The Lukeion Project
The Barbarian Diagrammarian
Our mascot, Leland. You'll get to know Leland very well this semester!
The Dreaded Dangling Participle:
Sandra reviewed the pictures of the dog sitting at her desk.
Was it Sandra or the dog sitting at the desk?
Welcome!
Are you ready to split some infinitives? Dangle some participles? It's barbaric. It's shameful! But people are doing it every day, and you might have even committed such atrocities yourself!
People are going to talk - there's just no stopping them. (If you don't believe me, stick 7 strangers in a room with something large, bumpy, purple, and furry; they'll talk.) And when people talk, they'll talk about cars, satellites, diseases, pets, gross stuff, fun stuff, boring stuff and unbelievable stuff. When they talk, they'll also use patterns that the people around them understand. If they didn't, no one would understand them! That's what we're going to examine in this class: how people talk. We'll hack it apart, slice it, dangle it, poke it, probe it, diagram it, twist it, turn it over, and perhaps, when we get frustrated, even give it a good kick.
What's different about this class is that we're not going to look at grammar in the normal way. We won't begin by memorizing the 8 parts of speech, which is what most grammar books will require. They start there because lists are easy things for teachers to test, but that's not a great way to actually figure out how a language works. Instead, we're going to begin with some simple sentences and we're going to hack them apart mercilessly. Then we'll see if we can get them back together without them looking like some sort of Frankenstein monster. Then we'll move on to more complicated sentences.
Our Schedule
- Our class meets each Thursday for 1 hour, but there are a few interruptions that will be mentioned in class as they are scheduled.
- March 29 - No live class; your class will be recorded
- May 4-8 - Final Exam
- Homework will be due by 5 pm Tuesday before the next class meets
- Exams will be available Sunday through Wednesday, and are due by 5 pm on Wednesday
Class Expectations
- Arrive in class on time
- Take notes during class
- Participate in class activities
- Complete assigned homework and submit it through this web page
- Take tests honestly and within the assigned window of time
Class Documents
Recommended Reading
We do not have a textbook for this class (yet - we're working on it!), but we do have several recommended books which make grammar fun!
- Florey, Kitty B. Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Books, 2006. Print.
A wonderful and humorous history of sentence diagramming. Read it for grammar, read it for pleasure! No grammar book was ever this fun.
- Schnoor, Joel. I Laid an Egg on Aunt Ruth's Head. Apex, NC: Gennesaret P, 2010. Print.
A fun and witty collection of 43 short anecdotes, each explaining an oft-broken grammatical rule. Aunt Ruth breaks the rules and her annoying grammar-geek nephew sets her straight.
|
|
