🗣 Natural language §

= language that has evolved naturally

Phenomena §

• Subcategorization
  • verbs can take certain complements
  • but can also have number of optional modifiers
    • e.g. “I sleep here”, “I hardly ever sleep here”
• Agreement
  • main verb agrees with person and number
    • e.g. “We drive a car”, “He drives a car”
• Movement
  • certain constituents can be moved around
  • e.g. “He drove back”, “Back he drove”
• Coordination
  • phrases can be conjoined by means of and and or
  • “John and Nick drove home”