1. Creativity of Language
“Any speaker of any human language can produce and understand an infinite number of sentences.”
Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman & Nina Hyams An Introduction to Language, 9th edition. Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, p. 77.

2. Most Important Concept 1
1. “Any speaker of any human language can produce and understand an infinite number of sentences.” (77)
2. “This system of rules explains how speakers can store infinite knowledge in a finite space—our brains.” (78)
3. “The rules of the syntax permit speakers to produce and understand a limitless number of sentences never produced or heard before—the creative aspect of linguistic knowledge.” (82)
Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman & Nina Hyams An Introduction to Language, 9th edition. Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, pp. 77, 78, 82.

3. Most Important Concept 2
4. “We can exploit the resources of our language and grammar to produce and understand a limitless number of sentences embodying a limitless ranges of ideas and emotions.” (82)
5. “Because the number of possible sentences in every language is infinite, there are also an infinite number of trees. However, all trees are built out of the finite set of substructures allowed by the grammar of the lanugage, and these substructures are specified by the finite set of phrase structure rules. (95)
Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman & Nina Hyams An Introduction to Language, 9th edition. Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, pp. 82, 95.

4. Most Important Concept 3
6. “The number of sentences in a language is infinite and [ ] languages have various means of creating longer and longer sentences.” (95)
7. “Our brain capacity is finite, able to store only a finite number of categories and rules for their combination. Yet this finite system places an infinite set of sentences at our disposal. (101)
8. “All speakers are capable of producing and understanding an unlimited number of new sentences that have never before been spoken or heard.” (128)
Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman & Nina Hyams An Introduction to Language, 9th edition. Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, pp. 95, 101, 128.

5. Syntax
“The part of the grammar that represents a speaker’s knowledge of sentences and their structures is called syntax.”
Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman & Nina Hyams An Introduction to Language, 9th edition. Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, p. 78.

6. What Syntax Reveals  Word order
 Relationship between meaning and the arrangement of the words
 Grammatical relations—Subject and Object
 Grammatical constraints—Verb subcategoriation
 Hierarchy of grammatical constituents
 Grammaticality judgments
 Structural ambiguity
Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman & Nina Hyams An Introduction to Language, 9th edition. Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, pp

7. 魚吃人

8. Word Order 1. Harold hit Ivan. 2. Ivan hit Harold.
3. The student picked up the book.
4. The student picked the book up.
5. Sally kissed John.
6. John was kissed by Sally.

9. Why Native Speaker Grammaticality Judgments are Basically the Same
Simple Answer:
 Because native speakers of a language share the same set of syntactic rules their grammaticality judgments will be the same.

10. Why Native Speaker Grammaticality Judgments are Basically the Same
More Complex Answer:
 Because Native Speakers of a (variety of a) language SHARE the same (or nearly the same) set (group) of SYNTACTIC RULES their Grammaticality Judgments will be (approximately) the same.
 Their MENTAL GRAMMAR is MORE OR LESS THE SAME
 In other words, they have the same (nearly the same) linguistic competence because they grew up speaking the same language

11. How can we judge what is grammatical?
1. Does NOT depend on whether you have heard it before
2. Does NOT depend on whether it is meaningful
3. Does NOT depend on whether you can interpret it
4. Does NOT depend on whether it is true
5. It DOES depend on our “unconscious knowledge of the syntactic rules of grammar”
Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman & Nina Hyams An Introduction to Language, 9th edition. Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, pp

12. Grammaticality Judgments of Strange Sentences
 Meaningless
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
Giant tomatoes danced at my party
last week.
 Uninterpretable
“Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
did gyre and gimble in the wabe.
 Untrue
Today is Wednesday.
My brother had a baby last week.
Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman & Nina Hyams An Introduction to Language, 9th edition. Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, pp

13. Ambiguity Words (Lexical Ambiguity) He walked by the bank.
He got shot in the back.
Phrases (Structural Ambiguity)
synthetic buffalo hides
small car factory
Sentences (Structural Ambiguity)
The boy saw the man with the telescope.
For sale: an antique desk suitable for lady
with thick legs and large drawers.

14. Tree Diagram of Sentence Structure
The child found a puppy.
Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman & Nina Hyams An Introduction to Language, 9th edition. Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, pp. 84, 90.

15. Grammatical Categories
Content Words
noun N NP
verb V VP
adjective Adj
adverb Adv
Function Words
preposition Prep PP
conjunction Conj
interjection Interj
auxiliary verb Aux
modal verb Modal
determiner Det
quantifier Quant

16. Phrase Structure Tree
Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman & Nina Hyams An Introduction to Language, 8th edition. Boston, MA: Thomson Wadsworth, p. 124.

17. Simplified Grammar of “English” Phrase Structure Rules
1. S  NP VP
2. NP  Det N (revised )
3. VP  V NP
4. VP  V (revised 96)
5. VP  V PP
6. PP  P NP
7. VP  V CP
8. CP  C S
9. NP  NP PP (added 97)
10. VP  Aux VP (added 107)
Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman & Nina Hyams An Introduction to Language, 9th edition. Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, pp. 93, 96, 97, 100, 101, 107.

18. Simplified Grammar of “English” Phrase Structure Rules
N  child, boy, man, men, telescope,
puppy, posse, baby, buffalo, hide
V  find, see, flee, sleep
P  with, from, in, on
Adj  small, synthetic
Det  the, a
Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman & Nina Hyams An Introduction to Language, 8th edition. Boston, MA: Thomson Wadsworth, p. 131, adapted.

19. Syntactic Rules Must Account for the Following
 the grammaticality of sentences
 word order
 structural ambiguity
 grammatical relations
 different structures with the same meaning
 the creative aspect of language.
Fromkin & Rodman (1998), pp

20. Ambiguous Sentence But Unambiguous Structure
The boy saw the man with the telescope.
The boy saw the man with a stick.
The boy hit the man with a stick.
The boy hit the man with the telescope.

21. Grammaticality Judgments