LL-L "Grammar" 2005.12.11 (04 [E]

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   L O W L A N D S - L * 11 December 2005 * Volume 04
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From: Ian Pollock <ispollock at shaw.ca>
Subject: LL-L "Grammar"

From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2005.12.09 (03) [E]

> And then apply various not-so-clever "Surface Transformations" or
> patches, to get the other allowed sentences. The problem here is that
> if
> we _had_ happened to say sentences like:
>
> "The quickly king runs"
>
> Then we could have covered this too by applying a new kind of Surface
> Transformation. Surface transformations do nothing for our
> understanding
> of language - you can allow what you like, you can disallow what you
> like.

That's just it! If the theory can make use of 'exceptions' to explain
anything, what is the value of the theory at all?

That is why I wanted to put forward the idea that a lot of sentences
which linguists these days interpret as having intricate invisible
structures are, in fact, completely unanalyzed. Maybe when people first
started saying things like "Have a match, Skippy?" they were conscious
of the omission of  "Do you.." But after a while it becomes a perfectly
ordinary way of saying the same thing. Не шукай зуба там, де він не
расте.

(As an aside: The funny thing is, linguists know of historical examples
of reanalysis and lexicalisation (e.g., "goodbye"<god be wi' ye") but
seem to view historical linguistics as somehow separate from modern
concerns.)

I think linguists often fall down when they ask people who create such
sentences as "Have a light, mate?" to "say that more completely". The
subject then realizes that they're supposed to talk formally, and "Oh,
of course, I really meant "DO YOU have a light." In my opinion, when
questing for underlying structure, what linguists often really find is
a healthy dose of internalized prescriptive grammar.

PS Thanks to Sandy Fleming for her heroic summing-up of the discussion.

-Ian Pollock 

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