Grammaticality

Last updated

In linguistics, grammaticality is determined by the conformity to language usage as derived by the grammar of a particular speech variety. The notion of grammaticality rose alongside the theory of generative grammar, the goal of which is to formulate rules that define well-formed, grammatical sentences. These rules of grammaticality also provide explanations of ill-formed, ungrammatical sentences. [1] [2]

Contents

In theoretical linguistics, a speaker's judgement on the well-formedness of a linguistic 'string'—called a grammaticality judgement—is based on whether the sentence is interpreted in accordance with the rules and constraints of the relevant grammar. If the rules and constraints of the particular lect are followed, then the sentence is judged to be grammatical. [3] In contrast, an ungrammatical sentence is one that violates the rules of the given language variety.

Linguists use grammaticality judgements to investigate the syntactic structure of sentences. Generative linguists are largely of the opinion that for native speakers of natural languages, grammaticality is a matter of linguistic intuition, and reflects the innate linguistic competence of speakers. Therefore, generative linguists attempt to predict grammaticality judgements exhaustively.

Grammaticality judgements are largely based on an individual's linguistic intuition, and it has been pointed out that humans have the ability to understand as well as produce an infinitely large number of new sentences that have never been seen before. [4] This allows us to accurately judge a sentence as grammatical or ungrammatical, even if it is a completely novel sentence.

Background

Criteria that determine grammaticality

According to Chomsky, a speaker's grammaticality judgement is based on two factors:

  1. A native speaker's linguistic competence, which is the knowledge that they have of their language, allows them to easily judge whether a sentence is grammatical or ungrammatical based on intuitive introspection. For this reason, such judgements are sometimes called introspective grammaticality judgements.
  2. The context in which the sentence was uttered.

Criteria that do not determine grammaticality

In his study of grammaticality in the 1950s, Chomsky identified three criteria which cannot be used to determine whether a sentence is grammatical: [5]

  1. Whether the sentence is included in a corpus,
  2. Whether the sentence is meaningful,
  3. Whether the sentence is statistically probable.

To illustrate this point, Chomsky created the nonsensical sentence in (1), which does not occur in any corpus, is not meaningful, and is not statistically probable. However, the form of this sentence is judged to be grammatical by many native speakers of English. Such grammaticality judgements reflect the fact that the structure of sentence (1) obeys the rules of English grammar. This can be seen by comparing sentence (1) with sentence (2). Both sentences have the same structure, and both are grammatically well-formed.

(1) Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. (Chomsky 1957: 17) (2) Harmless young children sleep quietly.

Sentence (1) is grammatical yet infelicitous, because the pragmatics of the verb 'sleep' cannot be expressed as an action carried out in a furious manner. Hence, a native speaker would rate this sentence as odd, or unacceptable, because the meaning does not make sense according to the English lexicon. [6]

Tree structure of the sentence "Colourless green ideas sleep furiously." Colourless Tree.png
Tree structure of the sentence "Colourless green ideas sleep furiously."

Thus, for Chomsky a grammatical string is not necessarily a meaningful one. However, speakers can understand nonsensical strings by means of natural intonation. In addition, non-meaningful but grammatical sentences are often recalled more easily than ungrammatical sentences. [7]

Grammaticality versus acceptability

When Chomsky introduced the concept of grammaticality, he also introduced the concept of acceptability. Chomsky has emphasized that "the notion of 'acceptable' is not to be confused with 'grammatical.'" [3]

For linguists such as Hopper, [8] who stress the role of social learning in contrast to innate knowledge of language, there has been a gradual abandonment of talk about grammaticality in favour of acceptability.

Acceptability is: [7] [6]

  1. A sentence that is consciously considered acceptable by both the speaker and hearer,
  2. A natural, appropriate, and meaningful sentence within a context,
  3. Related to a speaker's performance, and based on how a language would actually be used in a real situation,
  4. Speaker-oriented, depending on what speakers consider appropriate.

On the other hand, grammaticality is: [7] [6]

  1. A linguistic ‘string’ that follows a set of given rules,
  2. A grammatical utterance that is not necessarily meaningful,
  3. Based on a native speaker's competence or knowledge of a language,
  4. Defined by the possible outputs a particular grammar can generate.

In experiments, grammaticality and acceptability are often confused, but speakers may be asked to give their 'grammatical judgments' instead of 'acceptability judgments'. The general assumption is that a native speaker's grammar produces grammatical strings and that the speaker can also judge whether the strings are acceptable in their language. [7]

Gradience in acceptability

The traditional categorical interpretation of grammaticality is that a sentence is either grammatical or ungrammatical. Many modern linguists, including Sprouse, [9] support this idea.

