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

Yoon Ha Lee wrote:

>And I thought I'd never be interested in neurobiology.  I sometimes
>regret not paying more attention to HS biology.  (I declined to take IBH
>biology after seeing what a lab practical was like...)  Foundations are
>good to have.  <sigh>
I agree. When I went into my neuroling course, I knew bearly anything about
the structure of the brain, and my terminology was almost non-existant. I
had to have a nasty crash course in lobes, neurotransmitters, blood-flow
patterns, etc. Very rough.

> > Take a sentence like "The man admired Don's sketch of the landscape."  You
> > cannot say *"The man admired Don's of sketch the landscape". This type of
> > ungrammaticality is what syntacticians have been calling a "Phrase
> > Structure Violation" for decades. Now, if you attach electrodes to a
>
>Stupid question: so there are analogously ungrammatical sentences in
>other languages, or perhaps better stated, there *isn't* a language in
>which a construction like the starred one above *is* grammatical?
There are languages which are like English in this respect. There are
languages that differ. It would be interesting to see the neurological
activity in a language that allows the ungrammatical English sentence.
Presumablly they would not show the odd brain activity, but as far as I
know, work on this topic has only been done in English so far. There are
similar expiraments for Italian, Chinese, and Japanese, but not on exactly
this topic.

It would also be interesting to see a comparison of the differences between
languages as far as neural activity goes. My prof pointed out some areas
where speakers of different languages have different neural reactions, but
nothing regarding this topic.

> > There are a few other cases like this. Without going into what they are,
> > there is brainwave evidence for Subjacency, thematic selection, and
> > specificity conditions. Even more interesting: syntacticians claim all
> > three (four, counting the phrase structure violation above) of these things
> > are separate entities, and the brain's reaction to each is completely
> > different as well, suggesting that they are indeed distinct, identifiable
> > processes. I believe there is similar work on phonology as well, but (I'm
> > ashamed to admit) I paid less attention to those parts of the articles.
>
>I must learn more about syntax after I find out more about
>phonology/phonetics.  :-)  I'll have to check out the Gray Wizard's list
>of recommended books.
I just looked at the list for the first time. A very good library. As far
as syntactic theory goes, I would recommend either of the books by Radford
on his list. I would also recommend a couple books not on the list:

Introduction to Government and Binding, by Lilianne Haegemann.
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.


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Marcus Smith
AIM:  Anaakoot
"When you lose a language, it's like
dropping a bomb on a museum."
   -- Kenneth Hale
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