Copyright © 2003 by K. Stromswold 1

Lab 9: Grammar 2: Syntactic Structures & Syntactic Ambiguities

1. Consider the following sentences

a. I like coffee

b. You know that I like coffee.

c. He claims that you know that I like coffee.

A. Write another sentence that includes sentence c.

B. What does this set of sentences reveal about the nature of human language? How does the generative capacity of human language differ from the generative capacity of the toy phone we used in the last lab.

C. How is this characteristic of human language related to the difference between linguistic competence and performance.

2. In terms of verb subcategorization, explain why the following are ungrammatical

a. *The man located.

b. *Jesus wept the apostles

c. *Robert is hopeful of his children

d. *Robert is found that his children love animals.

e. *The children laughed the man.

f. *The child put the book.

g. *The man was died by the mugger.

3. The rules of syntax specify all and only the grammatical sentences of a language. Why is it important to say "only"? What would be wrong with a grammar that specified as grammatical all of the truly grammatical ones plus a few that were not grammatical?

4. Following the examples given in chapter 4 of Pinker’Äôs The Language Instinct (e.g., the example give on page 118), draw phrase structure trees for the following sentences

a. A very frightened passenger landed the crippled airplane.

b. The house on the hill collapsed in the wind.

c. The ice melted.

d. The hot sun melted the ice.

e. The children put the toys in the box

f. The reporter realized that the senator lied.

5. Using the example The boy saw the man with the telescope as a model (see Appendix 5), draw two phrase structure trees representing the two meanings of the sentence The magician touched the child with the wand. For each of the trees, provide a paraphrase of the meaning conveyed by the structure represented by that tree.

6. In chapter 4 of The Language Instinct, Pinker gives the following example of an ambiguous newspaper headline:

Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim

Draw phrase structure trees for each of the two possible meanings and for each tree provide a paraphrase of the meaning conveyed by the structure represented by that tree.

7. Look through magazines, newspapers, etc. and find at least 3 examples of sentences which are structurally ambiguous. For each of example, draw the phrase structure trees that correspond to the different meanings and analyze why the sentences are ambiguous. If you are stumped, you can use examples from the following websites for examples.

http://thisisnotthat.com/humor/language.html#bulletins

http://thisisnotthat.com/humor/language.html#signs

http://monster-island.org/tinashumor/humor/headline.html

http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/linguistics/synhead.html