Acceptability judgments, on the other hand, fall in a continuous spectrum. [9] [7] Sentences may either be clearly acceptable or clearly unacceptable, but there are also sentences that are partially acceptable. Hence, according to Sprouse, the difference between grammaticality and acceptability is that grammatical knowledge is categorical, but acceptability is a gradient scale. [9]

Linguists may use words, numbers, or typographical symbols such as question marks (?) or asterisks (*) to represent the judged acceptability of a linguistic string. During a judgment task, the speaker may report the acceptability of a sentence as acceptable, marginally acceptable, unacceptable, terrible, good, etc. Degrees of acceptability can also be represented by symbols such as ?, ??, *, **, or on a scale of 0-?-*-**, with 0 being acceptable and ** being unacceptable. [10] On a seven-point scale, speakers can rate sentences from 1 (least acceptable) to 7 (most acceptable). [11] 

(3) *** The Sally hugged him the Thomas (4) ** The Sally hugged him Thomas (5) * The Sally hugged Thomas (6) ??? Which the friend Thomas has painted a picture of? (7) ?? Which friend Thomas had painted a picture of? (8) ? Which friend has Thomas painted the picture of?

Note that examples (3)-(8) are open to interpretation as judgement is based entirely on intuition, and determination of grammaticality is dependent on one's theory of what the grammar is. Therefore, different individuals may assign the same sentence different degrees of acceptability. Some linguists believe that the informal use of these symbols is problematic because the exact meaning of the symbols have never been properly defined, and their usage is riddled with inconsistencies. [12] [13] [14]

Frequency affects acceptability

Acceptability is about the actual use of a speaker's language in concrete situations. Since it is speaker-oriented, it is possible to find instances of sentences that are assumed to be acceptable but ungrammatical. [6]

(9) But if this ever-changing world in which we live in

— Paul McCartney, Live and Let Die, 1973

Example (9) is ungrammatical, because the preposition in is copied. The rules of English prepositions only allow sentences such as (10a) and (10b), which show preposition pied-piping structure in (10a), and preposition stranding structure in (10b). [15] Sentences (9) and (11c) are ungrammatical but acceptable because of the frequency with which people hear the structure. [6] 

(10) a. This world [in which] we live [ __ ] ...  b. This world [which] we live in [ __ ] ...  c. *This world [in which] we live in [ __ ] ...

Although (10c) is acceptable due to a frequency affect, sentences with preposition copying are judged to be ungrammatical, as shown in (11c).

(11) a. This table [on which] I put the book [ __ ] ...  b. This table [which] I put the book on [ __ ] ...  c. *This table [on which] I put the book on [ __ ] ...

Other factors that determine acceptability

The prevailing models on grammaticality since Chomsky postulated that the acceptability of sentences is a scale, with clearly acceptable on one side, clearly unacceptable on the other, and all manner of ranges of partial acceptability in between. To explain the scale of partial acceptability, linguists have said that phenomena other than grammatical knowledge—such as semantic plausibility, working memory limitations, etc.—account for speakers reporting acceptability on a scale. However, there are a few exceptions to this trend, including those who claim that "strength of violation" plays a role in grammaticality judgements. Examples of linguists [16] of this persuasion include Huang's [17] proposal that ECP violations are stronger than Subjacency violations, Chomsky's [18] proposal that each barrier crossed leads to lower acceptability, and Optimality Theory (esp. Keller). [19] [20] 

(12) Subjacency *[CP Whatj does [ TP Sue wonder [CP when I broke ___j]]]? (Sportiche 2014: 287) (13) Barrier *Herselfj likes Maryj's mother

Subjacency says that you cannot relate two positions across two bounding nodes. In (12), we see that the movement of the wh-expression 'what' was moved past a Complementizer Phrase (CP) and a Tense Phrase (TP) to get to the specifier position of CP, thus this phrase is ungrammatical.

Within the past twenty years however, there has been a major shift in linguists' understanding of intermediate levels of acceptability. This is due to the increasing use of experimental methods to measure acceptability, making it possible to detect subtle differences along a scale of acceptability. [19]

Norm-based evaluation

Prescriptive grammar of controlled natural languages defines grammaticality as a matter of explicit consensus. On this view, to consider a string as grammatical, it should conform with a set of norms. These norms are usually based on conventional rules that form a part of a higher or literary register for a given language. For some languages, a group of experts are appointed to define and regularly update these rules. [7]

Use of grammaticality judgments

Research methods of sentence processing

There are several methods that successfully investigate sentence processing, some of which include eye tracking, self-paced listening and reading, or cross-modal priming. The most productive method however, is real-time grammaticality judgements. A grammaticality judgement is a test which involves showing participants sentences that are either grammatical or ungrammatical. The participant must decide whether or not they find the sentences to be grammatical as quickly as possible. Grammaticality is cross-linguistic, so this method has therefore been used on a wide variety of languages. [21]

