Teacher Discussion Forums

Hello

I'm doing some exercises from the book Syntax A Generative introdcution by Andrew Carnie and one of the exercises asks to classify the mistakes from a prescriptive or descriptive point of view, as I'm not a native speaker my intuitions/ expectancies failed me in two sentences:

(1) Who did you see in Las Vegas?

(2) Who do you think that saw Bill?

How would judge these sentences, what is the mistake in each?

Thanks

José

1) is fine regardless of viewpoint (descriptive versus descriptive?!), but 2) is incorrect. Again, I wouldn't call the latter judgement either prescriptive or descriptive in viewpoint, it is basically looking at an "unobservable" (unobserved, if you restrict yourself to actually-occuring examples and generalize accordingly), that is, a non-fact. Generative linguists for some reason seem to hold a lot of stock in "negative" (non-occuring) examples and evidence, as if teachers and students can formally learn a lot about language as effortlessly from the examples in generative textbooks as babies apparently can't (and don't need to) from the evidence around them, due to their LAD or something (i.e. these textbooks are full of theorizing and theory when it might be easier as adult linguists at least to just depend on the actual facts of usage as e.g. SFL does). Oh, the irony of the plight of Chomskyites (but actually, I am not sure of the overall theoretical orientation of Carnie, though I have my suspicions). All that is not to say however that making formal descriptions of a language (i.e. writing a grammar) is ever going to be a straightforward or easy process, but some ways do seem to make for easier going than others; then again, I'm not much of a syntatician, perhaps because I haven't given writers like Carnie enough time to presumably get to their point (assuming it's not all ultimately to prove "UG").

I think the point is that in 1, certain people might say that we should use 'whom' instead of 'who', hence it could be a 'mistake' from a prescriptive point of view.

2 is quite a tricky one, and there are different theories as to why it is incorrect. I think the Chomskyian idea is that a relative clause like this can't have an empty subject. However, the sentence 'Who do you think that Bill saw?' is fine, because 'Bill' is the subject of the clause. Obviously this is a mistake from the descriptive point of view.

'Who do you think that Bill saw?' sounds a bit cluttered (I guess I usually omit the 'that' in any sentences (that) I might utter like that?); as for 'who' versus 'whom' there, the supposed "incorrectness" of the 'who' is surely a non-issue (at most it is informal versus formal, or another example of that "linguistic martyrdom").