Chapter 3 of "Language Instinct"

Last time, due to lack of mental energy, the article got stuck in the phrase structure principles section. In fact, the phrase structure principle only answers the initial part of the question "Why can people form countless sentences", and there are many more steps to follow. The phrase structure principle only solves the problem of what components a phrase can have and how to arrange them. To use them to create phrases and sentences requires a complex series of subsequent processes.

...Yes, after talking so much and reading so many formulas, you still can't make a sentence.

The problem with phrase structure theory is that sentences generated by it alone are likely to be crooked. For example, the example in the book:

-Melvin dined(√)

? Melvin dined the pizza(×)

-Melvin put the car in the garage( √)

? Melvin put(×)

Every one of these sentences conforms to the principles of phrase structure, and some have the right eyes and mouths, while others have the mouth of a bull-headed horse. The long and crooked sentences are all crooked in the same place - the verb.

The reason is that the verb occupies the leading position in the harem in the phrase. There are so many holes in the phrase structure. It depends on which ones can be inserted and how they should be inserted. So this is why Pinker thinks it is unreasonable to define the subject as "the doer of the action", because it is the existing verb chicken that has the subject egg.

"What are you going to do?" "...Do it!" This is a living example. The reason why this joke works is because the verb "gan" can have two meanings: 1) to do (things) 2) to make (love). When the first meaning is applied, the following word "Ma" becomes a noun phrase (composed only of nouns), as the object of the verb, indicating "what (thing)"; when the second meaning is applied, the word "Ma" becomes the mood The particle, the auxiliary verb phrase, becomes the tone of invitation.

With the verb this chicken, it laid many eggs. If the eggs rolled around, it wouldn't be able to control them. Therefore, in order to ensure that the balls are where they should be, something similar to labels appeared in the language - "lattice" to ensure that the subject and object in the phrase will not wander around. Even if they wander around, they can be labeled Get it back.

Then it killed batches of language learners.

In many languages ??(especially Indo-European languages), case markers usually appear in the form of affixes. For example, in Latin, the suffix "-em" is used to indicate the subject case (object) of a noun. In agglutinative languages ??like Japanese, case markers are reflected through adjuncts. For example, the nominative case particle "が", the collar particle "の", etc. In the long-term interaction of humans, the grammar of many languages ??has been simplified, such as English and French. Of course, there are also thorny ones like Russian and Spanish, or there are those like Latin that change their word forms so maliciously that they end up killing themselves.

Looking at the Chinese language, if there is no such inflection, does it mean that there is no case, indicating that China is tolerant of the world and very friendly to foreign friends?

Naive.

Chinese is just a morphological case. The avenue is invisible, and the case in Chinese has long been integrated into the sentence itself. The position of words in Chinese is the case of Chinese, and it is as difficult to summarize as inflection. It's not mentioned in the book, so I won't ramble here.

Anyway, such a case marking system ensures that the marked words can move around in the sentence without changing the meaning of the sentence (of course the focus of the sentence will still change, which is a problem during translation) needs to be taken into consideration, but that’s another question). This consistency principle or synergy relationship is another set of sentence generation models in addition to the phrase structure principles.

Chomsky’s latest theory is that a sentence is actually a giant phrase. This phrase is centered on the auxiliary verb, so the sentence is essentially an auxiliary phrase (IP).

Just when you thought Chomsky's violent decoding of phrase structure principles has come to an end, he once again ruined your outlook.

Pink’s explanation of this theory is very simple: “Auxiliary verbs usually appear on the periphery of the tree diagram, so the auxiliary verb must be very special, then the sentence must be an auxiliary verb phrase hahahaha”

Lead the dog!

But what he said is indeed true. In fact, a sentence (the declarative sentence discussed here) is an assertion, "that is, the predicate (verb phrase) of the sentence conforms to the description of the subject of the sentence." This means that the predicate of the sentence contains a description of the subject, and the assertion contained in the sentence is that this description conforms to the meaning contained in the central auxiliary verb of the auxiliary verb phrase of the sentence (actually this is a kind of meaning in semantics Definition, press to disable).

Yes, I said it too.

Let’s give a chestnut. In the sentence You will surely be the most popular GV star one day, the predicate is the verb phrase be, the subject is you, and the center word of the phrase is will. The description of the subject by the predicate is "to become the most popular GV actor", and the conclusion of this sentence is that "to become the most popular GV actor" conforms to the "possibility" meaning contained in the central word will, which is expressed in the vernacular. It is possible for you to become the most popular GV actor, just around the corner.

Auxiliary verbs belong to the family of function words that contribute to the obscurity of sentences. Function words are generally inconspicuous, but they are indispensable to the sentence. They are to the sentence what welding points are to the steel frame. . There are six categories listed in the book, but those are still only Pinker's categories to take care of native readers, and do not take other languages ??into consideration.

Function words are very stable in language changes because they serve as the skeleton of sentences. It's easy to stick the fat on, but difficult to cut off the bones. If you don’t believe me, try replacing words like “because” and “so” with a newly coined word from Yangchunbaixue. How many days can you persist?

Moreover, the different uses of function words can also well reflect the grammatical differences between languages. Function words have a great impact on the structure of language.

It’s not over yet. The objects discussed above are all declarative sentences. The above theory cannot well explain why the prepositional phrase with in questions like "who did you filmed the GV with?" can be true even if there is no noun phrase behind it.

So Chomsky came up with another theory. "Deep structure", "surface structure", "transformation rules", "trace".

Every sentence we say has two levels of structure. Sometimes they overlap, and sometimes the deep structure requires transformation rules to map out the surface structure. The interrogative sentence in the example is such a sentence. The normal word order of the sentence should be "__did you film the GV with who", and in order to turn it into a question that normal people can understand, who needs to be the subject in advance, but cannot be left alone, so when who is moved away, A meaningless virtual symbolic "trace" was left in its original place.

The reason why these two levels of structure should exist is because they are used to meet the needs of one person playing two roles in an argument. The role of an argument in a verb phrase is determined by the head verb; and the same argument is also subject to the higher-level structure of the sentence. The examples in the book here are not translated well. Please explain.

Beavers build dams, using the present simple tense to express objective laws, referring to the habits of beavers (dam here refers to their nests).

Dams are built by beavers is a false proposition, because at this time Dam does not specifically refer to the nests made by beavers, but may also refer to dams. Beavers obviously cannot build dams, so the proposition is incorrect.

In both sentences, beaver is the agent, and dam is the recipient. Their roles assigned by the verbs are the same. The difference lies in their different positions in different sentence structures. If beaver is the subject in the first sentence, then the dams that follow are at a lower level, and are limited to the range of dams that beavers can make; and in the second sentence, dam is the subject, and there is no need to be subject to beaver. Restricted.

In the second sentence, dam leaves a trace in the verb phrase under the deep structure, so that when switching to the surface structure, the original sentence can be restored through the trace.