Computer-assisted language instruction

Catt [22] and Catt & Hirst [23] created a model of grammaticality based around a computer program developed for computer-assisted language instruction which was designed to perform automatic error diagnosis and correction of ungrammaticalities produced by second-language learners. The program classified errors made by language-learners in their sentences as being due to errors in phrase structure, transformations, morphology, verb subcategorization, or by the languages-learners translating their primary language directly into the language they are learning. The program worked primarily by utilizing a parser which consisted of constraints which, if a first parsing attempt failed, could be selectively relaxed. Thus, for a given parse, the constraints which were relaxed indicated the precise nature and location of ungrammaticality. [14]

Assessing first language (L1) competence

There have been experiments conducted in order to test how early speakers gain the ability to judge grammaticality in their native language. In an experiment by Cairns et al., preschool children aged 4–6 were presented sentences such as (14) and (15) orally. (To make sure that the meaning of the sentences was clear to the children, sentences were enacted with toys.) While sentence (14) is well-formed in the adult grammar, sentence (15) is not, as indicated by the asterisk (*). The source of the ill-formedness is that the verb hug is a transitive verb and so must have a direct object, namely something or someone who receives the action of the verb. Sentence (15) is missing the receiver of hug.

(14) The kitten hugged the pig. [Carin 2006: 215] (15) *The zebra hugged. [Carin 2006: 215]

The results of this study show that the earliest age at which children can discriminate well-formed from ill-formed sentences, as well as correct these, is at 6 years. [24] During the critical period between 4 and 6 years old, there is a significant increase in the accuracy of grammaticality judgments, since metalinguistic skill is in critical development; the judgment relies on the psycholinguistic ability of the child to access their internalized grammar and to compute whether it can or cannot generate the target sentence. [24] This ability to judge the grammaticality of sentences seems to develop in children well after basic grammar skills have been established, and is related to early reading acquisition—acquisitionists generally believe that the ability to make grammaticality judgments is a measure of syntactic awareness. [24]

Assessing second language (L2) competence

Grammaticality judgment tasks can also be used to assess the competence of language learners. Late learners of L2 perform worse on grammaticality judgment tasks or tests than native speakers or early acquirers, in that L2 learners are more likely to accept a sentence that is ungrammatical as grammatical. After the critical period, age of acquisition is no longer supposed to have an effect, and native-like performance is no longer supposed to be achievable. However, the idea that there is a critical period for the acquisition of syntactic competence, which is reflected by the ability to assess the well-formedness of a sentence, is controversial. On one view, biological or language-specific mechanisms become nonfunctional after a certain age. On another view, decreased L2 learning ability with age is not inevitable, and can be explained by factors such as motivation, learning environment, pressure, and time commitment. Although there is evidence that supports the claim that speakers outside the L2 mastery age range are not capable of acquiring native-like mastery of a language, there is also evidence supporting the opposite, as well as evidence for young learners not mastering an L2. [25]

General processing problems, rather than a deficit in some syntax specific process or module, offer a viable explanation for populations that exhibit poor grammatical performance. Performance on L2 grammaticality judgments might be partially due to variable accessibility to and use of relevant grammatical knowledge. Difficulties in basic level cognitive processing are due to:

  • low L2 memory capacity
  • poor L2 decoding ability
  • slow L2 processing speed

These issues have been tied to grammatical processing performance by testing native speakers of English on the same tasks under stressful conditions: there is shown to be difficulty in grammatical agreement when memory capacity is curtailed, important cues in the language when given noisy input, and processing important structures when not given enough time to process input. This shows that knowledge cannot always be automatically and consistently applied under stressful situations without having processing difficulties. However, these issues are not necessarily independent of each other, as low decoding ability of structure could affect processing speed. Overall, individual differences in L2 working memory and decoding ability are correlated to grammaticality judgment accuracy and latencies. However, there is no correlation between speed of processing measure and grammaticality judgment performance, age of arrival correlates with syntactic mastery, and knowledge of vocabulary probably drives grammaticality performance. [26] [27]

Age for decrease of L2 grammaticality performance varies from early childhood to late adolescence, depending on the combinations of the speaker's first and second language. The age of acquisition at which L2 learners are worse than native speakers depends on how dissimilar the L1 and L2 are on phonological and grammatical level. For example, Chinese/English bilinguals at 7 years old perform just as well as Spanish/English bilinguals at 16 years old. [28] [29] This is due to the fact that a grammatical construction on an L2 that has a parallel structure in an L1 would impose less processing demand than one that does not have a parallel, causing a poorer performance on language structure.

There is evidence for late L2 learners generally having issues with plurals and past tense, and not so many issues with Subject-Verb-Object testing, in which they show native-like results; there is better performance on Yes/No as well as Wh- questions than on articles and past tense. [26]

There is data supporting high-performing late learners well beyond the critical period: in an experiment testing grammaticality by J. L. McDonald, 7 out of 50 L2 English late-learner subjects had scores within range of native speakers. [26] The results are linked to how individual differences in L2 memory capacity, decoding, or processing speed affect processing resources to automatically apply the relevant grammatical knowledge.

