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From: rickw@eskimo.com (Richard Wojcik)
Subject: Re: Q: How's un/grammaticality DEFINED?
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Date: Wed, 5 Apr 1995 01:06:55 GMT
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In article <3lrdvp$15u@decaxp.harvard.edu>,
Zorro  <berriz@husc.harvard.edu> wrote:
>Is there a linguist in the house?  I have a methodological question.
>In linguistics books one frequently finds sample sentences, some of
>which are, in one way or another, designated as "ungrammatical".  How
>is this distinction made?  What fraction of the native speakers must
>deem a given construct ungrammatical for it to gain that official
>linguistic designation?  Conversely, if enough people deem that
>sentences like "I should have went to the store" or "There is cokes in
>the fridge" or "She say it's good" are fine, does this make them
>grammatical?  Or is there a criterion different from sheer statistics?

It is really important to distinguish between a psychological approach to
language and a sociological approach.  Generative grammar is
psychologically-based, and there has even been some friction between
generative linguists and sociolinguists in the past.  Grammaticality is an
intuitive, or psychological, judgement to generative linguists.  If you
want to raise the question of how well one's intuitive judgments agree with
those of other speakers, then you are stepping into the social realm.
Generative linguists sometimes finesse the difference by speaking of an
"ideal speaker-hearer", but that ideal person is still a single person.
It is just that the individual in question is imagined to be pretty close
to the norm for a given speech community.  That is what makes the putative
speaker "ideal".  It has nothing to do with looks or personality.  :-)
-- 
Rick Wojcik  rickw@eskimo.com     Seattle (for locals: Bellevue), WA
             http://www.eskimo.com/~rickw/
