and swallow is an NP containing the nouns duck and swallow. But no speakers hear it as
having mixed readings on which duck is a verb and swallow is a noun, or vice-versa,
and it is never uttered with this meaning. It is logically possible that the sentence
should have the mixed readings. And we could arti cially stipulate that the sentence
was to be understood in such ways. This would be to create a piece of arti cial language,
since no one naturally acquires such a language. The fact that English-speakers don't
intuit these mixed readings can be taken as evidence concerning the organization of
their grammatical competence.
The explanation of the relevant intuitions is that the competence system is structured
according to a co-ordination constraint. The constraint determines that we can only
conjoin constituents of the same grammatical category. This hypothesis about
grammatical competence, supported by the evidence from intuitive judgements about
forms like (8), explains why speakers are unable to achieve such logically possible
mixed readings. The interpretations that speakers can consciously hear, and then judge,
such expressions to have, are crucial evidence for, or against, this hypothesis about
their grammatical competence. I only hear (8) two ways, and I can only consciously
hear, or attend to, one of those interpretations at a time. Once I recognize that (8) has
these two readings, I can consciously switch my attention back and forth between these
intuited structural properties.
3.2 Intuitions and judgements
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3.2 Intuitions and judgements
Though grammarians do not tend to distinguish explicitly between intuitions,
judgements, and intuitive judgements, it may be that intuition and judgement are picking
out distinct aspects of speakers’ engagement with language. The term ‘intuition’ seems
to refer to the unre ective take or awareness that the speaker has of linguistic form,
whilst ‘judgement’ seems to refer to the formation of a report on the basis of that
intuitive take or impression.
It also seems that nothing very intellectualized is meant by intuitive judgement in this
context. Intuitive judgement might suggest that the data take the form of a speaker-
hearer judging that a linguistic form is grammatical, ambiguous, and so on. Indeed,
Devitt (
[2006a]
, p. 95) thinks that the relevant sense of judgement is ‘metalinguistic
judgements about acceptability, grammaticality, ambiguity, coreference/binding, and
the like’. But in pro ering their linguistic judgements speakers are not generally
required to have linguistic concepts with which to express the status or structural
interpretation they have assigned to linguistic material. As Collins notes:
We are interested in how speaker/hearers interpret strings, either their own or
those of others. This covers a panoply of di erent attitudes. Most often, the data
are simply that speaker/hearers nd a string unacceptable. Period […] Other times,
we might be after a more explicit judgement, and so we ask, ‘How many ways
ambiguous is the sentence, I had the book stolen?’. Other times we might ask, ‘Who
is xing the car in the sentences Bill told Sam to x the car and Bill promised Sam he
would x the car.’ (
Collins [2006]
, pp. 7–8).
To be capable of interpreting linguistic material, speakers need not have any
metalinguistic concepts with which to categorize the material or any special expertise
beyond competence in their language. No expertise is required, only an honest report of
how things strike one. In this respect, the linguistic intuitions data is analogous to the
data for other psychological theories, where ‘there is no relevant expertise about the
data beyond the authority of the subject's own perceptions.’ (
Slezak [unpublished]
, pp.
33–4).
On the orthodox model, a speaker's intuitions are simply cognitive data to be explained
and eliciting a speaker's linguistic intuitions does not require attributing to them any of
the theoretical concepts that animate grammatical theory. If a linguist says that a
speaker has the intuition that a re exive must be locally bound, this is just a shorthand
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way of saying that a speaker has linguistic intuitions that can be explained on the basis
of his possessing a grammatical competence, organized according to principles
involving re exives, locality, and binding.
3.3 Linguistic intuitions and visual impressions
Much of the evidence for computational theories of vision has come from subjects’
responses to presented material, either in the form of reports on the way that things
appear or seem to them, or their use of such appearances to carry out visual tasks.
Chomsky suggests a comparison between the way that speakers’ intuitive responses to
linguistic material are brought to bear on generative grammars and the way that
subjects’ reports in visual experiments are brought to bear on theories of vision:
A generative grammar attempts to specify what the speaker knows, not what he
may report about his knowledge. Similarly, a theory of visual perception would
attempt to account for what a person actually sees and the mechanisms that
determine this rather than his statements about what he sees and why, though
these statements may provide useful, in fact, compelling evidence for such a
theory. (
Chomsky [1965]
, pp. 8–9)
Chomsky ([2002], p. 125) takes the study of the computational operations of
grammatical competence, on which the intuitions evidence bears, to be the study of
‘mental representations and computations, much like the inquiry into how the image of
a rotating cube in space is determined from retinal stimulations.’
One similarity between the experimental investigation of vision and the investigation of
speakers’ linguistic intuition is that the intuitive takes speakers have on linguistic
material are pre-doxastic in a way that compares with visual appearances. And the pre-
doxastic nature of linguistic intuitions and visual appearances is of interest to the
grammarian and vision scientist, respectively. Upon presentation of a Kanizsa triangle
(Figure
1
), subjects report an impression of an equilateral triangle with its corners in
the circular (pacman-like) elements of the presentation.
Figure 1
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This impression of a triangle exhibits belief-independence because it can be had even
by subjects who do not believe that there is a triangle there and who have seen how the
illusion is created by comparing the two boxes in Figure
2
.
There are a large number and variety of visual illusions such as the Necker Cube and
Muller–Lyer lines, which can be enjoyed or su ered even by those who do not believe
in the veridicality of the appearances. They provide important evidence about how the
visual system lls in and processes the information that is input to it. These visual
seemings or impressions that are generated in the course of visual processing clearly
encode more information than is given to the senses, and are of particular interest for
precisely that reason. They are sometimes called percepts to highlight that they are
Figure 2
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impressions or seemings, and distinguish them from genuine perceptions.
Such mental capacities as vision, which exhibit independence from belief and general
intelligence, are said to be encapsulated. As Fodor (
[1983]
) originally employed this
notion, informational encapsulation meant that the computations that a system carries
out are de ned over a restricted base of information and not penetrated by central
cognitive processes, such as those involved in belief and theory-formation.
Linguists’ interest in speakers’ intuitions is comparable along this dimension. With
strings like (9), an impression of a complete structure can persist despite our coming to
believe that (9) does not have such a structure:
(9) Many more people have been to France than I have.
If we try to ll in the structural ellipsis, we see that the sentence makes no sense: Many
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