Canterbury Tales [3]
Dear Everybody,
A campus on a hilltop, overlooking an ancient cathedral, shady trees, rabbits, squirrels everywhere, a place of peace and tranquility, at least out of term-time, it’s really a nice place to spend two weeks.
In February, a windswept hilltop, trees without leaves, dark in the morning and dark by mid-afternoon, everywhere crowded with UKC’s 15,000 undergraduates, this is a much less attractive place then when summer comes round again.
A hundred and eighty or so people come from all over the world, all keen on upping their level of English and on learning sharper ways of teaching…, mixing, mingling and exchanging experiences, inspiring, I’d call it.
The above three utterances are a typical structure in spoken English. The bold parts are called ‘headers’ by Carter and McCarthy in their ‘Grammar of Spoken English’, while the words in italics are the comment. You can also call the bold parts ‘topic’, followed by the comment in italics.
Typically, the topic, or ‘header’, is a noun phrase, and often a quite complex one, and the comment can include a verb or not.
I used to teach my students that English is a SVO (Subject, Verb, Object) language, while Turkish is a SOV language, and Japanese is a Topic-Comment one.
I was woefully wrong. The Header-Comment structure is common in UK spoken English.
I have now stopped talking nonsense about my own language, and this is change for the better.
I feel better as a teacher now. The CGE (Cambridge Grammar of English) gives me a clear description of the spoken language.
Warmly yours
Mario