[TR] needs repaired

[TERRY SMITH]

For what it's worth, there are three types of grammar, maybe more now.  One:  prescriptive.  Two:  descriptive.  Three:  Transformational.

Sister Eloise with the stick was decidedly prescriptive.  Language "must" adhere.  

Trouble is, language is constantly evolving.  Sentence subjects are no longer as gender specific.  It's now okay to write lite instead of light.  Descriptive grammar is how people actually use it.  Hence it's not inappropriate to use the term "needs restored."

Transformational grammar is the study of language that takes it back to when it is first acquired as an infant.  Children "babble" in Chinese long before they actually start speaking Chinese.  Deep structure is the term used for when a thought first becomes language and helps describe when ellipses remove words, yet we still understand the meaning:  "Needs [to be] restored like that one."

I taught high school English for several years and my specialty was teaching remedial writing to kids who had failed at that hands of English Nazis all through school.  It took some major doing to get them to relax enough with language to realize that spelling, for instance, comes to English words from an anarchy of imported foreign languages, so don't sweat that you haven't memorized the difference between night and knight.  

Obligatory Triumph content:  "I put fluif in my Triumf."

> On January 27, 2020 at 4:05 PM JOE CURRY <spitlist at cox.net> wrote:
> 
> 
>     I resemble that remark!  :)
> 
> 
>         > > On January 27, 2020 at 1:52 PM Ron L'Herault <lherault at verizon.net> wrote:
> > 
> > 
> >         Warning:   This is not Triumph related.  
> > 
> >          
> > 
> >         I’m an uptight New Englander who was taught English grammar by nuns who had sticks.  8-).     Face Book, was the first place I’d seen this usage.  Now it appears in a mailing list message.
> > 
> >         “Needs Restored like that one.”
> > 
> >         ---------------------------------
> > 
> >         I look at that and first wonder, needs restored what?   Then deep in the recesses of my mind, I hear Sister Thomasina saying  “You will write ‘needs to be restored’ 100 times on the blackboard. When you are done, you will write ‘needs restoration’ 100 times as well.”  
> > 
> >          
> > 
> >         So, since it is not a Triumph question, if people want to answer privately, super.   Do you use this sentence construction habitually?  In what part of the country do you live?  I was not an English major. I’m definitely not a great writer and don’t spell everything correctly, but I’m extremely curious to find out the extent of the usage and this is a nice friendly group who may be able to help me.
> > 
> >          
> > 
> >         Let’s hear it for fluif.
> > 
> >          
> > 
> >         Ron L’Herault
> > 
> >          
> > 
> >          
> > 
> >     > 
> 
>      
> 
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