Grammar
rules, OK!
I am the Roman Emperor, and am above grammar
Emperor Sigismund
La grammaire qui sait régenter jusqu'aux rois
(Grammar which can govern even kings)
Molière, Les Femmes Savantes
Lonely
Hearts sentences are English sentences
In
discussing the Lonely Hearts environment, we noted that the interrelationships
between the component procedures - represented in the call diagram - were a direct
expression of the hierarchical (or constituent) structure of the advertisements
generated by a call to lonely. At the time, we took the
line that advertisements have
hierarchical structure more for programming convenience than anything else. If
we had been more intent on taking advantage of this notion as linguists, we might,
for example have concluded that at the highest level each advertisement, each
mini text, consisted of two sentences - the first being a statement of
intent, the second providing the contact instructions.
But, one thing we would have quickly realised is that, although this two-part text
structure may indeed be a feature
of many newspaper small ads, any genuinely linguistic hierarchical structure
within the two constituent sentences is not a function of their role in any
advertisement. It stems simply from the fact that they are sentences of
English, even if perhaps marginally abbreviated. Take the first example that
lonely returned to me a moment ago:
TORY WIDOW 31 YEARS SEEKS
INTELLIGENT BOY SCOUT 81 YEARS FOR HELP WITH HOMEWORK. PHONE 86 82 62 OFFICE
HOURS.
I have inserted two
full stops (periods) which lonely did not provide. If I now
go on to 'restore' the word old after years (twice) and
the word during before office (all of which were no
doubt omitted to keep down the cost), then each sentence conforms to a common
pattern in the language at large. Indeed, if we assume that there is a you
which is 'understood' at the start of the second sentence, they might
both be considered instances
of one and the same pattern. In other words, one general formula - Subject +
Verb + Object + Adverbial-Phrase - covers both.
The Lonely Hearts structures are all around you
To
demonstrate that pairs of sentences with these structural characteristics
are not exclusive to Lonely Hearts advertisements, we have only to combine
other English sentences of the same structure and see that they can be used together
in quite different situations.
Try:
Mum's made a cup of tea for you. Drink it now.
or
Two aircraft are circling the convoy all the time. Take a look
on the radar.
And if we take each sentence as a separate entity, it is
even easier to construct variants on the structure. For example, following the
pattern of the first, we have:
A cell can supply a current of 1.2 amps
through two 2 ohm resistors connected in parallel
or
The
Association has many local branches
throughout the country.
Of course, if you are only to be convinced by well
attested instances, then you should take:
You don't want no pie in the sky when
you die, You want something here on the ground while you're still around (Muhammad
Ali)..
That's one small step for a man. (that's) one giant
leap for mankind. (Neil Armstrong's own version of his moon landing
message)
Similarly, following the pattern of the second sentence, you can
say:
Give a brief explanation
in terms of kinetic theory
or you can trot out well worn examples:
Say it with flowers
Drinka pinta milka day
Pack
up your troubles in your old kit bag
Play it
again (Sam).
A table draws out the parallels:
Notice
that The
second master of the school has been teaching my sons Euclid since Thursday
last (which you met earlier)
has also the same pattern except for the extra noun phrase my sons
which appears after the verb:
The second
master of the school // has been teaching // my sons // Euclid // since Thursday
last
Son of Lonely Hearts - a sentence generator?
If
the sentences created within Lonely Hearts are just English sentences
and if the internal hierarchical structure of sentences can be directly encoded
in the interrelationship
between the procedures of such a system, then it might seem a feasible project
to convert Lonely Hearts into a sentence generating mechanism - i.e. to use the
general framework to implement a working grammar of a language. Indeed, it may
even seem more sensible that the original idea, since it is precisely because
the constraints on sentence internal structure are tighter than the constraints
on the structure of texts that linguists have normally restricted their attention
to sentences, taking these
to be the largest units about which it is possible to formulate explicit rules.
Let's see how this can be done
Ron Brasington
Department of Linguistic Science
The University of Reading
Reading
UK
E-mail: ron.brasington@rdg.ac.uk