This 48th collection of students’ pearls of wisdom, laboriously digitised from hand-written papers, demonstrates once again how students new to the study of language speculate about grammar after having imperfectly absorbed what their teachers think they have taught them.

Test Question—Grammaticality

Explain why the sentence *Hers book is red is ungrammatical.

Answers

• The sentence is in the active voice, hence the third person should be ‘her’.

• Because there is only surface structure and no deep structure. There is no relation between competence and performance.

• This sentence is in complementary distribution because it does not build a grammatical unit and does not obey the rules of English.

• The verb is singular, but hers is in the plural.

• The sentence is well formed as it is used and deemed acceptable by its speakers. Speakers of English know this.

• Because in this case, ‘hers’ occurs as a deixis.

• It is because it is about phrase constituency and not function.

• The case marker is wrong: it should be her’s book is red.

More to come...

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