ABSTRACT
What is grammar? Some combinations of words are possible in English, while others are not possible. Every native speaker of English can easily judge that ‘Home computers are now much cheaper’ is a possible English sentence, whereas *‘Home computers now much are cheaper’ is not, because they know that much is wrongly positioned in the second example. The ability to recognize such distinctions is evidence that, in some sense, native speakers already know the rules of grammar, even if they have never formally studied grammar. Similarly, native speakers apply the rules every time they speak or write (they can put words in the right order) and every time they interpret what others say (they know that ‘Susan loves Tom’ means something quite different from ‘Tom loves Susan’).
