![](bg4.png)
and should be avoided. However, in some cases,
stranded prepositions are normal where there is a
close relation between the preposition and the
preceding word, as in: Who are you looking for? Yet,
in sentence 7, the antecedents for the prepositions are
relatively far (what…for, bring…out, to be read…to).
Also, a single question usually uses one stranded
preposition, not three in a row.
Sentence 8: The plane that the pilot that the police
questioned flew crashed. (20% of teachers and 10 %
of students judged correct). This sentence is complex
because it contains center-embedding of relative
clauses. This sentence consists of three clauses that
can be written as:
[The plane [that the pilot (that the police
questioned) flew]] crashed.
Center-embedding poses an extreme processing
load for English speakers (Comrie, 1989: 27; Odlin,
1989: 97). However, processing difficulty does not
entail that his construction is ungrammatical.
Sentence 15: Susan trained like she’d never
done before. (0% of the teachers and 30% of the
students judged correct). The problem in this
sentence is the preposition like. Like in this case
functions as a preposition denoting a comparison,
similar to the preposition as. Following the
prescriptive grammars, as should link the first clause
Susan trained, with the comparative second clause
She’s never done before. The second clause is a
comparative clause marked by the use of present
perfect tense she had never done and the time signal
before. (Cobuild, 2005) describes that preposition
‘like’ and ‘as’ can be used to say that someone or
something is treated in a similar way to someone or
something else. (Huddleston & Pullum (2005) say
that like + finite clause is relatively informal but it
cannot be regarded as deviant. Most participants
focused on the use of different tenses in the first and
second clause so they judged this sentence as
incorrect.
Meanwhile the sentences that show the biggest
difference in perception are sentences number 16 and
17.
Sentence 16: I bought three mouses at the
computer stores. (35 % of the teachers and 80 % of
the students judged correct). ‘Mouse’ is a countable
noun which has an irregular plural form, i.e. mice,
instead of mouses. However, recently, the word
mouse is used as a technical term for computer
appliance. Oxford dictionary defines it as ‘a small
handheld device which is moved across a mat or flat
surface to move the cursor on a computer screen’. So,
the question is whether the plural of mouse in the
computing sense ‘mice’ or ‘mouses’? People often
feel that this sense needs its own distinctive plural,
but in fact the ordinary plural ‘mice’ is more
common, and the first recorded use of the term in the
plural (1984) is ‘mice’.
Sentence 17: There is only one person who thinks
of themself. The use of they/them/their to refer to a
singular person whose gender is unknown is
controversial (Leech & Svartvik, 2002: 58) Yet, the
pronouns they or them can be used for indefinite
pronouns such as someone or anyone (Cobuild,
2005). Some people say it is wrong to use them for
singular but clumsy to use him or her because it only
suggest that the person is a male or a female. Another
problem is the reflexive form themself. In themselves,
the plurality is double-marked (them+selves), while
the noun is singular (one person), so the term themself
is used. Biber, et al. (2000:343) note that the form
themself sometimes occurs in the news corpus to fill
the need for a dual gender singular reflexive pronoun.
4 CONCLUSIONS
The findings of this study show that students and
teachers have different perceptions regarding the
grammaticality of sentences. In general, the teachers
found more ungrammatical sentences than the
students. The teacher group only judged 31.43 % of
the sentences as correct or grammatical; while the
student group judged 44 % of the sentences as
grammatical. The results indicate that teachers were
able to find more ‘mistakes’ in the sentences given. It
is possible that the teachers are ‘rules sensitive’
meaning that they can spot irregularities immediately.
For example, when they see the word ‘mouses’, most
of the teachers consider this word as incorrect. On the
contrary, some of the students might be ignorant of
the grammatical rules. Thus, they tend to judge the
sentences as grammatical rather than finding the
irregularity in the sentences.
The findings of this study confirm Rimmer's
(2006) indication that there are three competing
motivations for rating the sentences as grammatical
or ungrammatical. Those are: (1) appeal to usage; (2)
appeal to rules; and (3) ignorance. In the case of the
teacher participants, the first and second motivations
apply to them. On the contrary, the most of the
students show the ignorance to the rules.
Finally, the question of which sentence is
grammatical and which is ungrammatical cannot be
answered in a clear-cut fashion. Rimmer (2006)
claimed that grammaticality judgment tests do not
offer conclusive evidence to support the legitimacy of
a specific construction. There is also no simple
answer to the question posed by Han & Ellis (1998)
CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017 - Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology
Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education
56