Is English Grammar Objective or Automatable?

[tgt]

Is this field subjective or objective? If the latter can it be automated? i.e type any sentence and have a software to check whether it is grammatically correct or not.

Some of you may also like to give some advice in here https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=2218462#post2218462

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

This is probably a better location for your thread than the science book discussion forum.

Here is a link...
http://www.grammarbook.com/
The first in a google search. It looks pretty good.

As for your questions:
Grammar is primarily subjective. It has to do with nothing but making sure that your reader will easily understand what you are writing (or saying). To some degree you can use logic and perhaps even information theory or neurolinguistics to make determinations on what syntax are most effective for communication but language is an almost wholely abstract invention which is subject to change based on common usage. While there may be mechanisms in your brain which favour certain syntax you are programmed with the language and its rules as you learn it so ease of understanding will be influenced by how and what you learn.

Edit: forgot the second question.
We do have software that can recognize grammar, based on fairly simple if-then rules probably, but it does not always work very well. Since the computer is not 'programmed' in the same way we are it will have difficulty judging coherence by the same standard. It doesn't even actually understand the lanuage. While the structure of a sentence may seem perfectly logical according to rules of syntax it may be confusing to actually hear or read. Similarly a sentence may break rules of syntax but actually be easier to understand than a properly formulated sentence.

 

[Astronuc]

Is this field subjective or objective? If the latter can it be automated? i.e type any sentence and have a software to check whether it is grammatically correct or not.

Grammar has rules or conventions. However, many people may not be aware of all the rules, and hence there may be some misunderstanding or difficutly in understanding, more so in the spoken form than in the written form.

The rules may be arbitrary, but they are supposed to be independent of the user, so in that sense the field of grammar is objective. The use of grammar is user dependent, so the use or misuse is subjective.

Word processors have algorithms to check grammar, but as TSA indicated they are not foolproof.

 

[tgt]

Would it then be correct to say that the rules of grammar is objective but people often misuse it (often not knowing) but get away with it. Its in this way that grammar is subjective?

In other words, it's the case that someone could say a grammatically incorrect sentence with the meaning of something grammatically correct? If we understand what they are saying then we actually label it grammatically correct (even though it's incorrect). Its in this way that grammar is not objective? However, as mentioned, strictly it is perfectly objective?

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

Would it then be correct to say that the rules of grammar is objective but people often misuse it (often not knowing) but get away with it. Its in this way that grammar is subjective?

In other words, it's the case that someone could say a grammatically incorrect sentence with the meaning of something grammatically correct? If we understand what they are saying then we actually label it grammatically correct (even though it's incorrect). Its in this way that grammar is not objective? However, as mentioned, strictly it is perfectly objective?

Grammar can be treated as objective. The point though is ease of communication. Whether or not communication is easily understood is subjective (foregoing any arguments from information theory and nuerolinguistics). If strict adherence to grammarical rules results in miscommunication and lack of understanding then they have failed in their purpose. If the majority of the users of a language can not easily understand communication based on these rules then the rules are 'incorrect' or outmoded and will be changed. It is in this way that grammar is subjective. You might call it "collectively subjective" which is something that can appear objective and can even be treated as objective to some limited degree.

So if a person uses 'incorrect' grammar but is understood it can still be labeled 'incorrect'. If the majority of persons communicating use 'incorrect' grammar and find ease of use it then becomes 'correct' and the rules of grammar have changed.

 

[honestrosewater]

Is this field subjective or objective? If the latter can it be automated? i.e type any sentence and have a software to check whether it is grammatically correct or not.

Sure, linguistics is working towards something along the lines of what you suggest. But you have a problem right away since each speaker speaks its own unique version of a language (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiolect" ) because, amongst other things, each speaker receives unique input. When a child learns a language through exposure, it has to infer the rules from the input that it receives using whatever innate learning abilities it has. You also need to distinguish grammaticality from aesthetic aspects of language.

By the bye, I wouldn't consider English grammar to be a field. Syntax and morphology are subfields of linguistics. You might also be interested in computational linguistics and language acquisition.

language use is a physical phenomena. Can any physical phenomena not be automated?

 

[manngnth]

free english speaking course provided by http://englishurban.blogspot.com

 

[maverick_starstrider]

I would say that grammar is both objective and subjective. In terms of verifying good grammar it is more on the objective side; there are things you can do, and things you can't. However, on the synthesis side, grammar is very subjective. People have styles. Some, like me, use lots of commas. Some never use semi-colons. Some people like short sentences and some people like longer, conjoined ones.

