Creativity%20of%20Language

1
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.
2
Syntax

• The part of the grammar that represents a
  speakers 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.
3

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4
Word Order

• 1. Harold hit Ivan.
• 2. Ivan hit Harold.
• 3. The student picked up the book.
• 4. The student picked the book up.

5
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.

6
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.
7
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
8
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.

9
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.
10
Grammatical Categories

• Content Words
• noun N
• verb V
• adjective Adj
• adverb Adv
• Function Words
• preposition Prep
• conjunction Conj
• interjection Interj
• auxiliary verb Aux
• modal verb Modal
• determiner Det
• quantifier Quant

11
Phrase Structure Tree

• Victoria Fromkin Robert Rodman. An
  Introduction to Language, sixth edition. Forth
  Worth Harcourt Brace College Publishers 1998,
  pp. 114, 115.

12
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

13
Simplified Grammar of EnglishPhrase
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.
14
Simplified Grammar of EnglishPhrase Structure
Rules

• N ? child, boy, man, men, telescope,
• puppy, posse, baby, buffalo,
  hide
• V ? find, see, flee, sleep
• P ? with, from, in, on
• Adj ? small, synthetic
• Det ? the, a

Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman Nina Hyams.
2003. An Introduction to Language. Boston, MA
Wadsworth, p. 140.
15
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.
16
Grammaticality Judgments

• Victoria Fromkin Robert Rodman. An
  Introduction to Language, sixth edition. Forth
  Worth Harcourt Brace College Publishers 1998,
  p. 107.