from a review...

[G Tsoulas]

It should perhaps be pointed out that Chomsky actually said that it
would be pointless to identify the set of sentences with convergent
derivations with the set of `grammatical' or `well formed' sentences,
simply because the latter are not well defined classes (see for example
the discussion around the notion "degrees of grammaticalness" in Aspects)
. Now, does anyone really disagree with this?  Personnally at least, I
really
don't see what's that got to do with the `rules' of scientific inquiry,
evaluation of theoretical proposals (well, ok, but see below), or what
Paul Postal accepts as counterexamples to his theory.  After all, what
exactly is the formal characterisation of the notion 'grammatical
sentence' beyond the one that says that  it is a sentence generated by the
grammar (has a convergent derivation) without being circular ?  It is
undeniable that we may talk of sentences as being  readily
accepted by native speakers and so on, but there is a host of
ancillary assumptions/idealisations attached to this (informal) idiom
(ideal speaker/hearer, homogeneous speech communities etc.) with which,
again, I have no problem though I am not so  sure that they are
accepted by many of the readers of this list, witness Ginzburg and
Sag(2000)

p. 15:
[regarding the distinction between E- and I-language]:

"We believe that this is a false dichotomy"

and on page 16:

" Of course, in order to develop a grammar of reprising one must drop
the assumption that grammars pertain to homogeneous speech communities
...."

I fully agree with Shalom's point that grammaticality judgments should be
taken as empirical constraints on grammatical theories (who doesn't ?)
and they are considered so in practice.  It is however, it seems to me,
the set of tacit assumptions about what a judgment can be taken to
represent that allows them to be so used in things that can be called
grammar of X.


apologies for the incursion...

Cheers
George





On Wed, 10 Apr 2002, Shalom
Lappin wrote:

> Hi Ivan,
>     I am surprised at you. How could you raise such a question? If, as the
> reviewer instructs us, we are now to follow Chomsky in discarding grammaticality
> judgements as empirical constraints on theories of grammar, then clearly the
> considered positons of those in proper positions of authority should be sufficient
> grounds for distinguishing true from false theories. Isn't this the way in which
> proper scientific inquiry works? Regards.
>                                             Shalom
>
> "Ivan A. Sag" wrote:
>
> > FYI.
> >
> > This is from Mario Montalbetti's (LINGUIST List) review
> > of Zagona (2002) The Syntax of Spanish:
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > A word to pre-empt inevitable attacks. It is very likely that the native
> > speaker of Spanish will object to some grammaticality judgments.  This is only
> > natural, given the ample dialectal diversity in Spanish. To get stuck here
> > would be a pity. First, because as Chomsky (1995) has pointed out in his
> > (in)famous fn7 on p203, there is no grammaticality. And second, because it
> > would be yet another unfortunate case of not seeing the woods because of the
> > trees. In any case, I expect judgment differences throughout the book to be
> > minimal.
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > Dang! So how do I evaluate it?...
> >
> > -Ivan
>
>



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