English Linguistics - Assignment 1 James Madison University

[This assignment will be marked only as an acceptable or unacceptable effort.]

1. What are Professor Cote's currently scheduled office hours?
2. Write down one example of each type of sentence below.
   1. A grammatical sentence never before heard in the English language.
   2. A grammatical sentence you usually say at least once a day.
   3. A sentence that sounds like grammatical English but doesn't make sense.
   4. A sentence that is understandable but also ungrammatical.
3. Listen closely to a conversation or conversations, perhaps by your friends, at the bookstore, on television, or wherever, and write down at least three examples of people speaking perfectly naturally in less than a full sentence. (Example: "Nice pants.") Also find one additional written example. What are your intuitions about why these utterances were okay?
4. After finishing the first chapter of your textbook, answer the following question and explain your answer: How likely does it seem to you that all human languages have sentences?