Chapter 6. Syntactic Structure
--Devitt’s theory is that the meaning of a sentence is its property of representing a
certain situation in a certain way; its meaning is its mode of presenting its truth
condition. This mode is to be explained in terms of modes of reference and syntactic
structures. Here Devitt needs to offer an explanation of how the syntactic structure of
a sentence helps contribute to the meaning of the sentence. (p. 114) The meaning of a
sentence seems to be intimately related to its grammar: an ungrammatical sentence is
apparently meaningless. So we need a theory of grammaticality. (p. 115)
--Chomsky offers a theory called “generative grammar” or “transformational
grammar” to account for grammaticality. It provides an explicit statement of the rules
for generating all and only those possible sentences of the language from words of the
language.
--Linguists take grammar and linguistic competence as the same thing, for they think
that competence consists in tacit knowledge of the grammar. Devitt argues that the
linguistic competence of speakers and the syntactic structures of linguistic symbols
are distinct.
6.2 Some reasons for structure
Why do we think that a string of words have to have a structure in order to be
grammatical and meaningful? The following are some reasons:
1. Some strings of words sound queer because they are ungrammatical. But what is it
for something to be grammatical? A grammatical sentence is one with words of
different syntactic categories (verbs, nouns, prepositions, etc.) organized in a
certain way according to certain rules. (p. 117-8)
2. Many sentences in a language are structurally ambiguous: all the words of a
sentence remain the same while its meaning differ depending on how those words
are parsed. Consider examples like
Tex likes exciting sheep
Spanish money lenders are more avaricious than cautious
The ambiguity of a sentences can be explained by the different structures the
sentence inheres. (see p. 119-120 for the tree structures)
3. Considering the task of constructing a question from its correlative statement
enables us to see that there exist structures, for the task requires noticing and
obeying rules that have to do with syntactic categories rather than with superficial
word order. Chomsky points out that all grammatical rules are
structurally-dependent (The Structure-Dependence Principle). See p. 120-2.
6.3 Linguistic Categories
--Evidence for word categories:
a) Morphological evidence: categories differ in the sorts of endings they can take.
E.g., verbs in English usually have a base form and various endings (“show”,
“showed”, “showing”, “shown”, “shows”, etc.), many adjectives have the
comparative ending “-er” (“quicker”, “faster”, “smarter”, ec.), adverbs with the
ending “-ly” (“quickly”, “forcefully”, etc.), and prepositional words such as “at”
without having endings.
b) Distributional evidence: words of different categories appear in different positions
in sentences. E.g., ---- can be injurious to your health. (nouns can fill in but not
adverbs); They can ---. (verbs can fill in but not nouns)
--Evidence for phrase categories:
a) Distributional evidence: a good example to show that there are different categories
of phrases is to compare the two phrases that involve “easy” and “eager”:
Noam is easy to please
Noam is eager to please
The two sentences have exactly the same structure, and apparently differ only in a
single adjective. This appearance is deceptive. “easy to please” and “eager to please”
are different categories of phrases. Consider the following two pairs of sentences:
It is easy to please Noam.
*It is eager to please Noam. (A wrong sentence)
*Noam is easy to please Lyndon (A wrong sentence)
Noam is eager to please Lyndon.
The contrast shows that these sentences are made up of phrasal constituents with very
different structures.
See also the example (on p. 124-6):
Drunks would get off the bus
Drunks would put off the customers.
b) Phrases can undergo “movement”:
Jane beat Tarzan with a dead snake
With a dead snake, Jane beat Tarzan.
*Dead snake, Jane beat Tarzan with a. (A wrong sentence)
We skip 6.4 on Anaphoria