Creativity of Language “Any speaker of any human language can produce and understand an infinite number of sentences.” Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman & Nina Hyams. 2011. An Introduction to Language, 9th edition. Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, p. 77.

Most Important Concept 1 1. “Any speaker of any human language can produce and understand an infinite number of sentences.” (77) 2. “This system of rules explains how speakers can store infinite knowledge in a finite space—our brains.” (78) 3. “The rules of the syntax permit speakers to produce and understand a limitless number of sentences never produced or heard before—the creative aspect of linguistic knowledge.” (82) Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman & Nina Hyams. 2011. An Introduction to Language, 9th edition. Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, pp. 77, 78, 82.

Most Important Concept 2 4. “We can exploit the resources of our language and grammar to produce and understand a limitless number of sentences embodying a limitless ranges of ideas and emotions.” (82) 5. “Because the number of possible sentences in every language is infinite, there are also an infinite number of trees. However, all trees are built out of the finite set of substructures allowed by the grammar of the lanugage, and these substructures are specified by the finite set of phrase structure rules. (95) Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman & Nina Hyams. 2011. An Introduction to Language, 9th edition. Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, pp. 82, 95.

Most Important Concept 3 6. “The number of sentences in a language is infinite and [ ] languages have various means of creating longer and longer sentences.” (95) 7. “Our brain capacity is finite, able to store only a finite number of categories and rules for their combination. Yet this finite system places an infinite set of sentences at our disposal. (101) 8. “All speakers are capable of producing and understanding an unlimited number of new sentences that have never before been spoken or heard.” (128) Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman & Nina Hyams. 2011. An Introduction to Language, 9th edition. Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, pp. 95, 101, 128.

Syntax “The part of the grammar that represents a speaker’s knowledge of sentences and their structures is called syntax.” Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman & Nina Hyams. 2011. An Introduction to Language, 9th edition. Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, p. 78.

What Syntax Reveals  Word order  Relationship between meaning and the arrangement of the words  Grammatical relations—Subject and Object  Grammatical constraints—Verb subcategoriation  Hierarchy of grammatical constituents  Grammaticality judgments  Structural ambiguity Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman & Nina Hyams. 2011. An Introduction to Language, 9th edition. Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, pp. 78-81.

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Word Order 1. Harold hit Ivan. 2. Ivan hit Harold. 3. The student picked up the book. 4. The student picked the book up. 5. Sally kissed John. 6. John was kissed by Sally.

Why Native Speaker Grammaticality Judgments are Basically the Same Simple Answer:  Because native speakers of a language share the same set of syntactic rules their grammaticality judgments will be the same.

Why Native Speaker Grammaticality Judgments are Basically the Same More Complex Answer:  Because Native Speakers of a (variety of a) language SHARE the same (or nearly the same) set (group) of SYNTACTIC RULES their Grammaticality Judgments will be (approximately) the same.  Their MENTAL GRAMMAR is MORE OR LESS THE SAME  In other words, they have the same (nearly the same) linguistic competence because they grew up speaking the same language

How can we judge what is grammatical? 1. Does NOT depend on whether you have heard it before 2. Does NOT depend on whether it is meaningful 3. Does NOT depend on whether you can interpret it 4. Does NOT depend on whether it is true 5. It DOES depend on our “unconscious knowledge of the syntactic rules of grammar” Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman & Nina Hyams. 2011. An Introduction to Language, 9th edition. Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, pp. 82-83.

Grammaticality Judgments of Strange Sentences  Meaningless Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. Giant tomatoes danced at my party last week.  Uninterpretable “Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe.  Untrue Today is Wednesday. My brother had a baby last week. Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman & Nina Hyams. 2011. An Introduction to Language, 9th edition. Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, pp. 82-83.

Ambiguity Words (Lexical Ambiguity) He walked by the bank. He got shot in the back. Phrases (Structural Ambiguity) synthetic buffalo hides small car factory Sentences (Structural Ambiguity) The boy saw the man with the telescope. For sale: an antique desk suitable for lady with thick legs and large drawers.

Tree Diagram of Sentence Structure The child found a puppy. Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman & Nina Hyams. 2011. An Introduction to Language, 9th edition. Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, pp. 84, 90.

Grammatical Categories Content Words noun N NP verb V VP adjective Adj adverb Adv Function Words preposition Prep PP conjunction Conj interjection Interj auxiliary verb Aux modal verb Modal determiner Det quantifier Quant

Phrase Structure Tree Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman & Nina Hyams. 2007. An Introduction to Language, 8th edition. Boston, MA: Thomson Wadsworth, p. 124.

Simplified Grammar of “English” Phrase Structure Rules 1. S  NP VP 2. NP  Det N (revised 100-101) 3. VP  V NP 4. VP  V (revised 96) 5. VP  V PP 6. PP  P NP 7. VP  V CP 8. CP  C S 9. NP  NP PP (added 97) 10. VP  Aux VP (added 107) Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman & Nina Hyams. 2011. An Introduction to Language, 9th edition. Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, pp. 93, 96, 97, 100, 101, 107.

Simplified Grammar of “English” Phrase Structure Rules N  child, boy, man, men, telescope, puppy, posse, baby, buffalo, hide V  find, see, flee, sleep P  with, from, in, on Adj  small, synthetic Det  the, a Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman & Nina Hyams. 2007. An Introduction to Language, 8th edition. Boston, MA: Thomson Wadsworth, p. 131, adapted.

Syntactic Rules Must Account for the Following  the grammaticality of sentences  word order  structural ambiguity  grammatical relations  different structures with the same meaning  the creative aspect of language. Fromkin & Rodman (1998), pp. 110-111

Ambiguous Sentence But Unambiguous Structure The boy saw the man with the telescope. The boy saw the man with a stick. The boy hit the man with a stick. The boy hit the man with the telescope.

Grammaticality Judgments