Syntax - English, not-so-English

English, not-so-English Syntax Introduction to the enterprise 1) Chris kissed Pat while Tracy danced. 2) Chris danced while Tracy kissed Pat. 3) Who did Chris kiss while Tracy danced? 4) Who did Chris dance while Tracy kissed? English, not-so-English English, not-so-English 1) Slept cat the. 1) Chris looked over the numbers. 2) Slept the cat. 2) Pat peeked over the fence. 3) The slept cat. 3) Chris looked the numbers over. 4) The cat slept. 4) Pat peeked the fence over. 5) Cat the slept. 6) Cat slept the. Knowledge of language • Native speakers “just know” what is part of their language. • But it’s tacit knowledge—we can’t just explain what it is that makes a sentence English. It just is. Or isn’t. • Our task: Exploring and characterizing what the nature of this knowledge is, and how it differs between languages. • When presented with a sequence of words, any (native English) speaker can tell you whether it makes a sentence of English. — How? What speakers know • Although we can’t explain our own knowledge of our native language, we can deduce it—and, in simple cases, we have a kind of intuition about what it is. 1) The cat slept. 2) Slept cat the. The noun Subject verb • Cat the does not make a good subject of a • The noun can be the subject of a sentence. • And the subject seems to come before the sentence, it has to be the cat. • In fact, the can’t really stand anywhere except before a noun. • So, we hypothesize that English speakers verb. • So, we hypothesize that English speakers know something like a general rule: the comes before nouns. know something like a general rule that subjects of a sentence come before the verb. Formalities Have we done it? • We can make these hypotheses formal, explicit: • A subject is made of the and a noun. • A sentence is made of a subject and a verb. 1. S ! subject V 2. subject ! the N 3. N ! cat 4. V ! slept • Perhaps that’s it, perhaps we have now described English. Let’s see. • There are lots of other nouns. Dog for example. And there are other verbs too. Like coughed. • If these rules describe English, then The dog coughed, the cat coughed, and the dog slept should be judged to be English sentences. Hooray! Er... What went wrong? • This is exciting! Maybe we have done it!! If • Although the dog chased the cat is judged to this is what English speakers know about English, then all and only the sentences generated by these rules should be judged as English. 1) The dog chased the cat. • Hmm. be English, our rules do not generate this sentence. • Just looking at it, we can see that the problem is that some verbs, like slept and coughed describe something performed by just one individual, but chase is something one individual does to another. Subject Verb Object 1. S ! subject V New rule: A verb with both a do-er (“subject”) and a do-ee (“object”) (let’s call such verbs “transitive”) comes between them. 2. subject ! the N 3. S ! subject Vt object 4. object ! the N 5. N ! cat, dog 6. V ! slept, coughed 7. Vt ! chased “Nouny” phrases We need a name for these “the noun” things. More than one word (a phrase, if you will), where the noun seems like the most important part. How about “noun phrases”? 1. S ! NP V 2. NP ! Det N 3. S ! NP Vt NP 4. N ! cat, dog 5. Det ! a, the 6. V ! slept, coughed Subjects and objects • We notice that our “subject” and “object” rule both look the same. • Also, notice that we can also say A dog chased a cat. So, a and the are probably the same kind of thing. We’ll call them “determiners” (though you might have called them “articles”). • Probably anything that can be a subject can also be an object. So we can simplify our rules. &c • Right. • The grumpy cat chased the terrified dog. • Ah. So, NPs can have adjectives like “grumpy” and “terrified” in them. • Ok, so our “theory of English knowledge” is still insufficient, but there’s a fairly clear way to extend it. 7. Vt ! chased Grammar • Supposing that we finally get to the end of this procedure, what we will have constructed is a grammar—a system that can distinguish strings of words into “English” and “not English.” • The sort of grammar we’ve been constructing is a generative grammar. The theoretical claim is that all —and only—strings that it generates will be judged by native English speakers as being “English.” • It is a theory—or a model—of what English speakers know about English. The S!NP V neuron? • This is not a claim that the actual rules we’re coming up with are somehow encoded in the brains of native English speakers. • The system we’re hypothesizing characterizes the knowledge, but who knows how the neurons are organized. • We can still learn a lot about the structure of language though—and maybe learn what kinds of things to look for among the neurons. Intuitions Stars • The primary thing we’re trying to explain is why people have the intuitions they have about language. • For a given string of words, a native speaker can say whether it is part of their language. But probably can’t tell you why. • These intuitions are quite stable across • The notational convention for marking a sentence that is not part of the language is putting an asterisk (“star”) in front of it. 1) *Cat the slept. 2) The cat slept. speakers. We seek the basis for these intuitions. Unacceptability • A string (of words) can be unacceptable for a number of different reasons. Some are important for building our model, and some are not. Ambiguity • Frequently, a sentence can be used to express more than one meaning. 1) I walked on the bank. 1) *Big that under staple run the jump swim. 2) You can’t stop a philosopher with a thesis. 2) My toothbrush is pregnant again. 3) All doors will not open. 3) The rat the cat the dog chased caught escaped adeptly. 4) Nothing cleans better than United Bio Lube’s SoyOrange™. *Ambiguity • But sometimes an ambiguity we might have expected to find is not there. So the sentence isn’t ungrammatical, but one intended interpretation is. 1) How did John say that Mary used the jackhammer? Answers: a) Incompetently, b) Quietly. 2) How did John ask if Mary used the jackhammer? Answers: a) *Incompetently, b) Quietly. But I would never say that • It generally does not matter that you’d never (or almost never) use a sentence being judged. • Given the circumstances under which the sentence would be appropriate (rare as they may be), would it be English? • Quite often one needs to construct rather artificial sentences to test specific hypotheses. Felicity • Another kind of unacceptability, which we generally won’t be concerned with in this class, is the kind that arises from a mismatch with the preceding discourse. 