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Class 1 - Weekly Assignment

weekly assignment

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Muhammad Zeeshan
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295 views4 pages

Class 1 - Weekly Assignment

weekly assignment

Uploaded by

Muhammad Zeeshan
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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chapter 1

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Generative Grammar

Prescriptive Rules

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WBE1.

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Workbook Exercises
[Critical Thinking; Basic]

a)
b)
c)
d)
e)
f)
g)

CO

PY

RI

Part 1: All of the sentences below are prescriptively wrong according to many language
mavens. Can you identify whats supposed to be wrong with them (i.e. what prescriptive
rule do they violate?). If youre not familiar with prescriptive rules you may have to search
around on the Web a bit to figure this out, but if youve been trained to write in the American
or British University tradition, most (or many) of these should stand out as poor grammar
or poor style. Certainly, Microsoft Words grammar-checking program is flagging each of
these sentences as I write them!
What did you put the present in?
Shes smarter than him.
To boldly go where no one has gone before!
He walks too slow.
Hopefully, the weather will turn sunny soon.
I found out something which will disturb you greatly.
Who did you see?

The Syntax Workbook, First Edition. Andrew Carnie.


2013 Andrew Carnie. Published 2013 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Preliminaries
h)
i)
j)
k)
l)
m)
n)
o)
p)

I cant hardly sleep.


10 items or less [a grocery store sign]
My view of grammar is different than yours.
I will not enjoy it.
If I was a linguist, then I wouldnt have to study prescriptive rules.
The homework wasnt done completely.
All of the linguists at the conference congratulated each other.
Me and John are going to the movies later.
I want to learn a new language like French.

Part 2: Consider each of the sentences above and evaluate whether or not they are really
unacceptable for you. Try to ignore what you were taught in school was right, and focus
instead on whether you might actually utter one of these sentences, or if youd actually blink
if you heard one of them produced by someone else. Listen to your inner voice rather than
relying on what you have learned is correct.

WBE2. Scientific Method Practice1


[Critical Thinking Practice; Basic]
Background: One particular kind of question in English is called a Yes/No question. These
questions can typically be answered with either Yes, No, or Maybe. The standard strategy
forforming Yes/No questions is to change the order of the words at the beginning of the
sentence from the equivalent statement:
a) John hasnt eaten anything.
b) Hasnt John eaten anything?

Statement
Yes/No question

With this background about yes/no and declarative sentences in mind, consider the
following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 1: Yes/No questions are formed by moving the second word in the equivalent
statement to the front.
Now look at the follow sentences:
c) Bilbo will eat chocolate-covered sausage.
d) Will Bilbo eat chocolate-covered sausage?

Statement
Yes/No question

Question 1: Are sentences (c) and (d) consistent with hypothesis 1? (Pay careful attention
to the wording of the hypothesis!)
Now consider the next two sentences
e)
f)
1

The old hobbit will eat the chocolate-covered sausage.


Will the old hobbit eat the chocolate-covered sausage?
Loosely based on an exercise in Carnie (2011).

Statement
Yes/No question

Chapter 1: Generative Grammar


Question 2: Are sentences (e) and (f) consistent with hypothesis 1?
Question 3: Instead of (f), what sentence does hypothesis 1 actually predict to be the grammatical Yes/No question equivalent to (e)?
Question 4: Try to come up with a hypothesis that accounts for the grammaticality of (e).
(Hint #1: words such as will are called auxiliaries. Hint #2: use as much of the language in
hypothesis 1 as you can, making only minimal changes.)

WBE3. Using Corpora for Doing


Syntactic Research
[Critical Thinking Practice; Basic]
Make sure you read the discussion of blow up in section 3.2 of chapter 1 before attempting
this question. Consider the phrase blow off . In colloquial American English, this sequence
has two2 usages with quite different meanings.
a) The leaves blew off the sidewalk.
b) I blew off doing my homework.
In (a) blow means (to move) in a burst of air. The off is actually a preposition that is tied
to the noun phrase the sidewalk. The other meaning, in (b), is the colloquial expression blow
off meaning didnt do, ignored responsibilities, or didnt show up in some circumstances. Phrases like blow off or blow up often allow two orders of the object and the particle
(off or up): I blew up the building and I blew the building up.
Now consider the following sentences:
c) Sean blew him off.
d) Sean blew off him.
Question 1: What meaning(s) does sentence (c) have? Are they different from sentence (d)?
Is sentence (d) even grammatical in your dialect?

Question 2: Now you get to use Google or a similar search engine to investigate the frequency of phrases like (ad) to see if their relative frequencies correspond to the availability
of meanings. Perform the following steps:

1) Go to Google.com or a similar search engine.


2) Click on advanced search (you may have to click on the gear icon at the top right).
3) In the box labeled This exact wording or phrase type in the following phrases, then
hit search. (Using the normal search function wont work. You need to use the exact
wording option.)
i) blow the guy off
ii) blow off the guy
2

It can also have a third, sexually charged, meaning. I emphatically want you to ignore that possibility here.

Preliminaries
iii) blow him off
iv) blow off him
4) Note down the number of hits for each search. (In Google , this number appears at the
top of the search results right under the search bar.)
5) Next, calculate the percentages of (i) vs. (ii) (Blow the guy off vs. blow off the guy). To do
this take each number, divide it by the total number of hits of (i) and (ii) summed
together, then multiply the result by 100.
6) Next calculate the percentages of (iii) vs. (iv).

Is there is a big difference between the percentage of examples like (iv) and the percentage
of examples like (ii)?
Question 3: Is there a correspondence between the numbers you got above and your
judgments of grammaticality and meaning?
Question 4: Look at the first few pages of your search results for blow off him. Do any of
these have the didnt bother to show up meaning? What does this tell you about the
structure of sentence (d)?

WBE4. Semantic vs. Syntactic Judgments


[Application of Knowledge; Basic]
Each of the following sentences might be considered to be ungrammatical, unacceptable, or
just odd. For each sentence, indicate whether the ungrammaticality or oddness has to do
with syntax (form) or semantics (meaning) or both.
a)
b)
c)
d)
e)

The chocolate-covered sausage sincerely wanted her mother-in-law to leave.


What do you wonder who chased?
Cat the dog the bark at.
Andrew is a professor and not a professor.
Danced makes me to have tired.

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