'totally novel sentence'

[Jon Aske]

I think nobody would disagree with the claim that we all learned in
Linguistics 101 that the number of possible sentences in a language is
infinite.  On the other hand, there is no doubt that a lot of the
sentences that are uttered by speakers are not novel and that
collocations of all types abound, as Fillmore and many others have
rightly emphasized.

I wish somebody would finally listen to Bolinger's suggestion (see
below) and actually work out some plausible estimates for the degree
of novelty that is actually found in the speech, as opposed to the
theoretical upper limit.  Now, that would be an interesting
psycholinguistic finding, I would think.  (Perhaps someone has already
speculated about this or done actual empirical research on this that I
am not aware of).

Anyway, here is the quote that I am so fond of:

"The distinctive trait of generative grammar is its aim to be an
ACTIVE portrait of grammatical processes.  It departs from traditional
grammar, which consists chiefly in the MAPPING of constructions.  How
much actual invention, on this model, really occurs in speech we shall
know only when we have the means to discover how much originality
there is in utterance.  At present we have no way of telling the
extent to which a sentence like I went home is the result of
invention, and the extent to which it is a result of repetition,
countless speakers before us having already said it and transmitted it
to us in toto.  Is grammar something where speakers 'produce' (i.e.
originate) constructions, or where they 'reach for' them, from a
preestablished inventory, when the occasion presents itself?  If the
latter, then the MATCHING technique of traditional grammar is the
better picture--from this point of view, constructions are not
produced one from another or from a stock of abstract components, but
filed side by side, and their interrelationships are not derivative
but mnemonic--it is easier to reach for something that has been stored
in an appropriate place.  Probably grammar is both of these things,
but meanwhile the transformationist cannot afford to slight the
spectrum of utterances which are first of all the raw material of his
generalization s and last of all the test of their accuracy."
(Bolinger 1961:381, Syntactic blends and other matters, A sort of
review of R.B. Lees's Multiply Ambiguous Adjectival Constructions in
English.)

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Jon Aske -- Jon.Aske at salem.mass.edu -- aske at earthlink.net
Department of Foreign Languages, Salem State College
Salem, Massachusetts 01970 - http://home.earthlink.net/~aske/
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Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end. --Igor
Stravinsky (1882-1971).