Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The sentence can be given as a grammatical puzzle [7] [8] [9] or an item on a test, [1] [2] for which one must find the proper punctuation to give it meaning. Hans Reichenbach used a similar sentence ("John where Jack had...") in his 1947 book Elements of Symbolic Logic as an exercise for the reader, to illustrate the different levels of language, namely object language and metalanguage.
Though it is generally agreed that there is positive evidence (i.e. evidence that demonstrates grammatical linguistic constructions) in the language input, there is a dearth of direct negative evidence in the general language learner input since most native or veteran speakers produce grammatical as opposed to ungrammatical speech.
Indirect negative evidence refers to the absence of ungrammatical sentences in the language that the child is exposed to. There is debate among linguists and psychologists about whether negative evidence can help children determine the grammar of their language. Negative evidence, if it is used, could help children rule out ungrammatical ...
In linguistics, evidentiality [1] [2] is, broadly, the indication of the nature of evidence for a given statement; that is, whether evidence exists for the statement and if so, what kind. An evidential (also verificational or validational ) is the particular grammatical element ( affix , clitic , or particle ) that indicates evidentiality.
For example, many linguistic theories, particularly in generative grammar, give competence-based explanations for why English speakers would judge the sentence in (1) as odd. In these explanations, the sentence would be ungrammatical because the rules of English only generate sentences where demonstratives agree with the grammatical number of ...
Various sentences using the syllables mā, má, mǎ, mà, and ma are often used to illustrate the importance of tones to foreign learners. One example: Chinese: 妈妈骑马马慢妈妈骂马; pinyin: māma qí mǎ, mǎ màn, māma mà mǎ; lit. 'Mother is riding a horse... the horse is slow... mother scolds the horse'. [36]
The second sentence is viewed as impossible because the Horn clause is a main clause, and lacks an initial complementizer, such as that. While the standard view of fronted NPIs is that they are indefinites or existentials, this raises an issue for the existence of Horn clauses, as negative Inversion is prevented.
Teachers and textbook writers often invent rules which their students and readers repeat and perpetuate. These rules are usually statements about English usage which the authors imagine to be, as a rule, true. But statements of this kind are extremely difficult to formulate both simply and accurately.