“The greater part of this world’s troubles are due to questions of grammar.” (Montaigne)
“Grammar is an example of a ’descrete combinatorial system’. A finite number of descrete elements (in this case, words) are sampled, combined and permuted to create larger structures (in this case, sentences) with properties that are quite distinct from those of their elements.” (Pinker, 1994)
“Another noteworthy descrete combinatorial system in the nastural world is the genetic code in DNA, where four kinds of nucleotides are combined into sixty-four kinds of codons, and the codons can be strung into an unlimited number of different genes.” (Pinker, 1994)
“Most of the complicated systems we see in the world, in contrast are blending systems like geology, paint mixing, cooking, sound, light, and weather. In blending system the properties of the combination lie between the properties of its elements, and the properties of the elements are lost in the average or mixture.” (Pinker, 1994)
“…. the brain must contain a recipe or program that can build an unlimited set of sentences out of finite list of words. That program may be called ‘a mental grammar’. …. Therefore, he argued, children must innatelu be equipped with a plan common to the grammars of all languages, a Universal Grammar….” N. Chomsky)
Parts of speech : a family of expressions that can substitute for one another without loss of grammaticality; Noun, Pronoun, Verb, Auxiliary verb, Adverb, Prepositional Phrase, Determiner, Adjective.
* ”She is in stay.” - Slots
Being ungrammatical : using form sor structures not generally used.
Prescriptive Grammar vs. Descriptive Grammar
Form / Structure / Function / Use
* ”Our grammar teacher is boring.” : source / ”Our grammar teacher is bored.” : experiencer
* “Bob Marley smiled at the sherriff.” vs. “Bob Marley smiled the sherriff.” (direct impact)
* “Aristotle flew the plane.” vs. “Aristotle flew in the plane.” ( Linguistic and Conceptual Distance )
Context
“There’s a woman in a supermarket. She meets a friend with a small child. They stop and chat. Then the child takes a bottle from the shelf and puts it in the first woman’s bag.”
New information vs. Given information
“… speakers and writers organize the information structure of their message on the basis of predicting how familiar the listener or reader will be, at any point, with what is the focus of attention….”
“Education is an admirabla thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught. “ (Oscar Wilde)
Eliza to Higgins in Pigmalion ( B. Shaw) : “ I don’t want to talk grammar. I want to talk like a lady in a flower shop.”