Ling 201 Section C
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February 2008

More on grammaticality and intuitions

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Competence vs. performance

In order to do theoretical linguistics, we distinguish linguistic competence from linguistic performance.

Competence

: A speaker’s mental facility for producing and understanding novel utterances of his or

her language. You can think of this as the speaker’s mental ‘linguistic program’, or simply as the
speaker’s (unconscious) knowledge of the grammar of his or her native language.

Performance

: A speaker’s use of language, i.e. their actual acts of producing and understanding

utterances.

Which is the focus of theoretical linguistics?

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Kinds of linguistic competence

The following form the core components of the grammar, all of which are included in a speaker’s
linguistic competence. These components of the grammar correspond in turn to four of the major
subfields of linguistics:

Phonetics

: The physical production and perception of the inventory of sounds used in producing

language.

Phonology

: The mental organization of physical sounds; the patterns formed by the way sounds are

combined in a a language, and the restrictions on permissible sound combinations.

Morphology

: The structure and formation of words.

Syntax

: The structure and formation of sentences; possible and impossible configurations of words.

Semantics

: The meaning of sentences.

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Intuitions at all levels

We have intuitions about all of the above areas of our linguistic competence.

Intuitions about possible sound patterns (phonology)

(1)

a. woozle vs. ?ngul (compare the common Vietnamese name Nguyen)

b. adort vs. ?zdort (compare Russian zdes’(‘here’))

Intuitions about possible word formation (morphology)

(2)

a. un-Skype-ableness vs. ?un-Skype-nessable

b. quick and quicker

c. intelligent but not intelligenter (compare German intelligenter (‘more intelligent’))

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Intuitions about well-formed combinations of words (syntax)

(3)

a. on the team vs. ?the team on

b. the team notwithstanding vs. notwithstanding the team

c. ?the baby seems sleeping vs. the baby seems to be sleeping vs. the baby seems sleepy

Intuitions about meaning (semantics)

(4)

a. If I claim that every student at UMass did their homework, then I commit myself to the claim that

every student in my Ling 201 section did the homework.

b. If I claim that every student in my Ling 201 class did the homework, then I do not commit myself to

the claim that every student at UMass did the homework.

This gives us a way of understanding the problem we ran into last time with respect to sentences like
(??).

(5)

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

We can say that this sentence is syntactically grammatical, but semantically ungrammatical.

Now, recall the conventions for indicating grammaticality we saw last time (Important: Refer to this
handout, and not the handout from last time (Wednesday, January 30), when studying these
marks. There was a typographical error in that version, which is corrected here!

)

Marking intuitions

These symbols appear at the front of examples, marking intuitions about them:

1

.

* Marks an example as ungrammatical

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.

? Indicates that there is some doubt about the example’s status

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. % Indicates that the examples status depends on one’s dialect

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.

# Indicates that the example is grammatical but likely to sound strange due to semantic

oddity or incoherence

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.

X

(or nothing at all) indicates grammaticality

Which of these marks would you place in front of (??)?

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Spelling

We’ve seen that the rules of prescriptive grammar are distinct from our intuitive linguistic knowledge
(our competence). Spelling, and all other orthographic conventions, are also not part of our linguistic
competence.

The subject of formal linguistic analysis is spoken—NOT written—language.

Writing (and reading) are learned, not acquired.

Illustrations of the distinction between orthography and grammar:

(6)

a. Its vs. It’s

b. their vs. there

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Consider the following words. Pronounce them to yourselves.

(7)

a. cats

b. dogs

c. linguists

d. tests

e. quizzes

f. fishes

Does the sound written with an s correspond to the same sound in all of the words above? What about
the sound written with an f in each of the words below?

(8)

a. roofs

b. hoofs

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