linguists and grammarians have noted that there is some regularity to
the things that people say. this is good.
linguists and grammarians have noted that much of this regularity can
be expressed in essentially mathematical constructs call "grammars".
this is really good.
but then somebody describes a sentence which *no* native English
speaker would ever say or write except under highly artificial
situations (such as articles about linguistics), and which virtually
no native speaker can understand (and many of those who can understand
it may require paper and pencil to do so).
then (at least one) linguists claim that this sentence is perfectly
good English because it fits the model. this is in SPITE of observed
evidence to the contrary.
as far as i know, linguistics is the only field which purports to be
science where theorists are allowed to redefine the observations. if
linguistics is a science, then grammars are a *theory* which attempts
to explain a natural phenomenon (which utterances are part of a
language).
this means the fact that a sentence is grammatical is a theoretical
observation.
furthermore, the *observation* that this sentence is not something
that has never been spontaneously uttered or understood indicates that
the theory is *wrong*, or at least limited.
but this doesn't seem to be the way that linguistics works. perhaps
my theory that linguistics is a science is at fault here.
Karl V. Teeter replied:
Hey, Rob, I don't quite get the point, since both of these are perfectly
grammatical and understandable English sentences...the cow the rat the
cat the dog tossed bit chased ate, etc., may be a bit more difficult. but
are still perfectly grammatical.
after FREEMAN ROBERT JOHN wrote:
> Has anyone any further references about or examples of what you might
> call "topological" limitations of language structure, similar to those of
> center embedding of relative clauses in English (Aravind Joshi, cmp-lg/9411030).
>
> The rat the cat chased ate the cheese.
> The rat the cat the dog bit chased ate the cheese.
>
> I always find it an amusing brick wall in English structure, right where you
> might least expect it. I'd be interested to hear of any other similar
> "arbitrary" restrictions.
>
> Rob Freeman
>