Therefore, if one wanted to write an algorithm to actually WRITE prose I think the subjectivity of grammar would be a big issue.

P.S. I think I put more effort into the grammar of this post than any other I've written. (which is to say I still didn't put much effort into it)

 

[SW VandeCarr]

The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy defines grammar as a system of rules specifying a language. In other words language is generated from a grammatical skeleton. Noam Chomsky's theory of transformational grammar implies that these rules may be embedded in a deep structure which is based on how the human brain processes and expresses information. In other words, it's innate. There are other theories, but most assume that a basic universality underlies all human languages in terms of noun phrases, verb phrases and the ideas of actor, actions, objects of actions, states of existence and modifiers. The predicate calculus apparently can break down any human language into a series of nested and interlocking functions F(x,y) F(x); for example PASSED(SHE,THE(TEST)). IS(THE(CAT), BLACK). (The cat is black).

COME FROM(I, CHICAGO); IS(CHICAGO,THE(CITY1)BIG(CITY1)); IS ON(CHICAGO,THE(LAKE)). (I come from Chicago, the big city on the lake.)

Although natural languages implement these rules in different ways, the grammatical structure of any language must reflect these rules for the language to be intelligible.

 

[CRGreathouse]

Noam Chomsky's theory of transformational grammar

 

[SW VandeCarr]

Whatever. I'm not carrying Noam Chomsky's water, but he was very influential.

I'm surprised you didn't comment on the predicate calculus. There were some mistakes there which I've since corrected. Direct modifiers, including articles, go outside the parenthesis since they assign the characteristic to the subject or object. However predicate nominatives and predicate adjectives are considered arguments of the existential function. IS(THE(GIRL),TALL). WON(THE(GIRL1)TALL(GIRL1),THE(GAME)).
Modified functions are bracketed: [QUICKLY(RAN TO)](HE,THE(FIRE)) 'He ran quickly to the fire'.

 

[AeroFunk]

I just read Steven Pinker's https://www.amazon.com/dp/0143114247/?tag=pfamazon01-20 and if you're interested in grammar, and the philosophy of language in general, I HIGHLY recommend it. It is easy to read and understand and there is something on every page that will make you go "hmmm, interesting".

 

[SW VandeCarr]

I just read Steven Pinker's https://www.amazon.com/dp/0143114247/?tag=pfamazon01-20 and if you're interested in grammar, and the philosophy of language in general, I HIGHLY recommend it. It is easy to read and understand and there is something on every page that will make you go "hmmm, interesting".

Thanks AeroFunk. I read the reviews on Amazon and they are favorable. However, issues of vocabulary and even some aspects of what are considered grammar are distinct from what might be considered fundamental organizing principles of human language. It's the organizing principles that interest me, not just of language, but of anything that might be described as a system.

Vocabulary and things like verb tenses vary greatly from language to language. Indo-European languages are obsessed with tense, but Sino-Tibetan languages are much more casual about tense. Tense can be expressed descriptively as well as grammatically. I'm not sure, from reading the reviews, that Pinker really goes after the basic features of language organization.

 

[mgb_phys]

So if a person uses 'incorrect' grammar but is understood it can still be labeled 'incorrect'. If the majority of persons communicating use 'incorrect' grammar and find ease of use it then becomes 'correct' and the rules of grammar have changed.

So "To boldy go" is now allowed

 

[CRGreathouse]

So "To boldy go" is now allowed

I've always found the prohibition of split infinitives silly. English isn't Latin, people!

 

[SW VandeCarr]

I've always found the prohibition of split infinitives silly. English isn't Latin, people!

The only languages I know of where infinitives are "splitable" are English (but not Anglo-Saxon) and the Scandinavian languages. This 'splitability' appears to have originated in Scandinavia and introduced into English during the Viking occupation in the ninth century. I'd be interested to hear from anyone about any other modern languages where infinitives are not one word.

 

[mgb_phys]

The 'source that must not be named' claims that it is unique to English and appeared after 1066 with a mixing of old English and French.

 

[SW VandeCarr]

The 'source that must not be named' claims that it is unique to English and appeared after 1066 with a mixing of old English and French.

