What do you call it in linguistics terms?

When you naturally feel that something doesn’t fit into a sentence and it makes the sentence sound incorrect.

Can you tell me if this kind of feeling or status in which you feel a sentence sounds correct or incorrect has a name in terms of linguistics? What do they call it in learning theory?

What is the best way to improve this sense which you can guess what is right or wrong without grammatical justification?
Thanks.

A malaprop? :confused:

When words naturally go together (usually in a specific order: cream and sugar, cats and dogs, shoes and socks, etc.) it’s referred to as a collocation. I’ve never heard of an un- or dis- collocation, though.

Being ungrammatical

I have no idea what you’re talking about unless you can give an example

suppose that I wrote your sentence reply incorrectly like

I have no idea what you would talk about …

Then somebody finds it incorrect and correct it to " I have no idea what you’re talking about . . " , but you can’t justify it by grammatically reason why your sentence is correct and what is the mistake in the first sentence, and you somehow by reading it somewhere feel strongly that your format “the corrected one you proposed” is correct,

I’m asking this because I can be 90% sure there would be a term for this kind of feeling in language study; [ When you feel that a sentence is incorrect but you can’t explain it why]

I would say that it’s a misunderstanding of the grammar and/or vocabulary of English. I was just going to say that it’s a grammatical mistake, but that doesn’t quite explain the problem. Consider those two sentence beginnings that you mention:

  1. I have no idea what you’re talking about . . .

  2. I have no idea what you would talk about . . .

The problem with number 2 is not that it’s ungrammatical. It is grammatical. The problem is that it means something different from number 1. Number 1 is used if someone is mentioning something that the person referred to as “you” is presently talking about. Number 2 is used if someone is mentioning something that the person referred to as “you” will be talking about in the future.

Not will (implies security) but may (implies possibility).

If someone’s grammar is technically correct but they’re not putting words together in a natural way, I’d say they’re not being idiomatic. Is that what you mean?

Perhaps “wrong within the context.” The example above, with “would,” pretty much leads the listener to expect the rest of the sentence to begin with the word “if.” If it doesn’t, the speaker is violating not the rules of grammar in the narrow sense, but the rules of grammar in a broader sense (the sense that linguists use, e.g., when they speak of “universal grammar.”)

It’s the kind of violation which produces some funny one-liners by quirky, “intellectual” comedians like Steven Wright, Emo Philips, and Mitch Hedberg*. Let’s call it “violation of expectation of word usage or scope.”

*“I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to do them, also.”

Wouldn’t this be a semantic distinction?

True, but it’s also a grammatical one. The problem for someone who doesn’t understand the difference between sentence fragments 1 and 2 is that they don’t understand the use of two particular grammatical elements of English. The two grammatical elements have two different meanings, so I guess you could call it a semantic distinction.

There’s grammar, then there’s usage, also called style. Some things are grammatically ok, but not good stylistically. They are not as clear, smooth sounding, or convincing as they could be. Then there are colloquial phrases that can’t be separated into their parts. These are just sayings or idioms. They need not be grammatical to begin with, so trying to understand why they are phrased this way or that way is a fool’s errand* for the language learner.

Language is culture. and culture can be illogical. There isn’t a rule to describe every aspect of the English language. Many things come down to style and preference, and that style is normative – it is established by what “everyone” is doing (what seems to be normal), not any specific rule.

This is why to improve your style in English, you must not only read, but read widely in a variety of topics and read material of good quality.
*“A fool’s errand” = a pointless task.

Step aside kids. I actually took a few classes in Linguistics forty years ago and am therefore fully-qualified to answer this question. :rolleyes:

It’s called a “funny feeling.” Don’t worry about it. Language is very resilient and the only question that counts is, “Did my audience understand correctly what I said?” If you worry too much about correctness you stop talking, and that’s not always good.

ETA: And what Hello Again said.

Never mind.