Bruce,
You've pretty much outlined the course of discussion in those classes.
I don't go very far into the problems in (1) because they're not ready
yet to handle embedding, much less double center-embedding. A
constraint-based grammar could block it, but that sort of grammar hasn't
developed far enough for classroom use yet and I like the opportunity to
distinguish between grammatical structure and sentence processing,
partly because it leads to some fairly accessible questions about
parsing. As to the others, you've hit on what makes them interesting to
talk about, and students take away from this a subtler sense of what
"ungrammatical" means-or sometimes just deeper confusion, which I spend
the rest of the semester repentantly alleviating.
Herb
________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bruce Despain
Sent: Thursday, September 07, 2006 11:01 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Grammaticality as indicator of knowledge of language
Herb,
You've called attention to your first-of-term grammaticality quiz a
couple of times and maybe would like some response. List, forgive me
for this diversion.
The sentences are almost all ungrammatical in the sense that peoples'
grammars do not allow its interpretation. You may want to say that the
first "ungrammaticality" is a matter of pragmatics, and the second a
matter of semantics, etc., but the first still comes down on the side of
being difficult to interpret because of its syntax and the second
because of its content. Wouldn't a constraint based grammar rule out
the degree of self imbedding in the first and the semantic anomalies of
the second? If these sentences could not be detected as ungrammatical,
wouldn't it indicate a deficiency in the structure of the grammatical
description or a special limitation on the concept of grammaticality?
The third through sixth sentences are ungrammatical only in the sense
that they are colloquial or informal. Some rules of grammar are there
because of the social need to be logical and ordered. They are typical
of the speech of less mature individuals. Anyone used to communication
in these registers must realize that grammatical constraints can vary by
the social situation. Number six might be avoided, but only because it
uses words that are conversationally based. What I'm referring to is
the "couldn't" to deny the possibility and "not sleeping" to quote a
claim in the conversational context. (The double negative may have
nothing to do with its avoidance.)
The seventh sentence can only be interpreted because of the familiar
combination of concepts in the words that suggest that an adjustment to
the jumbled word order will bring out the meaning.
The last sentence may have its spelling updated, but you need to put
"hit" in quotation marks. The constructions are simply not according to
the modern idiom. But a few times through does allow a perfectly good
interpretation. I suspect that even in 1490 this sentence was just a
bit formal, yet perfectly fit for the printed medium, like many of
today's research papers in linguistics.
Bruce
>>> "Stahlke, Herbert F.W." <[log in to unmask]> 09/07/06 7:07 AM >>>
Ed,
Interesting sentence. It's worth noting that the passive progressive,
with "being" has been acceptable in English only since the mid to late
19th c. Up until that time, Standard English would have required
The train must have been repairing.
This older usage is preserved in the Northern construction
The train needs repairing.
which has been replaced in a lot of dialects, including, to some degree,
Northern by
The train needs to be repaired.
or the Lower North and Southern
The train needs repaired.
Your point on grammaticality, though, is well taken. The double "be" is
uncomfortable for a lot of speakers for the same reason that doubling of
other function words feels awkward and is usually resolved by haplology.
But grammaticality is a multi-dimensional concept, one that we tend to
dumb down. I use the following sentences at the beginning of my grammar
classes to get students thinking about what we mean when we say that a
sentence is grammatical-or ungrammatical. The first one throws them
consistently, especially when I tell them that it is grammatically
unexceptionable.
1. The policeman the boy the dog bit called came.
2. "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously."1
3. Me and Bill went fishing last weekend.
4. The Sears Tower was a building higher than which no other had ever
been built.
5. That ain't no house I'd want to live in.
6. The guard couldn't have been not sleeping.
7. Upon were a there time three once bears.
8. "Then I pray all them that shall read in this little treatise to
hold me for excused for the translating of hit."2
1Chomsky, Noam A. 1957. Syntactic Structures. The Hague: Mouton.
2Caxton, William. 1490. Prologue to his translation of Eneydos.
Reprinted in W. F. Bolton, ed, The English Language: Essays by English
and American Men of Letters 1490-1839, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1966. (Spelling modernized.)
Herb
________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Edgar Schuster
Sent: Wednesday, September 06, 2006 10:46 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: On innate knowledge of language
I think I understand Johanna's point quite well, but perhaps I did not
make my own point clear. I was not trying to say that some students
have greater CONSCIOUS knowledge of grammar than their teachers, but
rather greater unconscious knowledge. Let me try an example. Is the
following sentence grammatical or not:
The train must have been being repaired.
I know from asking students and teachers that their answers may differ.
But even on simpler matters, such as what modifies what in a sentence or
how a given word functions, the intuitions of some people are stronger
than others, in my experience.
This is not to deny that EVERY native speaker has an enormous
intuitive knowledge of her or his native language.
Ed S.
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