LING 1000 Lecture Notes - Infinitive, Universal Grammar, Parse Tree
25 Feb 2013
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Document Summary
Syntax: the part of the grammar that represents a speaker"s knowledge of sentences and their structures. Rules of syntax: principles of grammar that account for the grammaticality of sentences, their hierarchical structure, their word order, whether there is structural ambiguity. Ex: system from the word un + system + atic + ally. Well formed: sequences of words that conform to the rules of syntax. (grammatical) Ill formed: sequence of words that violate the syntactic rules. (ungrammatical) The ability to make grammaticality judgements does not depend on having heard the sentence before. Grammaticality judgements do not depend on whether the sentence is meaningful or not. You may understand ungrammatical sequences even though you know they are not well formed. Grammaticality does not depend on the truth of sentences. Our unconscious knowledge of the syntactic rules of grammar permits us to make grammaticality judgements. Ambiguity: the term used to describe a word, phrase or sentence with multiple meanings.
