Subject: sum : native speaker intuitions

several weeks ago i posted a question about the current status of " native speaker intutions " in our discipline . in particular , i wondered about the problems posed by variations in the interpretation of sentences . such variations sometimes become apparent when i teach " modern english grammar , " a course that treats english syntax in nonformal , surface-structure terms and primarily is aimed at nonlinguists . in my post , i mentioned two sentences that gave rise to varying intuitions , but i will discuss in this summary only the first , viz . , " john asked mary to leave , " which one student claimed was ambiguous between the reading where mary would do the leaving and that in which john would do the leaving . she claimed she got this second reading by thinking something like " john asked to leave , " which clearly means that john would leave , and who he asked was mary . before i continue this discussion , i must point out that in my class i did not solicit interpretations of this sentence , nor did i expect any challenges to my reading , which i essentially presupposed , assuming - - erroneously - - that all my students saw it as i did . perhaps i did not make this point clear in my posting to this list , since several respondents implied that problems will arise when we solicit interpretations or judgments , or indeed if we do " generative " grammar at all . however , though my approach to syntax in this course is not generative and i did not request an interpretation for this sentence , students sometimes will challenge my assumptions about meaning . if the students involved were merely contentious , then i would chalk up such differences to personality and continue unabashed . but describing my students as contentious in this case would certainly be a distortion . their observations arose , it seems to me , out of a genuine desire to come to grips with the issue . several respondents pointed out that recent research in syntax has had to deal with the thorny issue of interpretation . georgia green reports that one of her students , tim williams , " has just completed a dissertation on infinitive complements , and one of the major points is that , as illustrated by the reaction to . . . ' john asked mary to leave , ' the subject of the infinitive in so - called equi constructions is not syntactically fixed . ( his dissertation deals with articulating the pragmatic principles that govern the interpretation , and misled us for so long into thinking that the interpretation was syntactically fixed . ) " both dan alford and dale russell noted that the interpretation of a sentence such as " john asked mary to leave " as meaning " john asked mary 's permission to leave " could be enhanced if there were a power / status differential between the two nps . dale wrote that " real-world stuff makes us lean toward one [ reading ] or the other to the point where we ' re not even aware of the potential ambiguity . " he provides an example of such real-world stuff in " johnny asked the teacher to go get a drink of water , " a sentence in which it is far easier to read the subject of the sentence as also being the subject of the infinitive . he points out that " we ' ve only changed lexical items , made the first object someone who is likely to be in a position to grant permission , and the subject of the sentence someone who is likely to want to perform the action of the infinitival . " following this line of inquiry , tony bex offers an enlightening pair of examples : [ 1 ] the teacher asked the child to leave the room . [ 2 ] the child asked the teacher to leave the room . he contends that these sentences " are typically interpreted pragmatically taking into account perceived authority ; i . e . , in [ 1 ] the teacher tells the child to leave ; in [ 2 ] the child asks whether s / he can leave . " in either case , it is likely that it is the child who will be leaving . i should note that this pair of examples proved to be particularly amusing and illuminating to my students - - especially to those who , like me , found the ' permission ' reading peculiar . tony 's examples demonstrated to them to what extent pragmatic knowledge plays a part in interpretation . the responses to the infinitive problem constituted only one of several lines pursued by my respondents . some , who like me teach undergraduate syntax courses , commented on the difficulty a few students have with even rudimentary syntactic analysis ( e . g . , the subject / predicate split , often claimed to be a universal strategy among english speakers ) . others commented on the familiar problem of intuition fatigue ( which could be summed up as " say a weird string 50 times and it sounds good ; say a good string 50 times and it sounds weird " ) . and still others took issue with the entire enterprise of a separate syntax , particularly of the generative variety , though by now it should be clear that any decontextualized sentence has the potential to give rise to more than one intepretation . in fact this very idea is discussed in carson schutze 's forthcoming book , _ the empirical base of linguistics : grammaticality judgments and linguistic methodology _ , to be published by university of chicago press in 1995 . in his post to me , carson contends that judgment data " can provide real , useful data , if we would just be more systematical and careful about how we collect them . of course speakers will differ on certain points . . . . the interesting question is whether the range of variation we find is systematically constrained in ways that interesting theories of grammar can explain . " finally , one last thread was contributed by larry hutchinson , who mentioned the history of introspection in this century : " in point of fact , the first psychology labs had been set up by introspectionists , but they were completely taken over by behaviorists and introspection dumped . . . . linguists in the 50 's were pretty much under the sway of behaviorists , and emotionally against introspectionism . . . . but then the enthusiasm generated by chomsky just swept away the behaviorist viewpoint , and along with it the contempt for the unguided use of speaker opinions . " i thank all of my respondents ( cited below ) for their insightful and helpful remarks . i hope i have not distorted their positions in any serious way . marilyn silva respondents : dan alford , mark arnold , laurie bauer , kirk belnap , tony bex , scott delancey , jakob dempsey , susan ervin - tripp , georgia green , larry hutchinson , ingo plag , jim jewett , jules levin , chris li , steve matthews , dan maxwell , micheal palmer , jeanmarie rouhier , dale russell , mary ellen ryder , carson schutze , linda shockey , jacques steyn , and one respondent who prefers to remain anonymous
