linguistic analysis - Professor Binkert's Webpage - Oakland University

to be told that (36b), (36e), and (36f) are ungrammatical: their status is predictable on the basis of
other structural facts about English that they unconsciously know.
Of course, the important question here is how to determine the structural units in the first place, that
is, how to justify a diagram like (37). Such a diagram characterizes English in two ways. First, it
states that English sentences consist of three structural units; second, it states that those units should
have three different labels. Each of these statements must be justified before they can be accepted
as an accurate characterization of English.
1.6.1 DIAGNOSTICS
As we saw in the Introduction, proposals for solving problems must be justified by independent and
objective evidence if they are to be successful. Without such justification, proposals become a
matter of personal opinion and a potential blueprint for failure. The next two sections outline several
diagnostics that linguists use to support their analyses. In the chapters that follow, we will consider
other tests. In using such diagnostics, linguists operate like many other professionals from doctors
to auto mechanics.
Doctors use diagnostics to figure out what is wrong with patients. They will take a patient’s
temperature and blood pressure, run laboratory tests, order X-rays and MRIs, and so on. These
diagnostics give doctors independent and objective measures that help them identify diseases and
other ailments. Auto mechanics work the same way, running various diagnostics to determine why
a car isn’t running properly. There is, thus, nothing particularly individual or novel about the
methodology linguists use. What makes the enterprise somewhat unusual is that the problem
involves the nature of human language, rather than more ordinary concerns like health and vehicles.
But, linguistic analysis is really nothing more than troubleshooting – nothing more than an exercise
in problem solving and finding the most cogent and robust solution possible.
With these remarks in mind, let us look at the question of identifying and labeling the units that make
up an ordinary sentence.
1.6.2 JUSTIFYING STRUCTURE: UNITS
Consider first the question of the number of units. Linguists determine structural units such as the
units of a sentence by attempting to manipulate the words in that sentence in one of three ways:
REFERENCE, OMISSION, and PLACEMENT. Great caution is needed during such
investigations because, as we have seen, the facts of language are largely hidden. It is easy to be
misled. Sometimes various manipulations produce conflicting results. This merely means that the
matter is more hidden than first imagined and that other supporting data, perhaps even from other
languages, must be looked at. For this reason, the more arguments that can be marshaled to support
a particular characterization, the more justified it is.
41