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Chapter 1 introduces the study of syntax as a cognitive science, focusing on how humans subconsciously understand and produce sentences. It distinguishes between Language (the human capacity for language) and language (specific languages like English). The chapter emphasizes generative grammar, Chomsky's theory that posits a subconscious set of procedures generating sentences, modeled through formal grammatical rules unlike prescriptive grammar rules. These rules dictate word order and other structural aspects. Understanding the chapter requires mastering concepts like the difference between competence and performance, arguments for Universal Grammar, and the logical problem of language acquisition, along with different types of data gathering (corpora and linguistic judgments) and levels of adequacy (observational, descriptive, and explanatory). The text also touches upon related fields like phonetics, phonology, morphology, and semantics, situating syntax within the broader context of linguistic study.

After reading chapter 1 you should walk away having mastered the
following ideas and skills:

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   2. 
      
      
      
      3. 
         
         
         
         4. Explain why Language is a psychological property of humans.
            Distinguish between prescriptive and descriptive rules.
            Explain the scientific method as it applies to syntax.
            Explain the differences between the kinds of data gathering,
            including corpora and linguistic judgments.
         
         
         
         
      
      
      
      
   
   
   
   


2. 
   
   
   
   6. 
      
      
      
      7. 
         
         
         
         8. 
            
            
            
            9. Explain the difference between competence and performance.
               Provide at least three arguments for Universal Grammar.
               Explain the logical problem of language acquisition.
               Distinguish between learning and acquisition.
               Distinguish among observational, descriptive and explanatory
               adequacy.
            
            
            
            
         
         
         
         
      
      
      
      
   
   
   
   


3. PRELIMINARIES
   Although we use it every day, and although we all have strong opinions
   about its proper form and appropriate use, we rarely stop to think about
   the wonder of language. So-called language “experts” like William Safire tell
   Syntax: A Generative Introduction, Third Edition. Andrew Carnie.
   © 2013 Andrew Carnie. Published 2013 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
   4 Preliminaries
   us about the misuse of hopefully or lecture us about the origins of the word
   boondoggle, but surprisingly, they never get at the true wonder of language:
   how it actually works as a complex machine. Think about it for a minute.
   You are reading this and understanding it, but you have no conscious
   knowledge of how you are doing it. The study of this mystery is the science
   of linguistics. This book is about one aspect of how language works: how
   sentences are structured, or the study of syntax.
   Language is a psychological or cognitive property of humans. That is,
   there is some set of neurons in my head firing madly away that allows me to
   sit here and produce this set of letters, and there is some other set of neurons
   in your head firing away that allows you to translate these squiggles
   into coherent ideas and thoughts. There are several subsystems at work here.
   If you were listening to me speak, I would be producing sound waves with
   my vocal cords and articulating particular speech sounds with my tongue,
   lips, and vocal cords. On the other end of things you’d be hearing those
   sound waves and translating them into speech sounds using your auditory
   apparatus. The study of the acoustics and articulation of speech
   is called phonetics. Once you’ve translated the waves of sound into mental
   representations of speech sounds, you analyze them into syllables and
   pattern them appropriately. For example, speakers of English know that the
   made-up word bluve is a possible word of English, but the word bnuck is not.
   This is part of the science called phonology. Then you take these groups
   of sounds and organize them into meaningful units (called morphemes)
   and words. For example, the word dancer is made up of two meaningful bits:
   dance and the suffix -er. The study of this level of Language is
   called morphology. Next you organize the words into phrases and sentences.
   Syntax is the cover term for studies at this level of Language. Finally, you
   take the sentences and phrases you hear and translate them into thoughts
   and ideas. This last step is what we refer to as the semantic level
   of Language.
   Syntax studies the level of Language that lies between words and the
   meaning of utterances: sentences. It is the level that mediates between
   sounds that someone produces (organized into words) and what
   they intend to say.
   Perhaps one of the truly amazing aspects of the study of Language is not
   the origins of the word demerit, or how to properly punctuate a quote inside
   parentheses, or how kids have, like, destroyed the English language, eh?
   Instead it’s the question of how we subconsciously get from sounds and
   words to meaning. This is the study of syntax.
   Chapter 1: Generative Grammar 5
   Language vs. language
   When I utter the term language, most people immediately think of some
   particular language such as English, French, or KiSwahili. But this is not
   the way linguists use the term; when linguists talk about Language (also
   known as i-language), they are generally talking about the ability of
   humans to speak any (particular) language. Noam Chomsky also calls
   this the Human Language Capacity. Language (written with a capital L)
   is the part of the mind or brain that allows you to speak, whereas
   language (with a lower-case l) (also known as e-language) is an
   instantiation of this ability (like French or English). In this book we'll be
   using language as our primary data, but we'll be trying to come up with a
   model of Language.


