Re: THEORY: OT Syntax (Was: Re: THEORY: phonemes and Optimality Theory tutorial)

On Tue, 21 Nov 2000, Marcus Smith wrote:

> Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
>
> >Well, I imagine there are an awful lot of things in linguistics to study,
> >and things will inevitably fall between the cracks!  <wry g>  A Good
> >Thing for linguists writing dissertations?
>
> Very good thing. Now if only people would do it...
Wrong major.  <deep sigh>

> > > The Syntactic Phenomena of English, by James McCawley.
> > >
> > > This last one is the most complete grammar of English I've ever seen. I
> > > have professors who re-read it regularly.
> >
> >Thanks for the recs!  Does that last book explain the article system
> >particularly well?
>
> Not that I recall.
>
> >   Despite the efforts of the Writing Workshop's
> >linguist-in-residence, Judy Pierpont, we writing tutors *still* can't
> >explain everything about the article system to foreign-language native
> >speakers.  :-(
>
> McCawley's book may not be what you are looking for in that respect. For
> one thing, he describes English as it is, not as an English instructor
> would want it to be. He is definitely not prescriptive.
<wry g>  That's actually a good thing.  (But if articles *were* covered
in gruesome detail it would've been convenient for me.  <wry g>)  I would
*like* to see how English-as-used (rather than as-prescribed) looks like
when dissected.  It's appalling how little formal English grammar I
know.  :-/

> He also has a rather unique way of doing syntax in some ways. He does
> things that would make a hard-core Chomskyan scream out in protest.
I don't know enough Chomsky to be a Chomskyan, so this won't be a problem....

> >   Especially to Asian-language speakers who think that
> >articles are redundant and confusing to begin with (if I weren't fluent
> >in English I would tend to agree) because they're not used to articles.  :-/
>
> I understand the point of view. I'm studying Pima right now, and its
> determiner system is leaving me confused. The article 'heg' never modifies
> a noun before the auxiliary, but modifies almost all of them after the
> verb. But so far it seems to be completely optional. It gets used with
> nouns and names. But sometimes there is a demonstrative instead of 'heg',
> and I'm not sure if there is a reason or if my consultant just feels like
> translating things that way. Very perplexing. Very fun.
<wry g>  A friend asked me how we get by in Korean without articles, and
I told her, if you really want to emphasize a specific something, you
stick in a demonstrative.

YHL