7 - The embedding problem

Summary

A native speaker of the target language is apt to perceive as ungrammatical, if not ludicrous, many of the utterances produced by a beginning learner; at the same time, he may have no difficulty in grasping the gist of what the learner is trying to convey. In actual fact, such ‘defective’ utterances are quite often more to the point than the corresponding circumlocutions of many an educated native. Imagine a migrant worker saying the following in a bakery:

(43) Me bread

Any native hearer (barring the odd linguist), will notice the apparent ungrammaticality of the utterance, and yet perceive it as perfectly meaningful, interpreting it as a request for a loaf of bread. On the first point (ungrammaticality), the hearer is wrong; the utterance is grammatically correct if uttered in a suitable context – as we will try to show further below. On the second point, the hearer is right because he takes note of the situational context of the utterance.

Take the second point to begin with: why should a hearer interpret the meaning of (43) as a request for bread, rather than as ‘I am the bread’ or ‘I've eaten bread’? Three factors have to be considered:

1. (a) The speaker is perceived to be in a baker's (awareness of the current situation).

2. (b) A baker's is a place where, among other things, bread is for sale (knowledge of the world).

3. (c) The preceding events as well as the preceding utterances may provide important cues (the same wording could be encountered in the course of a narrative).