Debating Grammar Pt. 2: Rules, Schmules
February 17th, 2009 | View Comments
To continue the debate regarding the existence of grammar, we move on to the topic of rules. Are the rules set forth in language a prescription of nuns with rulers in their hands, or is there something within the languages themselves that follow logical patterns?
The answer: BOTH
I will break this down into three parts: Syntax, Morphology, and Phonology
Syntax: Sentence Structure
Linguists don’t really care if you say, “Can I go to the bathroom?” vs. “May I go to the bathroom?” Structurally, both follow the same patterns. A common theory used in syntactic dissections is X-Bar Theory (sometimes noted as X’ Theory). I will not go into detail about X’ Theory as you could easily spend at least a semester’s worth of graduate seminar investigating it. Basically, think back to grade school sentence diagrams. Then, put them on steroids. I seemingly simple sentence such as, ‘He studies linguistics at the university,” ends up looking like this. (And that’s an easy sentence to diagram.)
In a nutshell, each phrase, whether they be noun phrases (NP), verb phrases (VP), adverbial phrases (AdvP), adjectival phrase (AP), etc. have specific places in which they can and cannot go. Most importantly, notice that lines are not crossed. Syntactic structures help us explain phenomena such as the understood “you subject” in a command:
(You) Call 911!
Here, the receiver of the message is the intended subject. If we switched the order, the subject would end up in the middle of the verb phrase, “call 911″, and the sentence would not structurally work in terms of syntax.
*Call (You) 911!
If the implied subject lies in the second position, the sentence no longer structurally works, thus is ungrammatical. (In linguistics, an asterisk [*] indicates an unacceptable utterance.)
Morphology: Word Structure
This one, I find fascinating. In English, we have a plethora of suffixes and prefixes which we can affix to roots. Take the root “speak”.
We could come up with words such as speaks, speakers, speaking, etc. These all come from a root+suffix model. What if we wanted to add multiple suffixes?
“Speak” is a verb. Only certain affixes can apply to verbs, mainly -s, -er, and -ing. If we tried to turn speak into an adverb by adding -ly, we end up with *speakly, an unacceptable utterance.
That said, affixes must be applied in specific order. We cannot add -s and then -er to imply a person who speaks: *speakser. (There are multiple -s affixes. One pluralizes nouns, one modifies verbs to indicate active action.)
Phonology: Sound Patterns
In colloquial spoken Chinese, you will not find two words with the third tone adjacent to each other. This is because there is a phonological rule that prohibits it. The rule indicates if you have two third tones next to each other, the first one becomes a second tone, a rising tone.
我給 John 蘋果 (了).
Wo3 gei3 John ping2 guo3 (le5).
If you were to transcribe just this sentence, with no other prior knowledge of Chinese, it would read:
Wo2 gei3 John ping2 guo3 (le5).
Nobody would speak the sentence as such:
*Wo3 gei3 John ping2 guo3 (le5).
I contend that the mere fact that we have utterances in which native speakers find unacceptable indicates the existence of grammar.
Up next… grammar vs. Grammar
Peter posted this on February 17th, 2009 @ 9:36am in Grammar | Permalink to "Debating Grammar Pt. 2: Rules, Schmules"
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Where does diction (word choice) fit into this?
I get that diction veers close to meaning, which linguists don’t care about when discussing structure. But in some languages (e.g., Korean*), the biological sex of the subject is relevant to word choice. For example, there are three verbs (that I know of) that translate in English as “to get married”. One is neutral, but one only applies to males, and the other is only used when discussing women and girls. To use the “female” verb when a subject is male, regardless of conjugation, case, tense, etc, is simply incorrect usage.
Does this qualify as ungrammatical? Or grammatically correct but unacceptable?
* Korean is considered by most, though not all, linguists to be an isolate (i.e., a language not fitting into any of the major language families), and I presume that hurts my point some. But, nevertheless…
I would consider diction, specifically with regard to gender appropriate word choices (Thai is like that too), as part of syntax. There are unwritten structures that indicate gender, past participle, etc. that can be accounted for in syntax.