David Crystal's series on spelling (Spell It Out), punctuation (Making a Point) and now, grammar (Making Sense) demonstrates his gifts as an intellectual historian as well as a linguist. Unlike most such historians, who deal with what is seen as the best that has been thought and said, Professor Crystal is more often concerned with exposing follies that have become entrenched across the centuries, and are sustained by force of habit and snobbery. Fortunately, this latest book also contains important ideas for teaching, centred on the Bucks Grammar Project, led by Lindsey Thomas.
Professor Crystal's demolition of the flaws in grammatical thinking is impeccable, and his encyclopaedic knowledge enables him to identify unsung heroes, notably Professor John Wallis FRS (1616-1703), who was the first to write a grammar of English without basing his description on Latin, with which English grammar has very little in common, The real link between English and Latin lies in vocabulary, as it does in all European languages.
Professor Crystal’s key idea is that the sentence is the unit that enables us to make sense of the words we use, hear or read. What constitutes a sentence is a matter of debate, and Professor Crystal offers the useful idea of "minor sentences" such as "Yes.", which do not contain the conventional structure of a subject and main verb. Professor Crystal draws a distinction between this time of sentence and an elliptical sentence, in which something has been left unsaid. To me, though, the idea can be extended to any that do not conform to the conventional structure. If we accept this this view, the single words and verbless sentences at the opening of Bleak House are sentences, beginning with capitals and ending with full stops. In any event, the idea of "minor sentences" allows us to focus on major sentences, which will be used almost all the time, while admitting occasional, deliberate, alternatives. This is one of the best ideas in the book.
Professor Crystal accepts his young daughter’s early, single-word utterances as sentences in their own right, when a great deal of the meaning is left unsaid. This is controversial, as so many children have to learn to add additional words to what they say in order to make and write understandable sentences. I also have trouble with two technical terms. English often requires nouns to be accompanied by what I describe as "companion words", such as my in my book, and a in a table. Linguistics has coined the word "determiner" to describe these words, even though some of them are indeterminate. I suggest that my alternative is more accurate and more understandable to children, though it may need further explanation to distinguish these, generally short, words from adjectives. The issue of tense, which I describe in terms of time zones, is another that needs further development, and Professor Crystal’s idea of integrating semantics – meaning – with the study of grammar offers a useful way forward.
The Bucks Grammar Project integrated grammatical teaching into the teaching of spoken and written language in a group of Buckinghamshire primary schools, with one project in a secondary modern school. The work at each stage is carefully matched to children's understanding. They study the construction of sentences, and experiment by varying structures in the course of their work, analysing their effects and improving the range that they use in their writing. The principles are described in the Appendix to Making Sense, and in a series of free downloads, including over 100 pages of case studies, illustrated with children's work showing consistent evidence of progress. I recommend these wholeheartedly. Lindsey Thomas is now working independently, and can be contacted through her site.