Diversity and uniformity of grammar: When ungrammatical expressions become grammatical

• 作者: Taro Kageyama
• 来源期刊: Journal of Japanese Linguistics
• 关键词: Areas of interest: syntax semantics variation grammatical errors property predication
• 年，卷（期）: 2012,（1）
• 页码范围: 6-31
• 页数: 26页
• 语种: 英文
• DOI: 10.1515/jjl-2012-0103

摘要

This paper will show that what appear to be outrageous mistakes made by native speakers as well as non-native speakers have potential to contribute in non-trivial ways to deepening our understanding of language in both theoretical and practical terms when they are analyzed properly. Specifically, it is shown that the irregular or ungrammatical constructions that are ruled out by purely structural constraints postulated in generative or other formal syntax could be systematically salvaged by differentiating two different semantic functions: property (or individual-level) predications that characterize the property or attribute of a subject NP and eventive (i.e., stage-level) predications that describe events, actions, or states that unfold with the progress of time. These two types of predications, which have been considered to be semantic or pragmatic in nature, are found to have systematic reflections in syntax.