1) Who bought the lamp? 2) #Noel bought the lamp. • We care about this when studying constraints on the structure of discourse, but here we’re studying constraints on the form of sentences in isolation. Mysteries • Our knowledge of language is very complex, but not available to introspection. • Children acquire language very quickly, in the same way, and with a stable result. • Different languages turn out to have a lot in common—there are a lot of possible properties language might have, but yet never seems to. How did we get this? Kids don’t just imitate • Children certainly are not told things like “Billy, if I • Imitation by itself could never work as a means of ever catch you using a subject pronoun that matches the reference of a proper name object, you’ll be eating only asparagus for a week!” • Yet they know that He saw John in the mirror can’t mean that John saw himself. • And—really—what could they hear that would teach them this? Things adults don’t say • Plus, kids say things they’ve never heard an adult say. • Me playing. • What do you think what the puppet has eaten? • How would this come about? acquiring this kind of language knowledge. • The knowledge we’re talking about differentiates English sentences from non-English sentences. (Or whatever language) • Which ones are good? The ones you hear? • The first platypus to eat twenty-five maroon gummi bears will win a prize. Sure, ok. You generalize. • So, maybe kids hear what parents say and recognize the patterns, and come up with general rules. • That’s not so hard, is it? • Let’s try it out. Making questions 1) Sue should borrow my guitar. 2) Sue borrowed my guitar. 3) Should Sue borrow my guitar? 4) Did Sue borrow my guitar? 5) What should Sue borrow? 6) What did Sue borrow? That’s easy • Yes-no questions are formed by taking the second word and putting it in the front. Unless there’s no word like should, then you just put did in the front, and use a bare (untensed) verb. • Wh-questions are formed by removing something and putting who or what in front of the yes-no question form. See? Simple. Trying something else • My roommate should borrow my guitar. • Roommate my should borrow my guitar? • Roommate my did borrow my guitar? • Who did borrow my guitar? • What roommate my should borrow? • Why person any would think this is hard? • Sue said that Mary borrowed my guitar. • Sue said Mary borrowed my guitar. • What did Sue say that Mary borrowed? • What did Sue say Mary borrowed? • Who did Sue say borrowed my guitar? • Who did Sue say that borrowed my guitar? And one more Poverty of the stimulus • Mary saw her in the mirror. • Mary saw her duck in the mirror. • The point is: The linguistic input that a child • Why can’t her be Mary? (Except if it’s • Yet, children always acquire the same rules. • 1, 2, 3, —, —, —? • 4, 5, 6? — 5, 7, 11? — 5, 8, 13? — 3, 2, 1? Mary’s duck—but it can’t be Mary who is ducking). How is a kid supposed to deduce this? gets is insufficient to determine which of the possible rules of grammar are the right ones. What are we left with? • Of course, you know where this is going: Having language = being human. • Rocks, ferns, cats, apes don’t soak up language when surrounded by it. • Birds have wings, people have arms. • What determines whether you’re a bird is whether your parents are birds. Universal Grammar • This is the idea of Universal Grammar (UG), which we take to refer to the humanspecific cognitive structures underlying language. • Languages differ, too. So, apart from the (species-)universal principles of language, there are differences in how they interact and operate. Parameters of variation. Human language • The point: What makes an organism a human is something about what is encoded in the genes. • Only humans have language. • So something that makes language possible must be encoded in the genes. Parameters • Basic word order: 1) English (SVO): Akira bought a book. 2) Japanese (SOV): John ga hon o katta. • Question formation (where what goes): 3) What did Akira buy? 4) John ga nani o katta no? Explanation What are the principles, parameters? • If languages are all governed by the same • This is the “big picture” take on what we’re • Learn the pronunciations and meanings of • How can languages vary? • In what ways don’t languages vary? • Do certain language properties “group” principles (which children don’t have to learn), then the child’s task is really to: the words. • Determine the “settings” of the parameters for the language they are acquiring. trying to accomplish in Syntax. together? Could they depend in some way on the same parameter? Prescriptive rules • We no doubt remember being taught things like this: 1) A preposition is something you should never end a sentence with. 2) It is important to always avoid splitting an infinitive. • But—there’s a reason why these were painful to learn. They aren’t rules of English. Where is English? • When we speak of “English,” what are we referring to? • Every native speaker has a complete knowledge system of their language. • As far as the grammar is concerned, it’s all part of a native speaker’s cognitive makeup. (Vocabulary is a different thing...) Prescriptive rules • Prescriptive rules are generally somewhat arbitrary. Somebody’s idea of what the language “ought” to be like, or hanging on to how the language used to be even after it has changed. • If these were actually rules of English, they wouldn’t need to be taught (to native speakers at least). • Mainly, they serve as a “secret code” that educated people use to identify each other. I-language, E-language • The notion of “English” is really an external notion. It’s kind of an “average” of the properties of the (nearly identical) knowledge systems that the individual speakers in the community have. • What we’re interested in here, in a sense, are the properties of a single speaker’s knowledge of language. We might call it “English” if that speaker is part of the “English” speech community. But it’s really an individual’s knowledge. It’s just that the community by and large has the same knowledge.