It might very well be the case that Bill is right when he writes the following:
*******
I have trouble accepting "sentenceness" as something that pre-exists our
definitions as a kind of fundamental category, at least in the way we've
traditionally defined sentences.
*******
If the definition of a sentence depends on whether we can begin the string with a capital letter and end it with a period,
then Bill is definitely right.
However, the data I cited didn't require that definition. I proposed that one cannot describe how tag questions are formed, how yes-no questions are formed, or the properties of certain kinds of pronouns without the category of a sentence/clause. I can be wrong, but I notice that Bill does not provide an explanation for my examples. Herb agreed with the point I made with those examples. And, I note that tag questions and yes-no questions are really common in the oral language.
Because I find the performance-competence distinction useful. I need to comment on the second problem Bill identifies.
The other [problem] is the effect of using a single pair of opposing terms like
"competence vs. performance." Setting up a binary opposition encourages
people to think that anything that is not A is by necessity B, with some
of the consequences that Herb has already mentioned. There's one sense
of "performance" in which the term encompasses speaker "goofs": slips of
the tongue, false starts, the occasional fit of coughing interrupting an
utterance and the like. But once we make a definition of sentence,
anything that diverges from that definition then becomes a "goof" in a
way that it wasn't before. Saying that slips of the tongue don't
necessarily fall within the purview of your theory is a very different
matter than saying that "ya eat yet?" doesn't, but having only the one
pair of terms leads us to group both as "performance" (or to rescue the
second via an ellipsis argument). A construct of the theory
("sentencehood") becomes the basis on which data is judged *relevant* to
arguments about whether the construct itself is valid. Once that
happens, you don't have a theory anymore; you have a faith (and it's a
really boring, nerdy one, without even a decent holiday attached).
****
1) Theories change over time. Herb correctly showed that what is part of competence and what is performance have changed over time. I don't understand why that is a problem.
2) The issue of "goofs" is interesting here. I can't tell whether Bill is suggesting that we need a theory of grammar that explains every utterance a speaker of the language makes. I know of no grammar that attempts a grammar that does that.
His example "ya eat yet" is interesting. Sounds OK to me. I'm sure I have uttered it. Do we have any intuitions about it? (Intuitions are a way to tap into competence.) What is the possible response to that question? (It is redundant to do this with a negative response.)
a) Ya, I did
b) Ya, I do.
(b) is completely unacceptable to me. I prefer (a). If your judgments are the same as mine, why might that be the case? Notice "did" is a past tense form and there is no past tense form in the question.
3) "Relevant" data are part of any theory. A theory is valued to the degree it can provide an explanation for the greatest amount of data. If data are presented that the theory should explain and it doesn't, then the inadequacy of the theory is revealed and people attempt to construct a better theory.
I return to tag questions, yes-no questions, and properties of certain pronouns. The construct "sentence/clause" is crucial, I think, to describe these constructs. That is not faith. I could be wrong, but I have never read a description of them that don't use the concept of sentence.
Bob Yates, University of Central Missouri
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