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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 Same
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 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. 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 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 the puppy.
Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman & Nina Hyams. 2003. An Introduction to
Language. Boston, MA: Wadsworth, p. 124.
Grammatical Categories
Content Words
noun
verb
adjective
adverb
N
V
Adj
Adv
Function Words
preposition
conjunction
interjection
auxiliary verb
modal verb
determiner
quantifier
Prep
Conj
Interj
Aux
Modal
Det
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 same
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, hide
V
P
Adj
Det




find, see, flee, sleep
with, from, in, on
small, synthetic
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.