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level of the individual sentence? By the sentence I mean the sentence
as it singly stands, ie. disconnected from preceding and succeeding
sentences in a paragraph, a chapter, or a book. Certainly not; for we
communicate through longer stretches of utterances, ie. texts.
SENTENCE OR TEXT
A sentence is either meaningful or meaningless. Drawing
distinctions between meaningful and meaningless sentences is not an
easy task. "Sentences, by definition, are grammatically well-formed".
(Lyons, 1981, p101) Many of the utterances formed in normal
circumstances, however, are ungrammatical in various ways, and yet some
of them are interpretable in their relevant contexts. But, as Lyons
maintains, "grammaticality must not be identified with semanticity".
(ibid, p102)
The distinction between grammaticality and semanticity is neither
recognizably sharp nor sufficiently clear-cut. There are many
utterances whose unacceptibility is quite definitely a matter of
grammar, rather than semantics. For example, "I can't speak English
like me speak Arabic" is obviously ungrammatical in standard English in
contrast with "I can't speak English as smoothly and fluently as I can
speak Arabic". The first utterance can be classified as being
ungrammatical and yet its meaning can be easily sought in the context
in which it is embedded. On the other hand, some utterances, which we
can classify as grammatical, are meaningless. Lyons cites a few
examples:
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