Understanding Grammar and Acceptability in Linguistics

1. ENG2003 Lecture 2

2. Grammaticality and Acceptability Numbers here indicated co-reference. (1) a. John1 thinks that Mary likes him1. b. John thinks that Mary2 likes herself2. c. * John1 thinks that Mary likes himself1. d. * John thinks that Mary2 likes her2. * = unacceptable to a native speaker Reflexive pronoun and its antecedent must be in the same clause. (2) a. John thinks [that Mary2 likes herself2.] b. * John1 thinks [that Mary likes himself1.] Principle of Reflexive Pronouns: A reflexive pronoun and its antecedent must be in the same clause.

3. * - ungrammatical ? – awkward or odd ?* - very awkward or odd % - acceptable to some, but not to others – speaker variation # - unacceptable, but grammatical – pragmatically odd & - ungrammatical under the intended interpretation Here are some examples. I like carrots. 민수가 사과를 먹었다. * I carrots like. * 민수가 먹었다 사과를 % John promised Mary to wash the dishes. =John promised Mary that he would wash the dishes. % 낫아요 # Carrots like me. 민수가 당근을 좋아한다. # 당근이 민수를 좋아한다. pragmatically ill-formed

4. grammatical – A sentence is grammatical if it does not violate any principles of grammar acceptable – A sentence is acceptable if a native speaker can use it in a particular context A model of grammar should predict that all and only the acceptable sentences of a language (in the appropriate context) are grammatical. The set of all acceptable sentences and the set of all grammatical sentences should be identical. A few wrinkles…

5. I couldn’t possibly fail to disagree with you less. The mouse that the cat that the dog chased bit died. 민수는 철수가 영희가 사과를 먹었다고 생각한다고 말했다. 민수는 개에게 물린 고양이에게 좇긴 쥐에게먹힌 치즈를 찾고 있다. All of these sentences are grammatical, but none of them may seem very acceptable to any speaker of English/Korean. Problems: logical complexity and structural complexity The mouse [that the cat [that the dog chased] bit] died.

6. Linguistics = study of language What is a language?

7. Language versus Dialect • If two distinct speech forms are mutually unintelligible they are two distinct languages. • If two distinct speech forms are mutually intelligible, they are two dialects of the same language.

8. This sounds easy enough, but what about the following scenario: Three towns, 10 km apart: A B C O----------------------------------O-----------------------------------O People from town A can understand people from town B People from town B can understand people from town C BUT, people from town A cannot understand people from town C We call this a dialect continuum, and they are quite common around the world. One famous one is the Dutch/German dialect continuum. Someone from Amsterdam and someone from Munich cannot understand each other – but people from the smaller boarder towns on the Dutch/German border can understand one another. Another dialect continuum is Cree. Cree is spoken from Alberta to Quebec, but not all dialects are mutually intelligible. Neighbouring dialects tend to be mutually intelligible, but dialects that are spoken in communities far apart tend not to be.

9. Is Chinese a language? Linguistically, Chinese is a subfamily of languages (it is a branch of the Sino-Tibetan family) The most widely spoken Chinese language is Mandarin (northern China and Taiwan). Another familiar Chinese language is Cantonese (Hong Kong and Guangdong province). A 10-year-old child from Beijing and a 10-year-old child from Hong Kong will not understand a word the other is saying – thus, Mandarin and Cantonese are two different languages. However, Mandarin is the official language of China. Sometimes, Mandarin is simply referred to as “Chinese”. Because of the official status of Mandarin, all the other Chinese languages are sometimes referred to as “dialects” – but this is a different use of the word “dialect” than described above. In this course, we will use the terms we introduced above.

10. Korean Listen to this video on Jeju: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcQHONkB0d0 Is Jeju a separate language or a dialect of Korean? Koreanic: Korean Jeju

11. Sprachbund • A sprachbund is a geographically related group of languages which share common features, but are not all genetically related. • Balkan Sprachbund – included Romanian (Romance), Bulgarian (Slavic), Greek (Hellenic), and Albanian (Albanian)

12. Sprachbund • Thai, Vietnamese, Sino-Tibetan • Northwest Coast Sprachbund (from California to Alaska) – includes Salish, Wakashan and Chimakuan languages

13. How does one form of the language become the standard? A COMMON MYTH: REALITY

14. The data that the theoretical linguist uses is usually elicited spoken language or recorded corpora of spoken language. With this in mind, which of the following are acceptable English sentences? Who did you go to the movies with? I don’t got hardly any money left. John wants to carefully fix the car. Answer? – they all are! Remember, we are dealing with spoken language – all of these sentences are found in spoken English, so they are acceptable sentences. …and in Korean 옷이 예쁘십니다 os-i yeyppu-si-p-ni-ta cloth-NOM pretty-?HON-FORMAL-IND-DECL ‘The clothes are nice.’

