CAS LX 522Syntax IWeek 1a.Introduction to the enterpriseEnglish, not-so-English1) 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-English1) Chris looked over the numbers.2) Pat peeked over the fence.3) Chris looked the numbers over.4) Pat peeked the fence over.English, not-so-English1) Slept cat the.2) Slept the cat.3) The slept cat.4) The cat slept.5) Cat the slept.6) Cat slept the.•When presented with a sequence of words, any (native English) speaker can tell you whether it makes a sentence of English. — How?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.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•Cat the does not make a good subject of a 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 know something like a general rule: the comes before nouns.Subject verb•The noun can be the subject of a sentence.•And the subject seems to come before the verb.•So, we hypothesize that English speakers know something like a general rule that subjects of a sentence come before the verb.Formalities•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 V2. subject ! the N3. N ! cat4. V ! sleptHave we done it?•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...•This is exciting! Maybe we have done it!! If 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.What went wrong?•Although the dog chased the cat is judged to 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 ObjectNew rule: A verb with both a do-er (“subject”) and a do-ee (“object”) (let’s call such verbs “transitive”) comes between them.1. S ! subject V2. subject ! the N 3. S ! subject Vt object4. object ! the N5. N ! cat, dog6. V ! slept, coughed7. Vt ! chasedSubjects 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.“Nouny” phrasesWe 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 V2. NP ! Det N 3. S ! NP Vt NP4. N ! cat, dog5. Det ! a, the6. V ! slept, coughed7. Vt ! chased&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.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•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 speakers. We seek the basis for these intuitions.Stars•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.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.1) *Big that under staple run the jump swim.2) My toothbrush is pregnant again.3) The rat the cat the dog chased caught escaped adeptly.Ambiguity•Frequently, a sentence can be used to express more than one meaning.1) I walked on the bank.2) You can’t stop a philosopher with a thesis.3) All doors will not open.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
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