Introduction to Linguistics - Assignment 7 James Madison University

1. Suppose that there is a language,"Notenglish", which has the same vocabulary as English but for which the correct word order is reversed for all the constituents of VP rules. (All other rules stay in the same order. )Turn each of the ungrammatical Notenglish sentences into a grammatical one:
   
   • My dog has fleas.
   • The magician changed into a rabbit. (note: "into" is a preposition and "a" is a determiner)
2. Do exercise 1 on page 170 in your text.
3. If possible, find a naturally-occurring example, written or spoken, of a structurally ambiguous sentence. (These come up all the time, even in The Breeze . :) ) Make up your own example only if you really find yourself unable to find a naturally-occurring one. Now answer the following questions about your sentence:
   1. What are the multiple possible interpretations of this sentence?
   2. What syntactic constituent is the source of the ambiguity?
   3. Was it possible, in context, to choose one meaning over the other(s)? If so, why?
4. Look at the two handouts in Blackboard Course Documents containing short descriptions of alternative theories of syntax. Then, choose just one alternative theory and characterize some ways that you think it differs from the theory discussed in our textbook. Does it have any similarities as well?
5. Recursion challenge! (Give it a shot; if you get a reasonable answer, a valueless prize is a definite possibility :) )
   The giants who live at the top of the beanstalk have a language of their own. It is a simple, nameless language with just the four lexical categories "fee," "fi," "fo," and "fum." Here are its other structural characteristics:
   A sentence must always end with a single "fum."
   There is never more than one "fum," and "fum" is not grammatical anywhere else in a sentence.
   Sometimes a sentence consists of nothing but that one "fum."
   There is no limit on how many times a "fee," a "fi," or a "fo" may occur in a sentence.
   Every "fee" must come before everything else in the sentence.
   Every "fi" must come after the last "fee" but before any "fo"s or "fum".
   Can you write a set of make-believe phrase structure rules that will produce all the possible grammatical sentence structures in the giants' language without producing any ungrammatical sentence structures in this language? Feel free to posit any phrasal categories in this language that will help you find rules that generate the correct results. Remember that recursion is a very useful tool... If you give up, your effort should still have at least two attempts at a possible rule.




6. Also, remember to start considering which article to use for your first critical summary, due 10/2... !

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