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GPS1. PRESCRIPTIVE RULES

[Creative and Critical Thinking; Basic]

In the text above, we claimed that descriptive rules are the primary focus of syntactic theory. This doesn’t mean that prescriptive rules don’t have their uses. What are these uses? Why do societies have prescriptive rules?

GPS2. OBLIGATORY SPLIT INFINITIVES

[Creative and Critical Thinking, Analysis; Intermediate]

The linguist Arnold Zwicky has observed¹⁴ that the prescription not to split infinitives can result in utterly ungrammatical sentences. The adverb soon can be reasonably placed before the infinitive (a) or after it (b) and, for most native speakers of English, also in the split infinitive (c):

a) I expect soon to see the results.

b) I expect to see the results soon.

c) I expect to soon see the results.

Zwicky notes that certain modifiers like more than or already when used with a verb like to double, obligatorily appear in a split infinitive construction (g). Putting them anywhere else results in the ungrammatical¹⁵ sentences (d–f):

d) *I expect more than [to double] my profits.

e) *I expect [to double] more than my profits.

f) *I expect [to double] my profits more than.

g) I expect [to more than double] my profits.

Explain in your own words what this tells us about the validity of prescriptive rules such as “Don’t split infinitives”. Given these facts, how much stock should linguists put in prescriptive rules if they are following the scientific method?

GPS3: NON-BINARY PRONOUNS AND ANAPHORS ¹⁶

[Data Analysis, Critical Thinking; Advanced]

BACKGROUND: In the chapter above, we discussed how anaphors must agree in person, number and gender with the noun they refer to. But we didn’t do a very deep investigation of what we mean by “gender”. Let’s consider the following commonly accepted distinction that social scientists use: Sex refers to the biological characteristics of an individual¹⁷ and gender refers to a social construct that can correlate with sex, but it doesn’t have to. In many cultures, gender is typically defined by how individuals identify themselves. In other countries, often those who have more socially conservative perspectives, the society classes people into genders based on their outward appearance. Either way, gender can be distinct from the sex assigned at birth. People whose gender does not align with their biological sex assigned at birth are often known as transgender and those people whose gender corresponds to their biological sex are called cisgender. Somewhat confusingly, in English, we use the same terms to describe sex assigned at birth and gender: “male” and “female”. Needless to say, conflation of these terms has led to a lot of conflict and misunderstanding.¹⁸ Of particular interest for our question about pronouns, there are also people for whom the traditional two-way male/female gender distinction is not appropriate. They identify as having gender characteristics outside the traditional male and female distinction. These individuals are often called non-binary¹⁹ Below we’ll be talking about the use of pronouns and anaphors for non-binary people. Let us refer to this notion of gender, which is tightly tied to identity as personal gender.

To complicate matters further let’s add in another definition: grammatical gender. Many languages have two or more “genders” or “noun classes” that they use to classify all the nouns in their language. We use different terms to describe grammatical gender from personal gender. Rather than using “male” and “female”, we use “masculine”, “feminine” and “neuter”. Often these genders have no obvious correlation to sexual characteristics. For example, in French, maison ‘house’ is feminine and is used with the feminine article la, by contrast camion ‘truck’ is masculine and used with the masculine article le. In Modern Irish the word cailín ‘girl’ is masculine and the word for ‘stallion’, stail, is feminine! Clearly there is no actual sex or personal gender underlying this categorization. English doesn’t express gender on most nouns, but the pronoun system shows what we might think of as grammatical gender in the distinction between he, she and it pronouns.

Number (singular vs. plural) also seems to have a grammatical usage distinct from the reference of the word. There are a set of nouns that are grammatically plural but clearly refer to singular entities. These words are known as pluralia tantum. For example, pants and scissors have no singular form and they show up with the plural form of verbs (the pants are in the drawer vs. *The pant(s) is in the drawer.) Despite taking plural agreement, they can refer to singular elements. So, number, like gender, can both be personal and grammatical.

PART 1: Non-binary they and subject number agreement.

Many non-binary people (as well as some other transgender people and some cisgender people) are now choosing to refer to themselves with pronouns other than the binary male/female contrasts. It is common for many non-binary people to identify the pronouns they, them, and theirs as the correct ones to use in reference to them.

Consider a person whose name is Chris. They are non-binary and they find that the pronouns that correctly identify their gender are they, them and theirs. Consider the following sentences, which all refer to singular Chris.

1 Chris is leaving.

2 *Chris are leaving.

3 *They is leaving.

4 They are leaving.

Are is the form of the verb to be used with 3^rd person plurals and is is the form used with 3^rd person singulars. Based on the sentences in (a-d), figure out which of the following determines the form of the verb: biological sex and number, personal gender and number, or grammatical gender and number. How can you tell?

PART 2 : Gender in anaphors

Now let’s consider the form of anaphors. Again, assume in this section that Chris is non- binary (i.e. identifies as neither male nor female in personal gender) and they use the they/them/their pronouns. Consider the following sentences:²⁰

e) Chris is introducing *himself.

f) Chris is introducing *herself.

g) Chris is introducing themselves/themself.

h) They are introducing *himself.

i) They are introducing *herself.

j) They are introducing themselves/themself.

Ignore for the moment the issue of whether it should be themselves or themself, for the moment assume either is ok. What determines the form of the first part of the anaphor (the them/him/her part)? Is it grammatical gender (cf. part 1 above) or is it personal gender? How can you tell? Is this the same as what determines subject agreement?

