CHAPTER 3 Combinatoriality

3.1 The need for an f-mental grammar

From the standpoint of communication systems in the natural world, one of the most striking facts about human
language is that its users can create and understand an unlimited number of utterances on an unlimited number of
topics. This productivity is possible thanks to an important design feature of language: utterances are built by
combining elements of a large butfinite vocabulary intolarger meaningful expressions. Furthermore, the principles of
combination are suchas toenableusers toconstructarbitrarilylongexpressions, subjectonly toextrinsic limitations of
memory and attention of the sort alluded to in Chapter 2).

As is observed in every introductory linguistics course, language provides many different ways of constructing
elaborate utterances. Among them are successive conjunction of phrases (1a) or clauses (1b), multiple adjectival
modifiers (1c), successively embedded prepositional modifiers (1d), successively embedded relative clauses (1e),
successively embedded complement clauses (1f), plus free mixtures of the above (1g).

(1) a. We ate apples and oranges and pears and pretzels and stew and...and I can't remember what else.

b. Ducks quack and dogs bark and cats meow andfish swi mand wor ms wriggle and...and I don't know what

armadillos do.

c. This is a big, new, imposing, poorly designed, cold, uncomfortable, very expensive building.

d. There's a sty on the eye on thefly on the lump on the wart on the frog on the bump on the log in the hole in

the botto mof the sea.

e. This is the butcher that killed the ox that drank the water that quenched thefire that burned the stick that

beat the dog that bit the cat that ate the goat that my father bought for two zuzim.