Introduction and Foundations

Ling 322Read Syntax, Ch. 1

(Lecture notes based on Andrew Carnie’s notes)

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What is Syntax?

• A sentence is not just string of words. It has a structure (=syntax).

• Syntax is a scientific study of sentence structures.

• Syntax is a subdiscipline of cognitive science, a study of the human being’sability to think.

• The goal of syntactic theory is to model the psychological (or cognitive)organization of sentence structure in the mind.

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What is a Sentence?

• A hierarchically organized structure of words that maps sound to meaningand vice versa.

Sentence

Sounds Meaning

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Scientific Method

• Study of syntax is a science.

• It uses scientific method.

Gather and observe some data

Make some generalizations

Develop a hypothesis

Test against more data

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Exercise: Wh-question Formation

• Trial 1:

(1) a. John likes Mary.

b. Who does John like?

Observation:

• Trial 2:

(2) a. Peter believes that John likes Mary.

b. Who does Peter believe that John likes?

(3) a. Peter believes that Sue said that John likes Mary.

b.

Observation:

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Exercise: Wh-question Formation (cont.)

• Trial 3:

(4) a. Bill believes the rumor that John likes Mary.

b.

(5) a. John liked the movie that he saw yesterday.

b.

(6) a. John will wake you up if Mary calls.

b.

c. Peter finished his homework before Mary called John.

d.

Observation:

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Exercise: Wh-question Formation (cont.)

• Trial 4:

(7) a. Peter wonders who fixed the bike with a wrench.

b.

(8) a. Peter wonders who fixed the bike with a wrench.

b.

Observation:

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Exercise: Wh-question Formation (cont.)

• Trial 5:

(9) a. Peter believes that John likes Mary.

b.

(10) a. Peter believes John likes Mary.

b.

(11) a. Peter believes that John likes Mary.

b.

Observation:

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Rules and Grammar

• We will encode our hypotheses about sentence structure using rules.

• Prescriptive vs. descriptive rules: Which is more scientific?

Prescriptive rules prescribe how we should speak.

Descriptive rules describe how we actually speak.

• The rules we will use are said to generate the sentences of the languages weare looking at. They are sentence-building rules.

• A group of rules is called a Grammar.

A grammar in the linguistic sense is a cognitive structure. It is the part of themind that generates and understands language.

• The kind of grammar we are looking at is called Generative Grammar, agroup of rules that generate the sentences of a language.

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Sources of Data

• Corpora of spoken and written languages

– Collections of recorded real world speech

– Telephone recordings

– Newspapers, books, magazines

– Folk tales recorded in the field

• *What do you wonder who likes?

– How do you know this is ungrammatical?

– Have you ever heard this sentence before?

– Will the fact that this sentence is ungrammatical appear in any corpus?

• In order to get at what we know about our languages, we have to know whatsentences are not well-formed.

Corpora are not sufficient. They don’t contain negative information, and cannever contain all the possible sentences of a language.

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Source of Data (cont.)

• We have to rely on our mental knowledge (competence) of our nativelanguage, or on the knowledge of a native speaker for languages that wedon’t speak natively. We need to access and describe this subconsciousknowledge.

• Performance vs. Competence

Performance: what speakers actually produce

Competence: what speakers know about language

We will be interested in both of these, but will focus primarily on Competence.

• How do we get at the competence of a native speaker?

Through a special psychological experiment called Grammaticality(Acceptability) Judgment Task.

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Grammaticality Judgment Task

• Ask a native speaker to read a sentence, and judge whether it is well-formed(grammatical, acceptable), marginally well-formed, or ill-formed(ungrammatical, unacceptable).

• We have to be careful in teasing apart syntactic ill-formedness(grammaticality) from semantic ill-formedness or processing difficulty.

(12) Ungrammaticala. * John put the book on. b. * Mary ate often the potato.

(13) Grammatical but doesn’t make sense

a. # Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

b. # I plan to travel there last year.

(14) Grammatical but difficult to process

a. The mouse [that the cat chased] escaped.

b. The mouse [that the cat [that the dog scared] chased] escaped.

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Grammaticality Judgment Task (cont.)

• Grammaticality is always determined with respect to an interpretation.

(15) Sue Tom hired.Grammatical under OSV interpretationUngrammatical under SOV interpretation

(16) Johni talked to him∗i/k.Grammatical if himk

Ungrammatical if himi

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Where do the rules come from? Learning or Acquisition?

