Pollyisms
Every class, I find myself scribbling down at least two or three (but usually many more) great quotes by Polly. So I’ve decided to start posting each week’s worth of great Pollyisms to share with everyone and also to preserve some of the funniest things she’s said.
This week we’ve been talking about control verbs in class.
Re: the transformational grammar view,
But, excuse me, who said the theta-criterion was correct? […] Dump the theta-criterion.
Re: my timidity to agree to ‘John promised Mary to cut the grass’ being totally acceptable,
Are you worried about being accused of Valley talk?
Re: how arbitrary category names are,
Call it ‘grasshopper/NP’.
Our ‘grapefruit/NP–wait, was it grapefruit?
Re: how any theory will need to give words meanings anyway (so why not make the semantics do all the work w.r.t. control),
Words have meanings!
And, this week’s best:
GB is the theory where you always get what you want. In CG, you can’t always get what you want–but if you try sometimes…
emma :: Apr.05.2007 :: misc, syntax, linguistics :: 2 Comments »
Oh, now you’re making me homesick!
on seeing an unbound variable in a derivation: “OH MY GOD. STICK A LAMBDA IN FRONT OF IT!”