User:Gert: Difference between revisions
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Let us begin by asking ourselves why we need grammars at all. I don't mean grammars in the sense of grammar books, but rather in the sense of what someone needs to know in order to correctly speak a language. For instance, pretty much every native speaker of English is able to say that the strings of words in (1) below are English whereas the ones in (2) are non-English: | Let us begin by asking ourselves why we need grammars at all. I don't mean grammars in the sense of grammar books, but rather in the sense of what someone needs to know in order to correctly speak a language. For instance, pretty much every native speaker of English is able to say that the strings of words in (1) below are English whereas the ones in (2) are non-English: | ||
(1) dogs, to go shopping, loves Jill, waiting for the bus, it is raining, happy cats, . . . | (1) ''dogs, to go shopping, loves Jill, waiting for the bus, it is raining, happy cats, . . .'' | ||
(2) Hunde, einkaufen gehen, go to shopping, waiting for bus the . . . | (2) ''Hunde, einkaufen gehen, go to shopping, waiting for bus the . . .'' | ||
Revision as of 15:40, 6 April 2017
Syntax 1 Wiki
The English Language and its Grammar
In this course, I am going to introduce you to syntactic theory, the science of the grammar of phrases and sentences. While we will use examples from other languages from time to time, mostly we will concern ourselves with the structure of English.
Let us begin by asking ourselves why we need grammars at all. I don't mean grammars in the sense of grammar books, but rather in the sense of what someone needs to know in order to correctly speak a language. For instance, pretty much every native speaker of English is able to say that the strings of words in (1) below are English whereas the ones in (2) are non-English:
(1) dogs, to go shopping, loves Jill, waiting for the bus, it is raining, happy cats, . . .
(2) Hunde, einkaufen gehen, go to shopping, waiting for bus the . . .
3. It is the task of English syntax to explain in a precise and principled fash.ion which strings of words native speakers of English accept as well formed English and which not.
4. This task would be easy to accomplish, if one could simply list all the English strings. But, unfortunately, one cannot do that, since there are infinitely many well formed English strings:
a. Mary is tired. Mary is very tired. Mary is very, very tired. Mary is very, very, very tired. . . .
b. Mary went to the store. Mary went to the store but Jill stayed home. Mary went to the store but Jill stayed home and Sue had the flu. . . .
5. So, it is impossible to list all and only the well formed strings of English words. But what is possible, is to find a property that all and only the strings of English have in common: they and only they are grammatical according to the Grammar of English! All other strings are ungrammat.ical according to the Grammar of English.
6. So, we need to concern ourselves with the Grammar of English. This is what this course is all about!