sum native speaker intuitions marilyn silva recently summarised responses dealing native speaker intuitions especially respect sentence john asked mary leave notes several respondents pointed interpretation sentence determined least part pragmatically view interpretation syntactically fixed wrong point demonstrated pair examples 1 teacher asked child leave room 2 child asked teacher leave room native speaker english new zealand english syntactician nt think syntax moulded anyone else rules theories 1 2 interpret person asked child 1 teacher 2 person required leave room amount intuition fatigue could summed say weird string 50 times sounds good say good string 50 times sounds weird able change interpretation kind sentence perhaps people interpretation sentence syntactically determined summary concludes post carson contends judgment data provide real useful data would systematical careful collect course speakers differ certain points interesting question whether range variation find systematically constrained ways interesting theories grammar explain agree native speakers differ certain points syntax probably differs people think probably typical case following sentences ungrammatical would normally b sentences 1 promised mary leave b promised mary would leave 2 candidates recommended obtain booklet b recommended candidates obtain booklet 3 john requires pass examination b john needs must pass examination john requires pass examination requires john pass examination 4 saw barn red b important syntactitions realise one probably thousands syntactically distinct englishes talking socially geographically definable varities may many new zealand english speakers share judgments english less based natural language grammar anyone else interpretation certain construction may influenced pragmatic factors even majority speakers disqualify purely syntactic account speakers whose language data accounted variation among langauge users important conflate differences try base grammar syntax phonology impure sample untimately grammar account individual language student disagree data rarely contentious contend slightly different grammatical structure course less valuable search constraints syntactic structure teacher received english grammar heartily endorse carson call systematic careful collection syntactic data think english really syntactically colleague father care must taken conflating data sources even care must taken conflating data even diverse sources wayne p lawrence