p. 6~9 will be skipped.
6. Linguistic ill-formedness
With relation to linguistic ill-formedness, we can see the examples of
semantically or syntactically ill-formed. It is sometimes very difficult to distinguish
between sentences which are semantically ill-formed and those which are syntactically
ill-formed.
[1] Semantic ill-formedness
(12) (a) !I killed John, but he didn’t die.
(b) !All my friends are linguistics, but I have no friends.
=> Two sentences in (12) are all semantically ill-formed.
[2] Syntactic ill-formedness
The two sentences in (13) have wrong word orders. Subject, predicate, and determiner
are not placed in their proper positions. So the sentences in (13) are syntactically
ill-formed.
(13) (a) *John very Mary much loves
(b) *All are linguists friends my
[3] Syntactic ill-formedness vs. Semantic ill-formedness
(14) We respect himself.
The obvious question to ask is how we decide whether to analyze (14) as syntactically or semanti-
cally
ill-formed. It might seem that the natural answer to this question is to rely on the intuitions of the
native speaker. But he should not be able to answer whether (14) is syntactically or semantically
ill-formed.
To sum up,
① Chomsky repeatedly emphasizes that his claim that a distinction can and
must be drawn between syntactic and semantic phenomena is an empirical one.
②
③ p.14
④ Chomsky refers to as the essential creativity of language:
“The most striking aspect of linguistic competence is what we may call the
‘creativity of language’, that is, the speaker’s ability to produce new sentence,
sentences that are immediately understood by other speakers although they
bear no physical resemblance to sentences which are familiar.”
⑤
=> Learning a language doesn’t simply involve learning a list of sentences produced
by others, and repeating them parrot-fashion.
⑥ Acquisition of a language involves acquisition of the following:
(i) a set rules of sentence-formation (which specify how to combine words
together to form grammatical sentences)
(ii) a set of rules of sentence-interpretation (which specify how to
interpret what sentences mean)
(iii) a set of rules of sentence-pronunciation
This is what Chomsky means by saying that Language is rule-governed.
=> The task of the linguists seeking to account for this creative aspect of grammatical
competence is to formulate a set of rules of sentence-formation(=syntactic rules), and
rules of sentence-interpretation(=semantic rules), and rules of sentence-pronunciation
(=phonological rules). A grammar of a language will comprise three interrelated compo-
nents:
a syntactic component, a semantic component, and a phonological component.