The sentences below are similar in their surface form but differ significantly in the way they are understood.
		Consider the sentences: John saw the boy in the park with a telescope. John saw the boy in the park with a dog. John saw the boy in the park with a statue. or to summarize the three: John saw the boy in the park with a {telescope; dog; statue}. These sentences are (on the surface) identical except for the choice of the last word. However, they can be seen to differ in important ways if we use our linguistic knowledge to determine which part of the sentence the prepositional phrase 'with a `x`' modifies in each case. The figure to the left provides a representation of the underlying structure which explicitly shows the aspect of the sentence that is modified by the prepositional phrase. In the first sentence, the seeing is being accomplished using a telescope. In the second, it is the boy who is with a dog. And, in the third it is the park that contains a statue. The fact that the surface form of the sentence does not provide a basis for these distinctions is part of the argument that the mind must possess rules which capture linguistic knowledge and are used to understand linguistic utterances.


	Understanding, Interpreting and Remembering Events
© Charles F. Schmidt