Fuzzy Grammar and the Performance/Competence Terminology Game

Fazey §rae§ eae tie §§?f§f§§§§€§§§§§€§$§§€ ?er§en§2egy Gene eeerge Leksff fieeeereizy ef €eE:§e:nie, Berkeieg I; Fuzzy Qreeger Anycne who has taught or taken an intrceuctsry eyntax course can tell you that sneakers £5 not always mas clear er uniform Judgments abeut whether sentences are well—foree er what they mean. Almost every syntactic er semantie phenomenen has n ehaeowy area in which speakers beccme anciear eith resgect to juegmenfie about meaning and vell~fermeeness. For the past few years, this phenomena has been studiefi intensi?el§ by 3033. His general results are as follows: (1) Rulea of grammar ec no? simyly ayply or fail to apply; rather they apply to a degree. (ii).Grammatical elements are not simply members or nonmembers of grammatical categories; rather they are members to a degree. (111) Grammatical cwnstructions are not simply ielanda or nonielands; rather they may be islands to a degree. (iv) Grammatical conatructions are not simply environments or non» envircnmente for rules; rather they may be environments to a degree. (v) Grammatical phenmmena form hierarchies which are largely constant for speaker to speaker, and in many cases, from language to language.‘ (vi) Different speakers (and eifferent languages) will have different acceptability threshcles along these hierarchies. Ross has made these claims in the absence of a theory of fuzzy grammar; no current thesry cf grammar can even begin to accomodate the facts that Kass has observefi. What I voule like to do in this paper is ask some fietailee questions about how current theories of grammar might be changee to accemedate even the most basic of Ross‘ observations“ 3 weuld like ta make ciear at the outset that I do not have a theory of fuzzy grammar ta propese; the beat 1 can do is make extremely tenfiative suggesfiiens for beginning to eeal with a handful of Bees’ §hencmena and ta yreviee a framework for further ingniry.