In Chapter 1 were asked to distinguish between grammatical and ungrammatical strings of words by marking the ungrammatical string with an asterisk. Here is a similar list. According to your knowledge or intuitions about English, which of these sentences would you star ? Sylvia wanted George to go Sylvia wanted George go Sylvia heard George to go Sylvia hoped George go Clarence looked up the number . Clarence looked the number up Morris walked the hill up Morris walked up the hill John put the bread . John put the bread in the cupboard. John cut the breath. Last night John was crying the baby Last night john was crying Last night Jhon was drying the baby. Last night John was making the baby cry. Last night John was making the baby dry. We predict that speakers of English would star sentences (3b, 3c, 3e, 3i, 3j, 3m) as ungrammatical. If We are right, this shows that grammaticality judgments are not quixotic but are rule-governed. Notice that the syntactic rules which account for our intuitions about these sentences are not merely ordering rules like those which determine that boy the is an ungrammatical phrase while the boy is grammatical. Syntactic rules do determine the order of morphemes in a sentence but they also do much more. The rules must specify, for exemple, that to is required with the verbe want, as illustrated by sentences (3a, 3b) but is not permitted after heard as shown by (3c, 3d). Our knowledge of syntax also permits us to move the word up in (3f) to produce (3g), but not in (3h). Moreover we recognise that in (3j) either some word is missing, which is present in sentence (3k), or that a wrong word was used and something like (3l) would be better. For English speakers (3m) would be considered strange, although any of the four sentences that follow it would seem correct. These examples show that sentences are not simply words and morphemes strung together randomly. Sentences conform to specific patterns and these patterns are dictated by the syntactic rules of the language. This is true of all the worlds languages. The fact that all speakers can distinguish grammatical from ungrammatical combinations of words in their own language, and somtimes even know how to fix up these combinations to make them grammatical sentences, demonstrates their knowledge of the rules of syntax. Remember that grammaticality is not based on what you were taught in a class in grammar, but on the rules you and the other speakers of your language learned or constructed while acquiring the language as children. Furthemore, your ability to make correct grammaticality judgments (according to your rules) does not depend on your having heard the sentence before. You may never have heard or read the sentence A pigeon-toed sloth on the beauty contest wearing a purple tutu.
Posted on: Wed, 24 Dec 2014 23:38:54 +0000
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