Teacher Discussion Forums

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In the following sentence:

Chomsky suggested that children have a built-in mechanism, which he called the Language Acquisition Device, or LAD, which pre-programs them to develop grammar based on the linguistic input they receive.

1. Is "to develop grammar" an object complement? If not, what is it?

2. What is "based on"? Is "based" the verb, with "grammar" the subject and "on the linguistic input" an adverbial phrase modifying "based"? Or....?

There are verbs like "points to", etc. that seem to require a preposition after them to make sense. Are they just regular old verbs, nothing special?

Thank you,

Donna

donnach wrote:1. Is "to develop grammar" an object complement? If not, what is it?

Yes, I'd say it is.

2. What is "based on"? Is "based" the verb, with "grammar" the subject and "on the linguistic input" an adverbial phrase modifying "based"? Or....?

(PHR V base sth on / upon sth: to use an idea, a fact, a situation, etc. as the point from which sth can be developed: What are you basing this theory on?—see also BASED (adj.))

>>>based adj. [not before noun]
1 ~ (on sth) if one thing is based on another, it uses it or is developed from it: The movie is based on a real-life incident. The report is based on figures from six different European cities.

(taken from OALD7 online)

I'd say that that "adjective" there leads an -ed participle phrase (which can be moved e.g. to between 'which' and 'pre-programs', where it would seem as much an adverbial participle as it might in its original position (I am assuming that it isn't really processable as a reduced relative clause - 'grammar based on the linguistic input they receive' is about the only possible type that one could have develop in one's mind (if one is to develop into a speaker of "any" language), notwithstanding the lack of a determiner such as 'a' or 'their' before 'grammar' there* - although that would make for a quick analysis)).

There are verbs like "points to", etc. that seem to require a preposition after them to make sense. Are they just regular old verbs, nothing special?

The thing with terms like 'prepositional verb' is that they can make you overlook or even forget things, such as (to borrow your words), sometimes just the 'regular old verb' is quite possible:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&as ... d%22&meta=
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&as ... n%22&meta=


* Sorry if all that sounded too empiricist (versus nativist, in the debate about the innateness of language, the validity of Chomsky's "Universal Grammar" etc).
http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewt ... 7225#37225 (post in the 'Why Everyone Should Study Linguistics' thread)

I am sure that I have read that very "LAD sentence" before somewhere (or it could just be that all passages which discuss this aspect of Chomsky's work sound the same!) - maybe in Sampson, for example?

Anyway, I pasted it into Google and came up with the following:
http://www.usingenglish.com/forum/ask-t ... ition.html

I agree with fluffy that "to develop grammar" is an object complement. I'd say " based on the linguistic input they receive" is a reduced adjective clause modifying grammar.

I do agree that if it is moved between 'which' and 'pre-programs', it becomes an adverbial participle. However, moving it there would require you to insert commas. The fact that this phrase doesn't need to be preceded by a comma when it ends the sentence indicates that it isn't adverbial in that position.

Chomsky suggested that children have a built-in mechanism, which he called the Language Acquisition Device, or LAD, which, based on the linguistic input they receive, pre-programs them to develop grammar.

Has the function of the phrase changed by moving it? I don't think so. The first phrase can be expanded into a relative clause.

grammar which is based on the linguistic input they receive

The second cannot.

which, that is based on the linguistic input they receive, pre-programs them to develop grammar.

I think that they are two different phrases and that the original wording is clearly better.

I'd considered the comma thing, and wasn't happy with the seeming modification of 'grammar' to begin with (so it would hardly have been a good idea to me at least to expand it in its original position let alone the other). But you have made me more consider the slight awkwardness of having '(pre-)programs' coming into the picture "too late", ouyang (it certainly helps when we supply our rewrites in full - it makes things easier to see generally, and some things much more apparent!).

Maybe the easiest thing (which I somehow forgot to mention before) would be to change 'based on' to 'on the basis of' or 'from':

Chomsky suggested that children have a built-in mechanism, which he called the Language Acquisition Device, or LAD, which pre-programs them to develop grammar...

...based on the linguistic input they receive.
...on the basis of/from the linguistic input they receive.

But my main contribution to "linguistics", if Chomsky would allow it, would read simply:

Children develop grammar...the linguistic input they receive.

But what do we get instead? Arguments about "possible" grammars, as if most people would hare off completely into their own brain, and ignore the evidence around them in their conjectures (wait, that is just what generative linguists do do! (wow, that sounds like 'doodoo'!)), if it were not for their LAD.

Sorry if I am boring you guys, but how can one remain uncritical reading let alone parsing sentences (or rather, ideas, theories) like that?

Mind you, there must be better-written, more persuasive innatist writings out there, and I suppose that if Donna had not asked about the grammar of this specific sentence (and if I had not read Sampson at least), I would probably have had no immediate trouble ("grammatical" thoughts), upon encountering it wherever, in reading and processing it well before only potentially dismissing more the (connected) theoretical claims behind it at some later date.

I refer to "they receive" as a relative clause. The relative pronoun has been omitted "which they receive" because it functions as an object. In a reduced clause, a subject and an essential auxiliary verb have been omitted forming a participial phrase.

Of course. Don't know why I said that.

they=subject
receive=verb
which or that=elliptical relative pronoun

Add it all together and you get a relative clause (elliptical relative clause since which or that has been omitted.