PART 3 : Number in anaphors

There are at least two speech varieties concerning the self/selves part of the anaphor when the singular they/them/their set is used. Some speakers will tend to use themselves, others will tend to use themself. In the following sentences, they, themselves and themself are both meant to have a singular referent: non-binary Chris.

k) Dialect 1: Chris is introducing themselves to the president.

l) Dialect 2: Chris is introducing themself to the president.

m) Dialect 1: They are introducing themselves to the president.

n) Dialect 2: They are introducing themself to the president.

What determines the number expressed on the anaphor (themselves vs. themself) in each of the dialects? Is it personal number (where non-binary they is singular) or is it grammatical number (where non-binary they is plural)? How can you tell?

PART 4: Revising our hypothesis.

In the text above we proposed the following hypothesis about the form of anaphors:

An anaphor must agree in person, gender and number with its antecedent.

Propose a revision to our hypothesis about what determines the form of anaphors that takes into account your observations in parts 2 and 3.

GPS4. JUDGMENTS

[Application of Skills; Intermediate]

All of the following sentences have been claimed to be ungrammatical or unacceptable by someone at some time. For each sentence,

1 indicate whether this unacceptability is due to a prescriptive or a descriptive judgment, and

2 for all descriptive judgments indicate whether the unacceptability has to do with syntax or semantics (or both).

One- or two-word answers are appropriate. If you are not a native speaker of English, enlist the help of someone who is. If you are not familiar with the prescriptive rules of English grammar, you may want to consult a writing guide or English.

1 Who did you see in Las Vegas?

2 You are taller than me.

3 My red is refrigerator.

4 Who do you think that saw Bill?

5 Hopefully, we’ll make it through the winter without snow.

6 My friends wanted to quickly leave the party.

7 Bunnies carrots eat.

8 John’s sister is not his sibling.

GPS5: PERFORMANCE VS. COMPETENCE

[Application of Skills (Basic)]

For each of the scenarios described below indicate whether the phenomena being described are best thought of as exhibiting the traits of performance or competence or a mix of the two.

1 Joe-Ellen is talking to her father about lending him some money, she starts to speak and says “Dad you need to get a new job, one where your boss …” and then she gets a text from her best friend telling her about the latest chapter in the on-going drama between two of their mutual friends. She reads the text which ends with “those guys”, and she then continues in her conversation with her dad saying “respect you”, using the agreement inflection that would be triggered by “those guys” rather than “your boss”.

2 Josh has been reading a novel from the regency period and comes across a sentence that sounds very convoluted and odd to him. So he thinks about the sentence to determine if this sentence is acceptable to him or not.

3 I’m lecturing to my introductory syntax class about phrase structure and distracted by cat sitting on the windowsill of the classroom. So, I stop mid-sentence and I go off on a tangent about my cats and how they’re fantastic. I never really come back to what I was saying before and my students are confused and uncertain about the topic I was lecturing about.

4 It’s been a terrible flu season, and Raini has lost her voice to laryngitis. Mike is over bringing her some soup. Raini is trying to tell him that she wants him to go to the pharmacy to get some medicine. But he can’t really hear her, and all he hears is “Go”. He’s terribly insulted because he was just trying to help, so he leaves and refuses to talk to her for a month.

5 Anita is doing field work on Basque word order. She’s collected a bunch of stories and recorded some Basque language TV, but now she’s working with a local native speaker. She’s written down a bunch of sentences that she thinks might be okay and asks the speaker “Do these sentences sound ok to you?”

GPS6. LEARNING VS. ACQUISITION

[Creative and Critical Thinking; Basic]

We have distinguished between learning and acquiring knowledge. Learning is conscious; acquisition is automatic and subconscious. (Note that acquired things are notnecessarily innate. They are just subconsciously obtained.) Other than language, are there other things we acquire? What other things do we learn? What about walking? Or reading? Or sexual identity? An important point in answering this question is to talk about what kind of evidence is necessary to distinguish between learning and acquisition.

GPS7. UNIVERSALS

[Creative and Critical Thinking; Intermediate]

Pretend for a moment that you don’t believe Chomsky and that you don’t believe in the innateness of syntax (but only pretend!). How might you account for the existence of universals (see definition above) across languages?

GPS8. INNATENESS

[Creative and Critical Thinking; Intermediate]

We argued that some amount of syntax is innate (inborn). Can you think of an argument that might be raised against innateness? (It doesn’t have to be an argument that works, just a plausible one.) Alternately, could you come up with a hypothetical experiment that could disprove innateness? What would such an experiment have to show? Remember that cross-linguistic variation (differences between languages) is not an argument against innateness or UG, because UG contains parameters that allow variation within the set of possibilities allowed for in UG.

GPS9. LEVELS OF ADEQUACY

[Application of Skills; Basic]

Below, you’ll find the description of several different linguists’ work. Attribute a level of adequacy to them (state whether the grammars they developed are observationally adequate, descriptively adequate, or explanatorily adequate). Explain why you assigned the level of adequacy that you did.

1 Juan Martínez has been working with speakers of Chicano English in Los Angeles. He has been looking both at corpora (rap music, recorded snatches of speech) and working with adult native speakers.

2 Fredrike Schwarz has been looking at the structure of sentences in eleventh- century Welsh poems. She has been working at the national archives of Wales in Cardiff.

3 Boris Dimitrov has been working with adults and corpora on the formation of questions in Rhodopian Bulgarian. He is also conducting a longitudinal study of some two-year-old children learning the language to test his hypotheses.