🚀 go-pugleaf

hand@tam2000.tamu.edu (Michael Hand) writes:

>Jacques Guy <jbm@newsserver.trl.oz.au> wrote:
>  > So there you are. Reject the data that contradicts the theory. Even
>  > better: fabricate data to prop up the theory (the rat that the cat 
>  > that the dog chased caught squealed).

>Huh?  Center-embedding produces intuitively *unacceptable* sentences 
>pretty fast, as your example shows.  Its unacceptability is a datum.
>Nonetheless, it is as grammatical as all get-out.  What's been 
>"fabricated" here?

How do you know it's "grammatical" if it's "unacceptable"? Unless of
course you create a grammar by fiat and then state, wholesale, that
sentences which fit that grammar are "grammatical" _by definition_,
whether they are "acceptable" or not. That, however, wouldn't buy you
anything, since you then have no way of empirically falsifying your
grammar.

-- Mark

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