. Nor took to it afterwards. What she has observed in her extensive reading, she doesn't entirely approve of. So she has developed some grammar and punctuation of her own. Works for her. Problem comes when fussy her in her idiosyncratic ('creative') ways and staid conservative (grammatically speaking) me have to collaborate on writing projects in our volunteer work. Amazingly, despite some heated battles, we're still friends and collaborators.
Myriad
March 23, 2009 10:42 AM
So, perhaps a Marxist analysis would be that grammar is a purely social construct to perpetuate the class struggle in delineating the difference between the haves and the have-nots (somewhat analogous to accents in England, especially monophthizing diphthongs and diophthizing monothongs: pronouncing "house" as hice or "girl" as gel, or the intrusive and dropped R's: law and order as lorandorde).

But I digress. Why are you trying to learn Gujarati? If Hindi was good enuf for Ramchandra, it should be good enuf for bloody Modi :-).

Great post. Both sides well-represented.
Smithbarney
March 23, 2009 11:08 AM
Julie Trap - I am not the lease bit kidding. Infact, youv'e now insult'd me and I will haft to send PMS's to everybody who like's me and "doesnt" like you. And may be write a whole poast about "it."!!!
Cindy Ross
March 23, 2009 01:53 PM
Cindy, the child is really not interested in the fact that I cd have showed her how she cd be independent of the dictionary if she knew grammar....so she struggles on with her dic
while am reading your posts rt now, laughed at the Freaky Troll innerview post, it was good fun. appreciate ur views Cindy
Rolling
March 23, 2009 01:59 PM
Mother, ;)
Delia, yes, thats why there is no right or wrong abt grammar bec it isnt rules, it keeps changing with changing needs and demands of communication and culture, yes, you are spot on it needs to be broken so that we cd forge ahead, right? guess thats what u meant?

Jeremiah, I had read your comments at Natalie B's , appreciate ur POV. thanks you for bringing in the 'commonsense' factor.
Myriad, you said it Ma'am, just my thoughts.
Smithbarney, you are not telling me all - are you ? I laughed and laughed and thought what our little communist friends wd have said to that - I know "there definitely is something subversive abt keeping people off from grammar and complete understanding of language so as ypu can write and do as you please wihout the hoi poloi getting the intent between your lines, hm, very nice, what do you think - we are stupid?" ha, ha
Rolling
March 23, 2009 02:08 PM
Wow! Excellent post. I see Marxism has already entered the debate :-). May I inject Chomsky (some of this was discussed on Matthew DeCoursey's post)? If Chomsky is right, he would fall more on the side of the "child", believing that grammar and language structure (especially the "Logical Form" ) are innate and intuitive. Whereas the expressed "Phonetic Form" is governed by its acceptance or not by native speakers, this has little to do with meaningfulness, but more with prescriptive grammars (a la your "adult").

There is a very good video of Steven Pinker (for the most part following Chomsky who was his teacher) on the Web. It is long, but the first part addresses some of the questions you brought up so adroitly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=JP&hl=ja&v=hBpetDxIEMU&feature=rec-HM-fresh+div

WOOF
Caveat Canem Croceum
March 23, 2009 02:18 PM
Well put.

Good going Gujarati!
Traveller1
March 23, 2009 08:06 PM
CCC, :) yes, i had earlier on posted abt the Chomsky and Pinker association here: http://nobina.wordpress.com/2008/09/13/i-advocate-we-teach-grammar/

Rama, thanks
Rolling
March 24, 2009 01:27 AM
Wonderful post! It took a turn into serious and profound issues that I didn't expect. Chomsky and Marxism fit right in. Personally I am reminded of what I think of as a Japanese approach to the arts - exquisite creativity made possible by a very tight rule-bound structure.
sanjuro55
March 24, 2009 09:01 AM
I read your post on your other blog. Exactly right. Though I couldn't fully follow the machinations of the involvement of local government bodies, your main points (there and here) are very well taken. Plus, you have a cool banner!

WOOF
Caveat Canem Croceum
March 24, 2009 05:52 PM
Sanjuro, you read my post! O wow am happy. Your comment made me go read up on Japart. Haikus I had always heard about and read some, so I see what you mean and can relate to what you say about tight lines make for exquisite inventiveness and creativity.

It also made me think of the fact that all great artists - literary or fine arts people - have alwasy worked within their boundaries and the point of their work was to discover for the world the limitlessness of limitated spheres, where life transcends the bounds of life and death and shows up as infinite, enduring beyond time and place, wd you agree?

Take away the lines and what do you have of life? A formless shapeless piece of nothing or chaos. Lines and boundaries are that DEFINE, makes something out of no-thing is my view.
Rolling
March 25, 2009 12:56 AM
Caveat Canem Croceum, thanks for patiently reading all this. You know, as teacher, I feel increasingly disturbed that Governments and syllabus framers are depriving learners of study that actually empowers and enables them to talk 'about' language, content and intent. Makes me frightened to think of the consequences...

In India they took it off the high school syllabii and spawned three or more generations of languageblind citizens who are limited to and restricted by "content" and dont know enough or have skills to even look for "intent" ! Isn't that DANGEROUS in democracies?
Rolling
March 25, 2009 01:11 AM
beautiful. amen.
rated and posted
JRDOG
March 25, 2009 05:15 PM
JRD, thank you :)
Read your pocket poetry piece but I have difficulty decoding poetry unless it it is very simple. Find prose easier to handle, you see?
Rolling
March 26, 2009 03:01 AM
very interesting stuff, and i mean very...two observations:

1. wisdom comes from children when they are unfenced, left free to see the conventions & decide for themselves. show em the fences, tell em YOU DECIDE

2. to agree with grammar is indeed a socially responsible thing to do, but to play with language is the right of every citizen of the speaking world: else how could grammar evolve & blossom into the new speaking way of the speakers who speak the same way & can identify each other by speech & identify those who have no freedom & wish to infringe on the freedom of others?

i don't usually tlak like this, honest. yr post inspired me.

jim. rated
James M. Emmerling
March 28, 2009 07:42 PM
JME, you articulated it for me, thanks, "to play with language is the right of every citizen". I hope someone from our govt sees this and stops deciding for the children.

You are right : your English has half a dozen different kinds of grammar actually. We had to study all of them at the univ. We enjoyed every bit of it :)

As teacher and a responsible adult, I believe in the stance that we give our children all there is, all we have, show them all the tools, THEN leave them to decide.

Taking off grammar studies from school however is arbitrary and not common sense.
Rolling
March 29, 2009 03:32 AM