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AceDecade t1_j6lqd0i wrote

Can you name some grammar rules that produce grammatically correct, semantically incorrect statements when you misuse them?

For example “he are running” is not grammatically correct, nor is “he will run yesterday”. I can think of plenty of grammar rules that product grammatically incorrect sentences when not followed, so I’m a bit skeptical that there are many grammar rules that produce grammatically correct sentences when not followed

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johndburger t1_j6mtj42 wrote

“He will run yesterday” is perfectly grammatical.

Too many people use “ungrammatical” to mean “this sentence just doesn’t sound right”. It has a much narrower meaning than that.

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flyingbarnswallow t1_j6m2tnd wrote

There are a couple famous examples. Chomsky’s sentence that often gets used in intro linguistics textbooks is “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.” It registers as syntactically correct, a perfectly valid sentence, as opposed to, say, “Sleep ideas green furiously colorless”, which is intuitively much worse. And yet, the syntactically correct sentence is semantically nonsensical. This tells us there must be a mechanism of syntax at least somewhat independent of semantics.

The second example I remember from intro linguistics (or maybe syntax) was the poem Jabberwocky. Almost all content words are nonsense words with no established English meaning. And yet, the sentences work. They read as sentences that should be possible in English. This is because they follow English grammatical rules.

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dg313 t1_j6mfsgi wrote

Is it because in the first sentence, “sleep” functions as a verb? So the syntax is recognized as adjective (or adverb, depending on if it’s modifying green or ideas)-adjective-noun-verb-adverb? But in the second sentence, there isn’t a verb since sleep is acting as a modifier for ideas, so it’s adjective-noun-(misplaced) adjective-adverb-adjective so it isn’t recognized as a sentence?

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flyingbarnswallow t1_j6opvgx wrote

Chomsky’s main idea is that while human language is produced linearly (that is, one word after another), it has a deep structure that is instead hierarchical. The full set of rules governing where different parts of speech can go in this hierarchy is waaaay too long for a Reddit comment (and I doubt I could explain it well since it’s been a few years since I really took syntax).

I believe the highest level in this sentence is a VP (Verb Phrase), although I think one might argue it’s a TP (Tensed Phrase) idk, I’m not a syntactician. A VP can take an internal argument (object, for English verbs), but isn’t required to, and in this case it doesn’t, since sleep is an intransitive verb. Embedded in that VP, as in all VPs, is an external argument, in this case the NP (Noun Phrase) “colorless green ideas”, and a V’ (read as “V bar”). The V’ itself contains the V “sleep” and the AP (Adjunct Phrase) “furiously”.

There’s more analysis to be done on this sentence (going into the NP and its adjuncts), but I’ll spare you. The point I’m trying to make is that rules govern the syntax of languages, but these rules are, under Chomsky’s original proposition, unrelated to semantics. He argued it is entirely possible for a sentence to be syntactically grammatical and semantically meaningless, which I think is well-evidenced by the fact that there are some meaningless sentences that seem like English and some that don’t.

Later linguists working with later models have challenged the strict hierarchy of this theory (called the Minimalist Program), and have also challenged its total separation of syntax and semantics.

The other point I should have made clearer in my first comment is that most people use “grammar rules” differently from how linguists use the term, including, I think, the person I was replying to. Linguists are scientists, and therefore take a descriptive view of language. We model what we observe. If our rules don’t conform to how people actually speak, it is we who are wrong, not the speakers, just like how a physicist’s model of particle behavior must be wrong if it doesn’t accurately product how a particle acts. This disqualifies almost all the grammar rules you learned in school. Things like “you can’t say ‘me and my dad went to the store’” or “you can’t end a sentence with a preposition” are obviously wrong, because people do it all the time. If those actually produced sentences universally judged by our mental grammar to be unacceptable, then people wouldn’t do them. The job of syntacticians is not to impose arbitrary rules like these, but instead to discover the actual, implicitly understood rules governing how all real human beings speak, not just those who have been taught to speak in a certain educated register.

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ad-lapidem t1_j6msw78 wrote

"He will run yesterday" is perfectly grammatically correct, it's just semantically nonsense. For that matter, "he are running" (or "he be running," etc.) may not be acceptable in standard Englishes, but might be preferred or at least unexceptional in certain dialects.

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AceDecade t1_j6nh902 wrote

“He will run yesterday” is grammatically correct? Grammatically speaking then, is this sentence future tense or past tense?