Are you serious? Certainly, it did not come from French. German has one word infinitives and I know for a fact that Swedish has two word infinitives: att tala (to speak). I just Googled "Anglo Saxon infinitives" and the AS infinitives used as examples are single words. It would be quite surprising if it were otherwise. I admit I'm guessing that two word English infinitives date from the time of the Danelaw in the ninth century but this would be consistent with what you said. Two word infinitives were probably characteristic of English by 1066.

 

[mgb_phys]

French doesn't have split infinitives but it does the thing of putting 'pas' in front of the verb, so if you are trying to use French word order with English (or the other way around) you could end up with it.

 

[SW VandeCarr]

French doesn't have split infinitives but it does the thing of putting 'pas' in front of the verb, so if you are trying to use French word order with English (or the other way around) you could end up with it.

Usually pas comes after the verb in French. Ne m'en donnez pas du BS.

 

[mgb_phys]

Sorry meant 'ne'

 

[SW VandeCarr]

The 'source that must not be named' claims that it is unique to English and appeared after 1066 with a mixing of old English and French.

Your source that must not be named has been discovered! It's the Wiki article on split infinitives. You're confusing the use of split infinitives with languages that distinguish between full infinitives (to go) and bare infinitives, or, to say it in another way, languages that have two word infinitives. I'm talking about the latter. Regardless of what the article says, zu gehen is a German infinitive with a preposition. The full infinitive is just gehen. Sie mochte gern ins Theater gehen. (She would like to go to the Theater).

EDIT: An example of the use of zu gehen in German is: das Recht zu gehen. (the right to go). This is a noun phrase were gehen is not acting as verb. As in most languages, the infinitive is a verbal noun when not part of a compound verb. I don't think there's any problem at all with splitting infinitives used this way. "To boldly go.." fits into this type of use.

 

[apeiron]

The discussion over split infinitives would help confirm Chomsky's point. The deep objective structure of grammar would be hierarchical. So either to boldly go or to go boldly would be acceptable to the deep structure. They form a single component in the construction of a thought (even if they are a meld of action and modifier). But then - because it does not matter too much which part of the meld is introduced into thought first - go or bold - we can have this secondary subjective debate about which should be the standard (if arbitrary) choices we make as a collection of language users.

If the word ordered mattered - if it cut against the deep hierarchical structure - then there would be strong rules about the choice.

 

[mgb_phys]

Your source that must not be named has been discovered! It's the Wiki article on split infinitives.

wiki is the 'source that must not be used' around here !

 

[SW VandeCarr]

The discussion over split infinitives would help confirm Chomsky's point. The deep objective structure of grammar would be hierarchical.

I can't speak to Chomsky's ideas because I know few specifics about them. His work, however, seems to be in line with the objectives of finding the general rules of language formation. I'm not sure what you mean by hierarchical here. I believe there are fundamental relationships between atomic formulas (words or particles) which are common to all human language since we all seem to acquire and process language in the same way. The basic way grammar is expressed is a varying combination of syntactical and morphological structures. Mandarin is almost entirely syntactical. Russian, Latin and classical Greek rely heavily on morphology. Some concepts that are coded into the grammar of some languages are expressed descriptively or implied from the context in others such as gender or tense. As you say, the example of "To boldly go.." or "To go boldly.." does not involve any hierarchical structure.

If the word ordered mattered - if it cut against the deep hierarchical structure - then there would be strong rules about the choice.

I have to disagree with you here. We don't know what this deep structure is. If it is truly hierarchical, we don't know what the hierarchy is. Transformational grammar is one theory, but this approach has been questioned in more recent literature (Montague, AI workers).
In the predicate calculus a complete sentence "Our mission is to boldly go where no human has gone." might look something like this: IS (OUR(MISSION), BOLDLY(TO GO1)WHERE1(TO GO1)); HAS GONE ((NO(HUMAN), WHERE1=THERE). In the functional notation of the predicate calculus F(x), F is not a hierarchical relation to x, it's some description or modification of x.

 

[apeiron]

If you are using set theoretic descriptions - all those brackets - then you are using nested hierarchies perhaps without realising it. And this is the general aspect of Chomsky I would find correct (he was rather weird and Platonic about things such as the evolution of language).

BTW the brain itself is hierarchically structured in its generation of actions and language just reflects that. What makes language different is that output is serially constrained (we have to make choices about which noise to make first). But discussion of that leads into truly complicated neurolinguistics and systems principles.

 

[SW VandeCarr]

If you are using set theoretic descriptions - all those brackets - then you are using nested hierarchies perhaps without realising it. And this is the general aspect of Chomsky I would find correct (he was rather weird and Platonic about things such as the evolution of language).