Reliability of L2 grammaticality judgments

The matter of reliability of L2 grammaticality judgments is an ongoing issue in the research field of second language acquisition. Undeniably, the case of second-language judgments involves participants to make judgments concerning their knowledge of a language system that is not necessarily complete compared to the knowledge of their first language. In an experiment, participants may encounter sentences beyond their current knowledge, resulting in guesswork. To minimize guessing, it is up to the linguists and researchers to select sentences that would better reflect a learner's knowledge of L2. [30]

Confounding factors in grammaticality judgements

Handedness

Studies have been conducted which explored the degree to which left or right handedness plays a role in idiolectal variation of grammaticality judgements, and have found that those with left-handed immediate family members, also referred to as familial sinistrality, perform differently than participants with only right handed family members. [31] [32] They suggest that those with familial sinistrality are less sensitive to violations of sentence structure likely due to a correlation between this group and a less localized language module in the brain. [32] Cowart [31] conducted a study specifically testing for the effects of familial sinistrality in grammatical judgement tasks. Using a 4-point scale, the experiment asked participants to judge sentences that followed the following model:

(17) a. What did the scientist criticize Max's proof of?   b. What did the scientist criticize a proof of?  c. What did the scientist criticize the proof of?   d. Why did the scientist criticize Max's proof of the theorem?

Examples (17a-c) are structural violations, (17a) violates the Specified Subject Condition, and (17b-c) violate Subjacency, while (17d) is a grammatical control sentence. It was found that since the violations were structural in nature, participants with familial sinistrality were less sensitive to violations in such as the ones found(17a-c) while (17d) showed no variation between participant groups. In a similar study Bever, Carrithers, & Townsend [32] found evidence that support Cowart's findings, also showing that no judgement differences were found when comparing groups across variables such as age, sex, and verbal SAT score.

Repetition

There have been numerous studies addressing the effect of repetition on grammaticality judgements in experimental contexts. [4] [33] [34] Repetition experiments are conducted by asking participants to give scaled ratings of sentences on their level of grammaticality. In the first phase, sentences are rated one at a time as a baseline measure of grammaticality level. In the repetition phase, participants rate each sentence after it has been displayed numerous times continuously, with short pauses between each repetition. They have generally found that repetition of a string significantly decreases participants grammaticality ratings of both grammatical and ungrammatical sentences. [4] [33] Two possible factors have been speculated to cause this affect, [14] the first attributes this phenomenon to satiation, the phenomenon of prolonged repetition leading to illusory changes in perception. The second is that changes in participants’ judgement process occurred as a result of repetitions. Repetition effects have been shown to not be present when sentences are displayed along with a preceding sentence to give the string context. [33]

Yes/no responses

When researchers interpret a yes/no response on grammaticality, they need to take into account of what the participants are responding to. The speaker could be rejecting the sentence for reasons other than its grammaticality, including the context or meaning of the sentence, a particular word choice, or other factors. For example, consider this ungrammatical sentence: [35] 

(16) The elephant are jumping.

A participant, whether an adult or a child, may reject this sentence because elephants do not jump. To avoid this misinterpretation, researchers need to clarify with the participants regarding the meaning of yes and no responses. [35]

Grammaticality illusion

Studies have shown that when native speakers judge ungrammatical sentences to be more acceptable than their grammatical counterpart, grammaticality illusion has occurred. [36] [37] Consider Frazier's example: [38] 

(18) The apartment that the maid who the service had sent over was cleaning every week was well decorated. (19) *The apartment that the maid who the service had sent over was well decorated.

The English grammar allows structures such as sentence (18), while sentence (19) is not allowed. Notice that sentence (19) is missing the verb phrase "was cleaning every week."

In several studies, [39] [40] participants carried out offline and online tasks. In the offline task, [39] the participants rated their comprehension of sentences on a five-point scale in a questionnaire. The result revealed that the ungrammatical sentences were rated as good as or even better than grammatical sentences.

In the online study, [40] participants did a self-paced reading (SPR) task. The sentence appears on a computer monitor word-by-word. After each word, participants were asked to choose if the sentence is still grammatical so far. Then they would go on to rate the sentence from 1 "perfectly good English" to 7 "really bad English." The result showed that ungrammatical sentences were rated to be better than the grammatical ones.

Cross-linguistic differences

To find out if grammaticality illusion also occurs in other languages, linguists have carried out similar experiments with different languages. [36] [37]

Vasishth [37] hypothesized that different word order could be a factor of grammaticality illusion. English sentences follow the order of subject, verb, object (SVO) while both German and Dutch have the subject, object, verb (SOV) order. Based on the results, German and Dutch participants do not show the effect of the illusion. However, if they were shown the sentences in English, they also show the illusion.