• Learning involves conscious gaining of knowledge.

Reading and writing are learned.

• Acquisition involves subconscious gaining of knowledge.

The ability to visually identify discrete objects are acquired.

Language is acquired.

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How do we acquire languages?

• Are we instructed by our parents?

Parents tend to correct content, not form. (from Marcus et al. 1992)

(17) ADULT: Where is that big piece of paper I gave you yesterday?CHILD: Remember? I writed on it.ADULT: Oh that’s right, don’t you have any paper down here, buddy?

Children do not know what they are doing wrong, and are unable to makecorrections when pointed out. (from Pinker 1994, pp. 281)

(18) CHILD: Want other one spoon, Daddy.FATHER: You mean, you want “the other spoon”.CHILD: Yes, I want other one spoon, please, Daddy.FATHER: Can you say “the other spoon?”CHILD: Other...one...spoon. FATHER: Say... “other”. CHILD: Other.FATHER: Spoon. CHILD: Spoon. FATHER: Other...spoon.CHILD: Other...spoon. Now give me other one spoon?

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How do we acquire languages? (cont.)

• Do we mimic our parents?

Children know things about language that they could not have been taught.

(19) Yes-no question formationa. A unicorn is in the garden⇒ Is a unicorn in the garden?b. [A unicorn that is eating a flower] is in the garden⇒ Is a unicorn

that is eating a flower in the garden?c. [A unicorn that is eating a flower] is in the garden⇒ *Is a unicorn

that eating a flower is in the garden?

Children sometimes say things that their parents could not ever have uttered.

(20) Overgeneralizationa. When she be’s in the kindergarten ....b. She do’s what her mother tells her.

Language is infinite. We produce sentences we’ve never heard before.

QUESTION: What property of grammar is most responsible for this?

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How do we acquire languages? (cont.)

• Language is an instinct, just like walking is.

The ability of humans to acquire and use language is innate, built-in, andhard-wired in our genes.

(A proposal by Noam Chomsky that revolutionized modern linguistics)

• A particular language is not innate, but the basic building blocks that anygiven language uses are built in.

=⇒ Universal Grammar (UG)

• Logic behind Innateness Hypothesis

Premise 1: It is impossible to learn the rules governing a system untilyou have ALL the data.

Premise 2: Language is infinite and creative. You can never hear allthe relevant data.

Conclusion: Language should be unlearnable, which is contrary to fact.Therefore, the basic building blocks of language cannotbe learned or acquired. Instead they must be innate (aninstinct).

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Other Arguments for UG

• Human specificity of language

• Distinct area of the brain linked to specific linguistic functions

• Crosslinguistic similarities in language acquisition (despite culturaldifferences)

• Language Universals

Subjects, object, verb; Structure dependence of syntactic rules; Recursion

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Variations across languages?

Principles and Parameters: UG principles provide an algorithm for acquiring aparticular grammar of any language. But they can be instantiated differentlyacross languages, through different parameter settings.

• Null-subject parameter

(21) a. EnglishShe left.

b. Korean

ttena-ss-ta.

leave-Past-Decl

‘She left.’

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Variations across languages? (cont.)

• Head parameter: SVO, SOV

(22) a. EnglishMary bought a book.

b. KoreanMary-ka

Mary-Nom

chayk-ul

book-Acc

sa-ss-ta.

buy-Past-Decl

‘Mary bought a book.’

• Wh-parameter

(23) a. EnglishWho does John think Mary likes?

b. KoreanJohn-i

John-Nom

Mary-ka

Mary-Nom

nwukwu-lulwho-Acc

cohaha-n-tako

like-Pres-Comp

sayngkakha-ni?

think-Int

‘Who does John think Mary likes?’

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Goals of This Class

• To identify the innate principles that govern sentence structure (UGPrinciples).

• To characterize the different ways in which languages implement theseinnate principles (Parameter settings).

• We will do this by formulating grammars (a set of syntactic rules) that meetthe following criteria.

– Observational adequacy: to account for all the observed(corpus/performance) data.

– Descriptive adequacy: to account for all observed data and allacceptability judgments (competence).

– Explanatory adequacy: to account for all observed data, acceptabilityjudgments, and also explain how the system arose (language acquisition).

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