Is it grammatically correct for one clause to have two different tenses?

This isn’t merely semantically incorrect because it suggests the use of time travel, it’s grammatically incorrect because the verb is just conjugated incorrectly for the tense of the sentence.

As for your other examples, certain dialects have different grammar rules, but they’re still rules. Breaking grammar rules doesn’t usually produce sentences that are still grammatically correct but semantically different in this case either.

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FormulaDriven t1_j6nsi13 wrote

"He will run yesterday" is future tense because the verb formation is the one for the future tense (will + INFINITIVE). "Yesterday" is not part of the tense. In meaning, the "yesterday" contradicts the tense but that's not a grammatical observation.

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Teupfleup t1_j6pbpe5 wrote

>This isn’t merely semantically incorrect because it suggests the use of time travel, it’s grammatically incorrect because the verb is just conjugated incorrectly for the tense of the sentence.

No, it's not. The point in "will run yesterday" and "sleep furiously" is actually exactly the same: Grammatically correct, semantically nonsensical. The effect of "yesterday" really isn't any different from "furiously" here, as it does not influence the grammatical tense. They are just adverbs that add meaning that is nonsensical. They're just sitting there in their correct grammatical positions. There really is nothing wrong with the conjugation of the verbs - It would be wrong it if it was "will ran", for example.

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ad-lapidem t1_j6o40pr wrote

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously, more famously.

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AceDecade t1_j6o4l68 wrote

What grammar rule does this sentence break? Isn't it grammatically correct, semantically nonsense?

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ad-lapidem t1_j6o4x00 wrote

It doesn't; that's the point I'm making. You can form a sentence which parses into grammatical English but which doesn't communicate any useful information. Grammar is not the only thing that determines whether something is good English or not.

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AceDecade t1_j6o519k wrote

I've never suggested otherwise. You claimed there were many grammar rules which produce grammatically correct sentences when broken. I'm asking which rules those are.

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ad-lapidem t1_j6ohiva wrote

Where do I claim this? I simply point out that "He will run yesterday" is grammatically correct even if it does not make sense. It follows all the rules of standard English grammar. You would presumably not object to the sentence "She will jog tomorrow" which is identical in grammatical structure and equally grammatically correct in standard English. But grammar, again, is not the sole determiner of what makes something acceptable English.

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AceDecade t1_j6oigxd wrote

Sorry, I was confusing you with the commenter above who made the claim I'm referencing. I was curious about grammar rules that, when you break the rule, you still end up with a grammatically correct sentence that means something different from what you may have intended.

I'm still not sure why you referenced "colorless green ideas sleep furiously". It's a grammatically correct, semantically meaningless sentence but it doesn't appear to break any grammar rules, which is what I was originally asking for.

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Any-Broccoli-3911 t1_j6moz9c wrote

"He is running", " he was running", "he will run", and "he ran" all mean something different but are grammatically correct. That grammar rule is essential to the meaning of the sentence, in this case, the tense.

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AceDecade t1_j6ncaj4 wrote

I agree. All four of the sentences you provided are grammatically correct and follow the grammar rule that the verb is conjugated to match the subject. What grammar rule has been “broken” that you would say actually produces a different, yet still grammatically correct sentenc?

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czbz t1_j6ojf49 wrote

What about the subject-verb-object order rule? I can say "Sam reads Reddit", or I can switch the subject and object and say "Reddit reads Sam". Breaking the rule didn't make an ungrammatical sentence, it made one with different meaning.

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AceDecade t1_j6ol10r wrote

Ah I see, in this example the rule is "broken" because we know that "Sam" is the subject, but it can be interpreted as a grammatically correct, semantically meaningless sentence where "Reddit" is the subject instead.

I guess that makes sense, but I wouldn't say that both the grammar rule has been broken AND the result is a grammatically correct sentence; rather, it's one or the other. Either the grammar rule has been broken because the subject is in the wrong place, or the grammar rule has not been broken but the subject is such that the sentence becomes meaningless.

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czbz t1_j6om9o0 wrote

I wouldn't say "Reddit reads Sam" is semantically meaningless. It can mean the Reddit community forms an understanding of who Sam is, or just that they read words Sam wrote, depending on context.

I would say the rule has been broken if the speaker intended to communicate that Sam was the one reading but they said the words in the wrong order, perhaps because they didn't know English grammar well. It's a particularly bad mistake because it may lead to a misunderstanding.

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