LING 1000 Lecture 13: Topic 3.2
17 Apr 2017
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
In syntax, structure refers to the way that parts or elements are arranged together to form a larger unit. In speech, words are stringed linearly one after another they are combined into groups that then in turn combinde with other groups or units. We are unconsciously aware of how words are grouped together. We are able to explain when something is not grammatical because the structure has been violated in some way. *books today bought john the. is a string of words, but it doesn"t make sense to an english speaker. However, if we rearrange the elements we get the following: John / bought / the books / today. This sentence makes sense to us, and the slashes shows where a pause seems natural. The words between pauses naturally seem to belong together. We know that there is structure to sentences when we find certain sentences to be ambiguous depending on how you group words together.