Examples of grammatical and ungrammatical sentences in German: [36] 

(20) Der Anwalt, den der Zeuge, den der Spion betrachtete, schnitt, überzeugte den Richter. (21) *Der Anwalt, den der Zeuge, den der Spion betrachtete, überzeugte den Richter.

Sentence (20) is grammatical, whereas sentence (21) is ungrammatical.

Possible causes

Gibson and Thomas [39] concludes from their offline acceptability ratings that working-memory overload causes native speakers to prefer the ungrammatical sentence. The shorter, ungrammatical sentences were easier to process and made more sense. The grammatical sentence with several embedded clauses, such as "was cleaning every week", may require high-memory load, making it difficult for the participants to comprehend the sentence.

Studies of grammaticality illusion in other languages such as Dutch and German [37] suggest that different language structures prevent participants from making incorrect judgments. For example, a three-verb sequence in subordinate clauses is more common in German or Dutch than in English. As a result, German or Dutch participants are well able to correctly rule out the ungrammatical sentences with the missing verb phrase.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Language</span> Structured system of communication

Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and written forms, and may also be conveyed through sign languages. Human language is characterized by its cultural and historical diversity, with significant variations observed between cultures and across time. Human languages possess the properties of productivity and displacement, which enable the creation of an infinite number of sentences, and the ability to refer to objects, events, and ideas that are not immediately present in the discourse. The use of human language relies on social convention and is acquired through learning.

In linguistics, syntax is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituency), agreement, the nature of crosslinguistic variation, and the relationship between form and meaning (semantics). There are numerous approaches to syntax that differ in their central assumptions and goals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Universal grammar</span> Theory of the biological component of the language faculty

Universal grammar (UG), in modern linguistics, is the theory of the innate biological component of the language faculty, usually credited to Noam Chomsky. The basic postulate of UG is that there are innate constraints on what the grammar of a possible human language could be. When linguistic stimuli are received in the course of language acquisition, children then adopt specific syntactic rules that conform to UG. The advocates of this theory emphasize and partially rely on the poverty of the stimulus (POS) argument and the existence of some universal properties of natural human languages. However, the latter has not been firmly established, as some linguists have argued languages are so diverse that such universality is rare, and the theory of universal grammar remains controversial among linguists.

In linguistics, transformational grammar (TG) or transformational-generative grammar (TGG) is part of the theory of generative grammar, especially of natural languages. It considers grammar to be a system of rules that generate exactly those combinations of words that form grammatical sentences in a given language and involves the use of defined operations to produce new sentences from existing ones.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Code-switching</span> Changing between languages during a single conversation

In linguistics, code-switching or language alternation occurs when a speaker alternates between two or more languages, or language varieties, in the context of a single conversation or situation. Code-switching is different from plurilingualism in that plurilingualism refers to the ability of an individual to use multiple languages, while code-switching is the act of using multiple languages together. Multilinguals sometimes use elements of multiple languages when conversing with each other. Thus, code-switching is the use of more than one linguistic variety in a manner consistent with the syntax and phonology of each variety. Code-switching may happen between sentences, sentence fragments, words, or individual morphemes. However, some linguists consider the borrowing of words or morphemes from another language to be different from other types of code-switching. Likewise, code-switching can occur when there is a change in the environment one is speaking. Code-switching can happen in the context of speaking a different language or switching the verbiage to match that of the audience. There are many ways in which code-switching is employed, such as when speakers are unable to express themselves adequately in a single language or to signal an attitude towards something. Several theories have been developed to explain the reasoning behind code-switching from sociological and linguistic perspectives.

A garden-path sentence is a grammatically correct sentence that starts in such a way that a reader's most likely interpretation will be incorrect; the reader is lured into a parse that turns out to be a dead end or yields a clearly unintended meaning. "Garden path" refers to the saying "to be led down [or up] the garden path", meaning to be deceived, tricked, or seduced. In A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926), Fowler describes such sentences as unwittingly laying a "false scent".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Generative grammar</span> Theory in linguistics

Generative grammar, or generativism, is a linguistic theory that regards linguistics as the study of a hypothesised innate grammatical structure. It is a biological or biologistic modification of earlier structuralist theories of linguistics, deriving from logical syntax and glossematics. Generative grammar considers grammar as a system of rules that generates exactly those combinations of words that form grammatical sentences in a given language. It is a system of explicit rules that may apply repeatedly to generate an indefinite number of sentences which can be as long as one wants them to be. The difference from structural and functional models is that the object is base-generated within the verb phrase in generative grammar. This purportedly cognitive structure is thought of as being a part of a universal grammar, a syntactic structure which is caused by a genetic mutation in humans.

Second-language acquisition (SLA), sometimes called second-language learning—otherwise referred to as L2acquisition, is the process by which people learn a second language. Second-language acquisition is also the scientific discipline devoted to studying that process. The field of second-language acquisition is regarded by some but not everybody as a sub-discipline of applied linguistics but also receives research attention from a variety of other disciplines, such as psychology and education.

