English grammar - Roger Berry 2012

A12.5 Conclusion
A12 Grammar in speech and writing
Section A. Introduction

So are spoken grammar and written grammar different phenomena? And is the sentence only relevant for writing?

One extreme answer would be that speech and writing are distinct. The other extreme would be that the grammar of speech is just a subset of (the rules for) the grammar of writing and that it needs no special treatment. However, to follow the first extreme above would be extremely inefficient; most information about the two modes would need to be repeated. To follow the alternative would be to maintain the second-class status of speech and to perpetuate the poor treatment of features that are typical of spoken English. It is accepted that the study of grammar has long had a bias towards the written form (understandably so, since language study originally evolved to study and preserve classic literature).

The approach taken in this book is somewhere in between: that writing and speech have the same grammatical choices (within the constraints of their differing mediums), but that they differ in terms of tendencies (strong ones, in some cases). Moreover, as noted above, the barriers between the two modes are being broken down by new forms of communication (see D12 for more on this).

As regards the status of the sentence, we certainly need some concept to explain how clauses relate to one another in writing. The fact that the sentence is not a purely graphological concept is demonstrated in C9 by the difference between graphological and grammatical sentences established there. Moreover, there are certainly some forms of speech (of the more formal, more planned variety) where sentences can be clearly identified.

However, identifying sentences in all forms of speech is difficult if not impossible, as anyone who has tried to transcribe speech using full stops will know. This difficulty can extend to informal written forms: the ubiquitous use of dashes to connect clauses in emails and other forms of computer-mediated communication is evidence of this.

Comments

Activity A12.1:

1. Do you get (= ’understand’) it?

2. I told you so.

3. It sounds good to me.

These and others have become so common that they are almost fixed phrases.

Activity A12.2:

In full the text would be (added sections underlined):

Ok, I will contact Jonny.

I presume you mean Tuesday 2nd November. It would be good to catch up though . . .

Make sure you bring your thermals when you get back - there have been heavy frosts the last few mornings . . .

The last line shows a more extensive use of ellipsis, with the subject, auxiliary and verb being omitted. See the reading in D12 for more discussion of the nature of email communication.

Activity A12.3:

One possibility is that Peter represents a vocative: the person being addressed. The other is that it is a case of right dislocation, implying Peter is a friend of mine. In speech there would be different intonation: the vocative would have low flat intonation.