15. The litmus test here is the native speaker’s intuitions. Compare the following: Who do you think Peter likes? Who do you think likes Peter? Who do you think that Peter likes? Who do you think that likes Peter? The last sentence is not one you’ll hear a native speaker of English say. We say that this sentence is ungrammatical. We mark it with an asterisk. namwuskaci-ka kkekk-i-ess-ta tree.branch-NOM snap-INCH-PST-DECL ‘The tree branch broke.’ elum-i nok-ass-ta ice-NOM melt-PST-DECL ‘The ice melted.’ *elum-i nok-i-ess-ta ice-NOM melt-INCH-PST-DECL ‘The ice melted.’ *

16. This brings us to an important point. Parity of language. From a linguistic perspective, no language or dialect is “better” than another one. In other words, we cannot say one language or dialect is better able to express a concept or more suitable for a given topic or that a given utterance is “wrong” from a linguistic point of view. Imagine you’re watching a nature program on TV that’s showing birds building nests. narrator: “As you can see, the bird interweaves the pieces of bark counter-clockwise and secures the pieces with stomach secretions… imagine the following continuation “However, the bird is building the nest wrong. It should weave the pieces of bark clock-wise and use mud to secure the pieces of bark…” It is clear that it is not the job of zoologists to tell animals how to behave in the wild. They simply describe how they do behave and analyze their behaviour. Likewise, it is not the job of a linguist to tell people how to speak, we simply describe how people use language and analyze it.

17. Prescriptivism:The practice of dictating, by virtue of some authority, acceptable standards of language use. Linguists are interested in a descriptive approach – The way people actually use language tells us something about how the human mind works. Prescriptive approaches are what most of us are familiar with. Editors, for example, are interested in prescriptive approaches to the study of language. Prescriptivist attitudes are most often applied to written language, but are often applied to spoken language. Examples of prescriptive authorities (with varying degrees of qualifications) include the Academie Française, 국립국어원, Chicago Manual of Style, Ann Landers, your high-school English teacher and so forth.

18. In the case of English, prescriptive rules had another source – Latin In the mid 19th century, some writers such as Dryden and Swift sought to “fix” the English language (i.e., keep it from changing) by introducing rules from Latin into English. Latin was perceived as a “perfect” language. Unfortunately, some rules of Latin are unsuited for English. Take the sentence above. Who did you go to the movies with? There is a prescriptive rule against stranding prepositions like this. The sentence should read With whom did you go to the movies? The reason for this rule is simple. Latin doesn’t strand prepositions, so English shouldn’t, either. However, preposition stranding (sentences such as (6)) have been used in the language for over 700 years. But…how about the following: A good writer should have a clear idea of who she is writing for. A good writer should have a clear idea of for whom she is writing.

19. Another well-known kind of example is the following: Someone forgot their umbrella on the bus. A prescriptivist approach holds that someone is singular and should have a singular descendent. The sentence, then, should read as follows: Someone forgot his umbrella on the bus. In fact, some people will severely admonish you for using generic or singular ‘they’. The truth of the matter is that generic ‘they’ (or ‘their’ as in the sentence above) has been around since the word ‘they’ was borrowed into English. (It may surprise you to find out that they was not originally an English word – it was borrowed from Scandanavian). Almost immediately after it was borrowed into English, it was used as in the sentence above – the way we still use it today. It can be found in the works of Shakespeare and Austen. In the 1850’s, however, a few scholars at the time decided that generic ‘they’ should not be used. The upshot is this – languages and dialects do not have any inherent (positive or negative) value, linguistically speaking. From a linguistic point of view – all languages and dialects are equal.