<i>Syntactic Structures</i> Book by Noam Chomsky

Syntactic Structures is an important work in linguistics by American linguist Noam Chomsky, originally published in 1957. A short monograph of about a hundred pages, it is recognized as one of the most significant and influential linguistic studies of the 20th century. It contains the now-famous sentence "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously", which Chomsky offered as an example of a grammatically correct sentence that has no discernible meaning, thus arguing for the independence of syntax from semantics.

Poverty of the stimulus (POS) is the controversial argument from linguistics that children are not exposed to rich enough data within their linguistic environments to acquire every feature of their language. This is considered evidence contrary to the empiricist idea that language is learned solely through experience. The claim is that the sentences children hear while learning a language do not contain the information needed to develop a thorough understanding of the grammar of the language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Biolinguistics</span> Study of the biology and evolution of language

Biolinguistics can be defined as the study of biology and the evolution of language. It is highly interdisciplinary as it is related to various fields such as biology, linguistics, psychology, anthropology, mathematics, and neurolinguistics to explain the formation of language. It seeks to yield a framework by which we can understand the fundamentals of the faculty of language. This field was first introduced by Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, professor of Linguistics and Cognitive Science at the University of Arizona. It was first introduced in 1971, at an international meeting at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The term linguistic performance was used by Noam Chomsky in 1960 to describe "the actual use of language in concrete situations". It is used to describe both the production, sometimes called parole, as well as the comprehension of language. Performance is defined in opposition to "competence"; the latter describes the mental knowledge that a speaker or listener has of language.

In linguistics, well-formedness is the quality of a clause, word, or other linguistic element that conforms to the grammar of the language of which it is a part. Well-formed words or phrases are grammatical, meaning they obey all relevant rules of grammar. In contrast, a form that violates some grammar rule is ill-formed and does not constitute part of the language.

A resumptive pronoun is a personal pronoun appearing in a relative clause, which restates the antecedent after a pause or interruption, as in This is the girli that whenever it rains shei cries.

<i>Aspects of the Theory of Syntax</i> 1965 book by Noam Chomsky

Aspects of the Theory of Syntax is a book on linguistics written by American linguist Noam Chomsky, first published in 1965. In Aspects, Chomsky presented a deeper, more extensive reformulation of transformational generative grammar (TGG), a new kind of syntactic theory that he had introduced in the 1950s with the publication of his first book, Syntactic Structures. Aspects is widely considered to be the foundational document and a proper book-length articulation of Chomskyan theoretical framework of linguistics. It presented Chomsky's epistemological assumptions with a view to establishing linguistic theory-making as a formal discipline comparable to physical sciences, i.e. a domain of inquiry well-defined in its nature and scope. From a philosophical perspective, it directed mainstream linguistic research away from behaviorism, constructivism, empiricism and structuralism and towards mentalism, nativism, rationalism and generativism, respectively, taking as its main object of study the abstract, inner workings of the human mind related to language acquisition and production.

<i>Lectures on Government and Binding</i> 1981 book by Noam Chomsky

Lectures on Government and Binding: The Pisa Lectures (LGB) is a book by the linguist Noam Chomsky, published in 1981. It is based on the lectures Chomsky gave at the GLOW conference and workshop held at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy, in 1979. In this book, Chomsky presented his government and binding theory of syntax. It had great influence on the syntactic research in early 1980s, especially among the linguists working within the transformational grammar framework.

The main purpose of theories of second-language acquisition (SLA) is to shed light on how people who already know one language learn a second language. The field of second-language acquisition involves various contributions, such as linguistics, sociolinguistics, psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, and education. These multiple fields in second-language acquisition can be grouped as four major research strands: (a) linguistic dimensions of SLA, (b) cognitive dimensions of SLA, (c) socio-cultural dimensions of SLA, and (d) instructional dimensions of SLA. While the orientation of each research strand is distinct, they are in common in that they can guide us to find helpful condition to facilitate successful language learning. Acknowledging the contributions of each perspective and the interdisciplinarity between each field, more and more second language researchers are now trying to have a bigger lens on examining the complexities of second language acquisition.

In applied linguistics, an error is an unintended deviation from the immanent rules of a language variety made by a second language learner. Such errors result from the learner's lack of knowledge of the correct rules of the target language variety. A significant distinction is generally made between errors and mistakes which are not treated the same from a linguistic viewpoint. The study of learners' errors has been the main area of investigation by linguists in the history of second-language acquisition research.

In linguistics, the term near-native speakers is used to describe speakers who have achieved "levels of proficiency that cannot be distinguished from native levels in everyday spoken communication and only become apparent through detailed linguistic analyses" (p. 484) in their second language or foreign languages. Analysis of native and near-native speakers indicates that they differ in their underlying grammar and intuition, meaning that they do not interpret grammatical contrasts the same way. However, this divergence typically does not impact a near-native speaker's regular usage of the language.