BTW the brain itself is hierarchically structured in its generation of actions and language just reflects that. What makes language different is that output is serially constrained (we have to make choices about which noise to make first). But discussion of that leads into truly complicated neurolinguistics and systems principles.

OK but I'm not claiming (nor do AI workers) that the predicate calculus is a model for how language is generated. Intuitively nouns and verbs would seem to be at the most basic level of language. Does that mean they are at the top or at the bottom of the hierarchy? The predicate calculus places them at the bottom and this is reflected in some nesting patterns (adverbs are outside the parenthesis). Howeover, our concepts of parts of speech don't always hold when analyzing languages that a very different from the IE model. In Western Shoshone dialects of the western US, "The chicken ran across the road" would be literally translated as "Running chicken goes to (other side by) the road." "Other side by" is indicated by particle which can be loosely translated "a place further from me" than some point of reference, in this case, the road. It can be seen that here "running chicken" is nested inside the parenthesis whereas in English, "run" would be outside the parenthesis. GOES TO (RUNNING(CHICKEN), PLACE1 BY(ROAD1) PLACE1 ACROSS TO (ROAD1)). Note, the Shoshone contains more information than the English since the necessary construction will tell us if the chicken is still by the road (so it can still be caught and served for dinner) or has moved on to freedom.

 

[apeiron]

If you are coming at this from a computer science perspective then hierarchies will be a problem because computers do hierarchies very badly. They are anti-hierarchy systems pretty much!

You can find a thread of research which runs through Ashby, McKay and Grossberg which would be as good as it gets when comes to getting hierarchical "computation".

But take your question about nouns and verbs. First I would point out that this is a divide that results from a standard brain dichotomy (and dichotomies are the path to hierarchies).

So we have a world that is divided into objects and actions, locations and motions. We have a whole - some situation - and first must come the simple divide. There is a chicken. There is its running. We can now construct a proto-hierarchy out of this. Something vaguely specified (the whole that is "an object acted") becomes specifiable as two sub-components (what object? what kind of action?)

Then through hierarchies (via further dichotomies) we can increasingly specify (or qualify) this initial thought.

So the chicken is placed within the realm of objects as (for instance), [material [living [feathered [farmbird [chicken]]]]. Note the dichotomous distinctions (and the more dichotomous, the more meaningful we find them).

We are also saying [not-immaterial [not abiotic [not furred [not wild [not a duck, goose, etc].

This is one of the major things absent in most computational approaches of course. Only positive information is represented (what something is) and not at the same time all the things it is not (which is how brains do it - the idea of chicken involves not just rousing chicken circuits so to speak, but also suppressing goose and duck circuits).

As to the Shoshone example, there is no grammar that contradicts the general Chomskian story. Some languages may be better at sharply expressing some kinds of thought, but like the numbers of names Eskimoes have for snow, that tends to get exaggerated.

The wide variety of serial utterance arrangements is why serial computers struggle with human language comprehension. But hierarchically operating human brains don't.

 

[SW VandeCarr]

As to the Shoshone example, there is no grammar that contradicts the general Chomskian story. Some languages may be better at sharply expressing some kinds of thought, but like the numbers of names Eskimoes have for snow, that tends to get exaggerated.

The wide variety of serial utterance arrangements is why serial computers struggle with human language comprehension. But hierarchically operating human brains don't.

I certainly agree that there is something like a universal grammar for human language. I've worked with AI people in developing "intelligent" programs for medical applications. The idea was to get the computer to "think" like a physician. These programs are moderately successful and are improving all the time. However, we all understood that that the use of the predicate calculus was justified based on its utility, not because it was model for how the human brain actually processes language. In other words, we wanted to be clear that we were not making claims that the predicate calculus is the best possible model for a universal grammar. The predicate calculus can deal with the "shifting" hierarchies that occur between specific grammars and semantic structures, but the individual programs are language specific.

 

[SW VandeCarr]

The wide variety of serial utterance arrangements is why serial computers struggle with human language comprehension. But hierarchically operating human brains don't.

I missed this comment. It would that seem that grammars that make heavy use of morphology would be more amenable to serial processing. There is considerable freedom in how to arrange words in a sentence in highly inflected languages which would suggest that all languages are not equal in terms of the modeling grammars in computer programs. The difficulties with semantic structures also depend on how well developed classification trees are in a given language. Some languages are 'flatter' than others.