4. SYNTAX AS A COGNITIVE SCIENCE
   Cognitive science is a cover term for a group of disciplines that all have
   the same goal: describing and explaining human beings’ ability to think (or
   more particularly, to think about abstract notions like subatomic particles,
   the possibility of life on other planets or even how many angels can fit on
   the head of a pin, etc.). One thing that distinguishes us from other animals,
   even relatively smart ones like chimps and elephants, is our ability to use
   productive, combinatory Language. Language plays an important role in
   how we think about abstract notions, or, at the very least, Language appears
   to be structured in such a way that it allows us to express abstract notions.1
   The discipline of linguistics is thus one of the important subdisciplines o f
   cognitive science.2 Sentences are how we get at expressing abstract thought
   processes, so the study of syntax is an important foundation stone for
   understanding how we communicate and interact with each other as
   humans.
   1 Whether language constrains what abstract things we can think about (this idea
   is called the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis) is a matter of great debate and one that lies
   outside the domain of syntax per se.
   2 Along with psychology, neuroscience, communication, philosophy, and computer
   science.
   6 Preliminaries


5. MODELING SYNTAX
   The dominant theory of syntax is due to Noam Chomsky and his colleagues,
   starting in the mid 1950s and continuing to this day. This theory, which
   has had many different names through its development (Transformational
   Grammar (TG), Transformational Generative Grammar, Standard Theory,
   Extended Standard Theory, Government and Binding Theory (GB),
   Principles and Parameters approach (P&P) and Minimalism (MP)), is often
   given the blanket name Generative Grammar. A number of alternate theories
   of syntax have also branched off of this research program. These include
   Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG) and Head-Driven Phrase Structure
   Grammar (HPSG). These are also considered part of generative grammar;
   but we won’t cover them extensively in this book. But I have included two
   additional chapters on these theories in the web resources for this book at
   www.wiley.com/go/carnie. The particular version of generative grammar
   that we will mostly look at here is roughly the Principles and Parameters
   approach, although we will occasionally stray from this into the more
   recent version called Minimalism.
   The underlying thesis of generative grammar is that sentences
   are generated by a subconscious set of procedures (like computer programs).
   These procedures are part of our minds (or of our cognitive abilities
   if you prefer). The goal of syntactic theory is to model these procedures.
   In other words, we are trying to figure out what we subconsciously know
   about the syntax of our language.
   In generative grammar, the means for modeling these procedures is
   through a set of formal grammatical rules. Note that these rules are nothing
   like the rules of grammar you might have learned in school. These rules
   don’t tell you how to properly punctuate a sentence or not to split
   an infinitive. Instead, they tell you the order in which to put your words. In
   English, for example, we put the subject of a sentence before its verb. This is
   the kind of information encoded in generative rules. These rules are thought
   to generate the sentences of a language, hence the name generative grammar.
   You can think of these rules as being like the command lines in a computer
   program. They tell you step by step how to put together words into
   a sentence. We’ll look at precise examples of these rules in the next few
   chapters. But first, let’s look at some of the underlying assumptions of
   generative grammar.
   Chapter 1: Generative Grammar