In language acquisition, negative evidence is information concerning what is not possible in a language. Importantly, negative evidence does not show what is grammatical; that is positive evidence. In theory, negative evidence would help eliminate ungrammatical constructions by revealing what is not grammatical.

References

  1. ↑ McArthur, Tom; Lam-McArthur, Jacqueline; Fontaine, Lise (2018). "The Oxford Companion to the English Language". Oxford Reference. doi:10.1093/acref/9780199661282.001.0001. ISBN   9780199661282.
  2. ↑ Millar, Jim (2011). A critical introduction to syntax. New York: Continuum International Group. p. 119. ISBN   978-0-8264-9703-1.
  3. 1 2 Chomsky, Noam (1965). Aspects of the theory of syntax. Massachusetts: Cambridge: M.I.T. Press.
  4. 1 2 3 Nagata, H (1988). "The relativity of linguistic intuition: The effect of repetition on grammaticality judgments". Journal of Psycholinguistic Research. 17 (1): 1–17. doi:10.1007/bf01067178. S2CID   143737753.
  5. ↑ Chomsky, (1957): "Syntactic Structures", The Hague/Paris:Mouton
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 Bauer, "Grammaticality, acceptability, possible words and large corpora", 2014
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Chapman, Siobhan, and Routledge, Christopher, "Key Ideas in Linguistics and the Philosophy of Language", 2009
  8. ↑ Hopper, Paul (1987): Emergent grammar. In: Aske, Jon et al. (ed.) (1987): General session and parasession on grammar and cognition. Proceedings of the thirteenth annual meeting. Berkeley: BLS: 139–155.
  9. 1 2 3 Sprouse, J (2007). "Continuous acceptability, categorical grammaticality, and experimental syntax". Biolinguistics. 1: 123–134. doi: 10.5964/bioling.8597 . S2CID   13058743.
  10. ↑ Bard, Ellen Gurman; Robertson, Dan; Sorace, Antonella (March 1996). "Magnitude Estimation of Linguistic Acceptability". Language. 72 (1): 32. doi:10.2307/416793. ISSN   0097-8507. JSTOR   416793.
  11. ↑ Sprouse, Jon (2013). "Acceptability Judgments - Linguistics - Oxford Bibliographies - obo". www.oxfordbibliographies.com. doi:10.1093/obo/9780199772810-0097 . Retrieved 2018-12-11.
  12. ↑ Bader, M.; Haussler, J. (2010). "Toward a model of grammaticality judgments". Journal of Linguistics. 46 (2): 273–330. doi:10.1017/s0022226709990260. S2CID   145312924.
  13. ↑ Ross, John Robert (1979). "Where's English?" . In Fillmore, Charles; Kempler, Daniel; Wang, William (eds.). Individual Differences in Language Ability and Language Behavior. New York: Academic Press. pp.  127–163. doi:10.1016/B978-0-12-255950-1.50014-7. ISBN   9780122559501.
  14. 1 2 3 Schütze, C. T., (2016). The empirical base of linguistics: Grammaticality judgments and linguistic methodology. Language Science Press. ISBN   9783946234036 OCLC  945783708.
  15. ↑ RADFORD, ANDREW; FELSER, CLAUDIA; BOXELL, OLIVER (2012-10-22). "Preposition copying and pruning in present-day English" (PDF). English Language and Linguistics. 16 (3): 403–426. doi:10.1017/s1360674312000172. ISSN   1360-6743. S2CID   120241363.
  16. ↑ Sprouse, "Continuous Acceptability, Categorical Grammaticality, and Experimental Syntax", 2007
  17. ↑ Huang, Cheng-Teh James (1982). Logical relations in Chinese and the theory of grammar (Thesis thesis). Massachusetts Institute of Technology. hdl:1721.1/15215.
  18. ↑ Noam., Chomsky (1986). Barriers. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. ISBN   978-0262530675. OCLC   12969567.
  19. 1 2 Keller, Frank (2000). Gradience in Grammar: Experimental and Computational Aspects of Degrees of Grammaticality (Ph.D. thesis). Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh. doi:10.7282/T3GQ6WMS – via Rutgers University.
  20. ↑ Keller, F. (2003). A psychophysical law for linguistic judgments. eScholarship, University of California.
  21. ↑ Kail, M.; Lemaire, P.; Lecacheur, M. (2012). "Online grammaticality judgments in french young and older adults". Experimental Aging Research. 38 (2): 186–207. doi:10.1080/0361073x.2012.660031. PMID   22404540. S2CID   8675735.
  22. ↑ Catt, Mark (1988). "Intelligent diagnosis of ungrammaticality in computer-assisted language instruction" (PDF). Technical Report CSRI-218.
  23. ↑ Catt, Mark; Hirst, Graeme (1990). "An intelligent CALI system for grammatical error diagnosis". Computer Assisted Language Learning. 3: 3–26. doi:10.1080/0958822900030102.
