linguistic structures - Professor Binkert's Webpage - Oakland ...

CHAPTER ONE: FUNDAMENTALS OF LINGUISTICS
1.1 GRAMMATICAL CHARACTERIZATION AND GRAMMATICAL REALIZATION
The first language that children acquire during childhood is called their NATIVE LANGUAGE.*
As they mature, children are considered NATIVE SPEAKERS of that language. Knowledge of
one’s native language is quite special. It differs in many ways from the knowledge one gains
studying a language in school, for example, in Spanish class. In particular, native speakers are not
generally aware of what they know about their native language. Also, they usually cannot describe
what they know or explain how they know it. Their knowledge is unconscious. To see this,
consider the following sentences, which differ only in that (1b) contains the word that:
(1) a. Do you think the judge will tell the truth?
b. Do you think that the judge will tell the truth?
Every native speaker of English knows that these two sentences are yes/no questions, that is,
questions that can get either a positive or negative answer. Now suppose that a person does not
know who will tell the truth and wants to find out. In such a case, the person could ask a
WH–question, which is a question that begins with a WH–word like who, what, where, etc. Given
sentences like those in (1), every native speaker unconsciously knows that the results of attempting
to ask such a WH–question will be different. Sentence (2a), a WH–question related to (1a), is
perfectly GRAMMATICAL, meaning it does not violate any rules. On the other hand, sentence
(2b), a WH–question related to (1b) and containing the word that, is UNGRAMMATICAL,
meaning it violates some rule (an asterisk at the beginning of a sentence indicates that it is
ungrammatical).
(2) a. Who do you think will tell the truth?
b. *Who do you think that will tell the truth?
There is a specific principle that rules out sentences like (2b), yet native speakers typically are not
consciously aware of what that principle is. Nor can they explain why the word that can be left out
of (3a) to produce the synonymous (3b), whereas a similar deletion in (4a) produces the
ungrammatical (4b).
(3) a. The lawyers that the judges admire will tell the truth.
b. The lawyers the judges admire will tell the truth.
(4) a. The lawyers that admire the judges will tell the truth.
b. *The lawyers admire the judges will tell the truth.
_______
* Words and phrases in boldface capitals are important concepts. They are found in the index,
which indicates the page(s) on which the concepts are introduced or reviewed. There is also a
glossary of most of these concepts on Moodle in the files section under the folder HANDOUTS.