Creativity of Language

“Any speaker of a human language can produce and understand an infinite number of sentences.”

Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman & Nina Hyams. 2003. An Introduction to Language. Boston, MA: Wadsworth, p. 117.

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. 2003. An Introduction to Language. Boston, MA: Wadsworth, p. 118.

魚吃人

Word Order

1. Harold hit Ivan.2. Ivan hit Harold.

3. The student picked up the book.4. The student picked the book up.

Why Native Speaker Grammaticality Judgments are Basically the Sa

me

Because native speakers of a language share the same set of syntactic rules their grammaticality judgments will be the same.

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. 2003. An Introduction to Language. Boston, MA: Wadsworth, pp. 120-121.

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 tovesdid gyre and gimble in the wabe.

UntrueToday is Wednesday.My brother had a baby last week.

Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman & Nina Hyams. 2003. An Introduction to Language. Boston, MA: Wadsworth, pp. 120-121

Ambiguity

Words (Lexical Ambiguity)He walked by the bank.He got shot in the back.

Phrases (Structural Ambiguity)synthetic buffalo hidessmall 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 the puppy.

Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman & Nina Hyams. 2003. An Introduction to Language. Boston, MA: Wadsworth, p. 124.

Grammatical Categories

Content Wordsnoun Nverb Vadjective Adjadverb Adv

Function Wordspreposition Prepconjunction Conjinterjection Interjauxiliary verb Auxmodal verb Modal determiner Detquantifier Quant

Phrase Structure Tree

Victoria Fromkin & Robert Rodman. An Introduction to Language, sixth edition. Forth Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers: 1998, pp. 114, 115.

Syntactic Rules Must Account for the Following

the grammaticality of sentences word order structural ambiguity grammatical relations different structures with the sam

e meaning the creative aspect of language.

Fromkin & Rodman (1998), pp. 110-111

Simplified Grammar of “English”Phrase Structure Rules

S NP Aux VP

NP Det (Adj) N

VP V (NP) (PP)

PP P NP

AP Adj (PP)

Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman & Nina Hyams. 2003. An Introduction to Language. Boston, MA: Wadsworth, p. 140.

Simplified Grammar of “English”Phrase Structure Rules

N child, boy, man, men, telescope, puppy, posse, baby, buffalo, hideV find, see, flee, sleep

P with, from, in, on Adj small, synthetic Det the, a

Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman & Nina Hyams. 2003. An Introduction to Language. Boston, MA: Wadsworth, p. 140.

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.

Victoria Fromkin & Robert Rodman. An Introduction to Language, sixth edition. Forth Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers: 1998, p. 117.

Grammaticality Judgments

Victoria Fromkin & Robert Rodman. An Introduction to Language, sixth edition. Forth Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers: 1998, p. 107.