  24. 1 2 3 Cairns; et al. (2006). "Development of a Metalinguistic Skill: Judging the Grammaticality of Sentences". Communication Disorders Quarterly: 213. doi:10.1177/15257401060270040401. S2CID   146193377.
  25. ↑ McDonald, Janet L. (2000). "Grammaticality judgments in a second language: Influences of age of acquisition and native language". Applied Psycholinguistics. 21 (3): 395–423. doi:10.1017/s0142716400003064. S2CID   144005853.
  26. 1 2 3 McDonald, Janet L. (2006). "Beyond the critical period: Processing-based explanations for poor grammaticality judgment performance by late second language learners". Journal of Memory and Language. 55 (3): 381–401. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2006.06.006.
  27. ↑ Mackey, Alison; Abbuhl, Rebekha; Gass, Susan M. (2009), "Interactionist approach", The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition, Routledge, doi:10.4324/9780203808184.ch1, ISBN   9780203808184
  28. ↑ Johnson, J. S.; Newport, E. L. (1989). "Critical period effects in second language learning: The influence of maturational state on the acquisition of English as a second language". Cognitive Psychology. 21 (1): 60–99. doi:10.1016/0010-0285(89)90003-0. PMID   2920538. S2CID   15842890.
  29. ↑ Birdsong, D.; Molis, M. (2001). "On the evidence for maturational constraints in second-language acquisition". Journal of Memory and Language. 44 (2): 235–249. doi:10.1006/jmla.2000.2750.
  30. ↑ Tarone, E. E.; Cohen, A. D.; Gass, S. M. (2013). Research methodology in second-language acquisition. Taylor and Francis. pp. 303–320. ISBN   9781135445348.
  31. 1 2 Cowart, Wayne (1989). "Notes on the biology of syntactic processing". Journal of Psycholinguistic Research. 18 (1): 89–103. doi:10.1007/bf01069049. ISSN   0090-6905. PMID   2647963. S2CID   20011906.
  32. 1 2 3 Bever, Thomas G.; Carrithers, Caroline; Townsend, David J. (1987). "A tale of two brains, or the sinistral quasimodularity of language". Proceedings of the Ninth Annual Cognitive Science Society Meetings.: 764–773.
  33. 1 2 3 Nagata, Hiroshi (1989). "Repetition Effect in Judgments of Grammaticality of Sentences: Examination with Ungrammatical Sentences". Perceptual and Motor Skills. 68 (1): 275–282. doi:10.2466/pms.1989.68.1.275. ISSN   0031-5125. S2CID   144626702.
  34. ↑ CARROLL, JOHN M. (1979). "Complex compounds: phrasal embedding in lexical structures". Linguistics. 17 (9–10). doi:10.1515/ling.1979.17.9-10.863. ISSN   0024-3949. S2CID   145789336.
  35. 1 2 Lust, Barbara; Blume, Maria (2016), "8. The Grammaticality Judgment Task", Research Methods in Language AcquisitionPrinciples, Procedures, and Practices, De Gruyter Mouton, doi:10.1037/15968-009, ISBN   9783110415339
  36. 1 2 3 Vasishth, Shravan; Suckow, Katja; Lewis, Richard L.; Kern, Sabine (2010). "Short-term forgetting in sentence comprehension: Crosslinguistic evidence from verb-final structures". Language and Cognitive Processes. 25 (4): 533–567. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.492.8407 . doi:10.1080/01690960903310587. ISSN   0169-0965. S2CID   17553104.
  37. 1 2 3 4 Frank, Stefan L.; Trompenaars, Thijs; Vasishth, Shravan (2016). "Cross-Linguistic Differences in Processing Double-Embedded Relative Clauses: Working-Memory Constraints or Language Statistics?". Cognitive Science. 40 (3): 554–578. doi:10.1111/cogs.12247. hdl: 2066/149288 . ISSN   1551-6709. PMID   25943302.
  38. ↑ Frazier, Lyn (1985). "Syntactic complexity". Natural language parsing. pp. 129–189. doi:10.1017/cbo9780511597855.005. ISBN   9780511597855 . Retrieved 2018-12-16.{{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)
  39. 1 2 3 Gibson, E.; Thomas, J. (1999). "Memory Limitations and Structural Forgetting: The Perception of Complex Ungrammatical Sentences as Grammatical". Language and Cognitive Processes. 14 (3): 225–248. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.486.7065 . doi:10.1080/016909699386293.
  40. 1 2 Christiansen, Morten H.; MacDonald, Maryellen C. (2009). "A Usage-Based Approach to Recursion in Sentence Processing". Language Learning. 59 (s1): 126–161. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9922.2009.00538.x. ISSN   1467-9922.

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.