From: Dave Washburn (dwashbur@nyx.net)
Date: Thu Jul 26 2001 - 11:23:34 EDT
Randy,
It's not so much that something we can't define doesn't exist; it's
more a case that something we can't define is fairly useless for
doing grammatical/syntactical research. Suppose I suggest a
grammatical category "gerf." And then I say "the gerf is the
essential minimal syntactic unit." When you ask me what a gerf
is, I say "I can't really define it, but I know it's there" that's not
going to give you much to go on for studying the nature of a gerf.
So it is with the term "sentence." In our language there is such a
word, and it can be somewhat defined. The problem is, for
syntactical research, it isn't useful unless we can pin it down
somehow the way we can "clause." Syntactically speaking (at
least from a TG viewpoint) there is no such thing as a "compound
clause"; a clause is a clause, and when you have two or more
conjoined, that's what you have: two or more clauses. Ditto for
VP's. Hence, for determining structure rules, transformations and
the like, "clause" or "VP" is a much more useful term than the
nebulous idea "sentence." Does that clarify?
Moon,
The advantage of redefining "clause" as "VP" has to do with
determining basic deep structure patterns and the transformations
that map them onto surface structures. Chomsky used the term
"sentence" and others use the term "clause" because the subject
is seen as a NP that is separate (in terms of phrase structure) from
the VP; this is where I part company with Chomsky. Someone
emailed me privately and told me that Chomsky is moving in the
direction of subordinating the subject under VP, and if that's
correct, IMO he's making a needed correction to his approach. I
still can't buy his minimalism, though, because it seems like an
elaborate shell game to me: he takes problematic items and moves
them out of syntax proper into other compartments of his theory.
Again, YMMV.
Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
"You just keep thinking, Butch. That's what you're good at."
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