"What even is that."

"...It's a sentence. I'm almost completely sure that it's a sentence." 

"Does the text say what the labels mean? - I guess it must, but like, does it say in this part of the book."

It does not make any sense. Calm down, it's math, math often doesn't make any sense until you've seen how it's done. "Can you, uh, show me one of the exercises?"

"Uh ....Draw a labelled tree diagram for each sentence below. You will find it easier if you break down the sentences by using the phrase structure rules set out at the end of Part One."

There do seem to be instructions at the end of part one but at no point do any of them explain what an AuxP is. 

Annisa is going to learn French or die, and she doesn't want to die, so she WILL understand this. Somehow.

"Okay, does the first page of the book make sense without context."

"The first page of the book is mainly about what syntax is? I thought I knew what syntax was!"

"Well, if Annisa doesn't, you can't start her in the middle of the book, that's like starting - I don't know, calculus without algebra, or something." She doesn't know calculus but she's pretty sure you need algebra for it, probably. "So - I think we have to start there and see if that makes sense, or if we need a... book on whatever the algebra is to this book's calculus."

They need a book on adding. But the French equivalent. She does not say that.

"Gimme one of those," she says, and grabs one of the English ones. "Fundamentals of French Syntax, by Christopher Gledhill, published in 2003."

"This is a study group, not an academic journal, we don't need a full citation."

"Well, if it changes its mind about what it is, we won't be accused of plagiarism. Okay - 

Syntax is the study of how words and phrases combine to form meaningful units in a language. Even in languages which do not have rigid word orders (such as Latin and American Indian languages), syntax is important because it examines the relations which emerge between sequences of words. Syntax is essential to our understanding of French, because it teaches us a great deal about the ‘grammar’ of the language (the correct and incorrect uses of particular words). But syntax also provides a scientific way to analyse language. This is an important point, because the syntactician’s job is not only to spot patterns, but also to understand and explain the complexities of language.

"So - syntax is a branch of science, apparently, that studies how words in sequences are related to each other?"

"Is that a science? I feel like people just - go with what sounds right."

"Yeah, that's the next paragraph. Okay - 

One of the simplest ways of exploring syntax is to observe what happens when the normal rules of the language break down. For example, most speakers of French would reject such a sentence as * Je toujours bois café, although its literal translation would be fine in English: I always drink coffee (an asterisk * indicates an ungrammatical construction). The sentence obviously means something in French, but a native speaker would reject it, and prefer Je bois toujours du café. French speakers intuitively know that grammatical adverbs (such as toujours) cannot separate the subject of the verb (je) from the verb (bois), and that a common noun (café) cannot be used without an article (du). So, in any explanation about what makes a valid sentence in French, we are obliged to refer to syntax, our implicit knowledge about how words are ordered into meaningful sequences.

"So - syntax is also the implicit knowledge of how words are combined into sentences make sense? Is it - the study of that implicit knowledge - ?"

She reads ahead for a few seconds.

Annisa needs her to go back and read the coffee example five more times!!! She does not say this.

Then she remembers that she is going to die if she doesn't learn French and she does say it.

She rereads the coffee example once.

"I think it's, like, an introductory example for explaining the concept, not something that's trying to actually teach you a rule about French that it wants you to learn right now? Like, an English example would be something like - if you said 'Drink always I coffee', that's wrong, and it's saying that the reason it's wrong is that it breaks from our implicit knowledge of how English syntax works? I think."

"...okay."

"Let's just see if the basic explanation of what the book is about makes any sense, whether it's even the right book for you.

To understand syntax is to understand one of the most fundamental characteristics of language. Many linguists consider syntax to be a central area in linguistics. They claim syntax constitutes the highest level of structure in the mechanisms of language (over and above sounds, morphemes and words discussed in other areas of linguistics). They also argue that syntax reveals the way the human mind works, especially the way we express thoughts or propositions. In the 1950s, the American linguist, Noam Chomsky, claimed that these properties could be found in all languages in one form or another. This idea was first proposed by the rationalist Port Royal grammarians in France and is known as universal grammar. This is not a ‘grammar for all languages’, but an attempt to find the underlying properties shared by all human languages. For instance, all languages appear to express ideas through transitivity, that is through a perspective of Subject - Verb - Object, although the order of these elements and their functions vary greatly from one language to the next. For example, Latin prefers the order Subject – Object – Verb, whereas Japanese tends to express a general ‘Topic’ instead of an explicit subject. In addition, all languages appear to be able to paraphrase, that is they express the same idea in a variety of ways for stylistic effect. For example -

"- okay those examples don't look helpful to you yet. So - syntax is also a science related to... psychology? Is what I'm getting here? And the idea that all languages share certain basic grammar comes from France, so if there are in fact oddballs in this area we can expect French not to be one of them."

Okay. Okay. Focus. Naima does not appear to be confused. Therefore, he cannot appear to be confused, because then Naima will think he's an idiot and the group will kick him out and probably he'll get eaten by a grogler. It's so simple when you put it that way! 

"So, it looks like this book is about ...finding rules for what's happening in our brains when we generate language. That at least sounds potentially useful for Annisa's thing. Look at this – 

As a mathematical linguist, Noam Chomsky was interested in finding the patterns which appeared to link these universal properties of language. He argued that if two sentences were related in some way, they were related by a series of abstract rules.Instead of seeing language as hugely complex and idiosyncratic, he suggested that we are in fact dealing with a small number of rules which can be combined in different ways to produce an almost infinite variety of expressions.

"Yeah! So - maybe if Annisa can't currently learn languages the normal implicit knowledge way, she can still learn how the small number of rules work and then apply them with... whatever mathematical linguists do."

" - yeah, I guess that makes sense. This looks - really complicated? But - not in a way I'd be worse at than other people, just, uh, it looks kind of complicated in general."

"Yeah I think this is, like, a legitimate academic work about some kind of scientific discipline I know nothing about? But - it does say 'fundamentals' on the cover, even if it's not meant to be a teaching tool. So - maybe this is okay, actually, if you've never met a teaching tool that worked for you. And hey, it does start out with rules that look basic, it's just that the abbreviations make them look opaque.

Most basic sentences in French share the same pattern, and this is reflected by our first rule: S -> NP VP. This states that all Sentences in French (S) consist of a Noun Phrase (NP) which serves as a subject (the topic or starting point of the sentence). All sentences also have a Verb Phrase (VP) which serves as a comment about the subject (what the subject is or what the subject is doing).

"So every sentence in French has a subject and a verb. - do we need to go over what subjects and verbs are or has everybody encountered those before."

Julian is feeling like he got the Group in way over their collective heads but Annisa does not seem to be actively having a panic attack. So. Progress?

"It's a code. You're learning to break a code." That idea seemed to get some traction last time so he's decided to run with it. "This is the – whatsit. Decoder? Key? – Maybe we should see how this applies to your actual French homework." 

"I'd rather understand it first before I try to do French with it. I know what a subject and a verb are."