Form and Function: A Quandary

The agonizing process of evolving a more accurate grammar for presentation in the classroom goes on. Dr. Conlin, a professor of English education at the Arizona State University, Tempe, succinctly examines the problem of form and function in structural grammar, pointing out that “in a modem analytic language we are still plagued with inflectional changes which at times point in the wrong direction. Since function determines meaning and therefore response, identification of function is of primary concern.”