20. Korean: 옷이 예쁘세요! (The clothes look nice! – sales clerk at a clothing store) 커피가 나오셨어요 (Your coffee is ready. – barista at a café) The following dialogue is from J. Lee (1996) 선배: 요즘 잘 지내? (senior: Everything going well these days?) 후배: 예 그런데, 선배님, 부탁이 있어요 (junior: Yes, but I have a favour to ask, sir) 선배: 뭔데? (senior: What is it?) 후배: 혹시 아르바이트 들어오시면 소개 좀 해 주세요. (junior: If perhaps a part-time job becomes available, could you let me know?) 시 – subject honorific  becoming an addressee honorific

21. Descriptivism:The practice of describing, analyzing and understanding how language is used This includes language in all its forms, including its dialects (the form of a language used in a geographically determined area), sociolects (the form of a language used by a given socio-economic class) and even idiolects (the particular form of a language used by a specific person). This is the approach followed by most linguists.

22. Universal Grammar (UG) • Language is unlike mental capacities (such as mathematics or the ability to explicate a poem) in that is doesn’t require any conscious effort on the part of the child to acquire it. • Children do not sit and memorize lists and lists of irregular verbs, for example. • Language instruction, if present at all, is scant and generally ineffective.

23. Universal Grammar (UG) • Language is more like other physiological properties of human (such as going through puberty, or growing limbs) in that it happens naturally to the child when exposed to appropriate environment (namely, a speech community). • It is natural to ask, then, “Are some properties of language innate or hard-wired?”

24. How does the child uncover the complexity of human language? Poverty of the Stimulus – The input the child receives is too impoverished to determine the rules of their language. Example: parasitic gaps Which files did you put away without reading __ ? (compare: Which files did you put away without reading them?) The first sentence contains a ‘parasitic gap’ – the precise details are unimportant. What is important is that this sentence is grammatical. Consider now the following sentences. *Which teacher punished you for hitting __ in the face? (compare: Which teacher punished you for hitting them in the face?) Somehow, we just know that certain constructions allow parasitic gaps and others don’t. We’ve never received instruction on this, nor are examples of parasitic gaps prevalent enough for us to figure them out.

25. Kids (don’t) say the darndest things… Jamie was climbing a tree one day. When he was near the top of the tree, he fell and bruised his arm. Later on that day, he was having a bath. His father walked in and asked, “What happened to your arm?” Jamie answered back, “I hurt it climbing a tree earlier.”

26. When did Jamie say he hurt his arm? When he was climbing the tree. When he was having a bath. When did Jamie say how he hurt his arm? When he was having a bath. *When he was climbing a tree. Children never offer this response How do we know that this is not a possible response?

27. Universal Grammar • UG = that part of language that is invariant across the species (humans) • Predicts the presence of some properties that are universal in all languages. • Much current research focuses on determining which aspects of language are truly universal, and which vary across languages.

28. Recall the principle of reflexive pronouns from above: Principle of Reflexive Pronouns: A reflexive pronoun and its antecedent must be in the same clause. John thinks that Bill should look at himself in the mirror. himself must corefer to Bill himself cannot corefer to John Onondaga (Northern Iroquoian, southern Ontario and New York State) John wa’henhé:n’ Bill wa’hadadya’doháe’ John wa’-ha-enhé:n-’ Bill wa’-ha-adad-ya’d-oháe-’ John fact-he-say-punc Bill fact-he-refl-body-wash-punc ‘John said that Bill washed himself.’ (cannot mean: ‘John said that Bill washed John.’ Theories of reflexive pronouns are often grounded in UG. That is, a researchers are trying to work out a universal theory of reflexives.

29. Children do not learn language by analogy It has been suggested that children learn language by analogy. This seems like a reasonable possibility given the large variety of generalizations that can be made about grammar. For instance, the first analogy the child could draw is that direct objects are always place after verbs. This would account for the two-word stage during language acquisition, which consists usually of sequences of a verb and a direct object. Under this approach, there is no underlying universal grammar. The child simply learns language the same way he or she learns any other aspect of life. Consider, however, the following examples (Gleitman, 1994). Susan painted the red barn. Susan painted the barn red. Susan saw the red barn. *Susan saw the barn red.

30. Children do not learn language by analogy Under the analogy approach it is expected that children would produce speech errors during acquisition along the lines of the last example – however, children never seem to produce errors of this kind. This is unexpected assuming that children make use of analogies during language acquisition, but is compatible with an approach that assumes UG. In short, UG doesn’t make structures available that could produce the last sentence, which is why children never make errors of this kind.