LING 1000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Syntactic Category, Adjective Phrase, Auxiliary Verb
14 May 2018
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UNIT 3: Syntax
What is syntax?
- examines how words combine to form phases, which in turn combine to form
sentences
- traditional prescriptive rule: infinitives to + verb should not be split up,
rather than true ungrammaticality
- Syntax: represents a speakers knowledge of sentences and their structures
- Grammars of all languages include rules of syntax that represent speakers’
knowledge of these facts
- mechanisms: modification, coordination and clause insertion that make
number of sentences limitless
- Every sentence is a sequence of words, but not every sequence of words is a
sentence
- Sequences of words that conform to the rules of syntax are well formed or
grammatical and those that violate the syntactic rules are ill formed or
ungrammatical
- Grammatical judgements don’t depend on whether the sentence is
meaningful or not
- Syntactic knowledge goes beyond being able to decide which strings are
grammatical and which are not
o Accounts for multiple meanings or ambiguity of expressions
- Within phrase, certain words are grouped together → sentences have
hierarchical structure as well as word order
- Structural ambiguity: results of different structures
- Syntactic knowledge enables us to determine the grammatical relations in
a sentence, such as subject and direct object and how they are to be
understood
- Syntactic rules in a grammar account for at least
o The grammaticality of sentences
o Word order
o Hierarchical organization of sentences
o Grammatical relations such as subject and object
o Whether different structures have differing meanings or the same
meaning
o The creative aspect of language
Structures of sentences
- in syntax, structure refers to the way that parts or elements are arranged
together to form a larger unit
- order if words in a sentence and how words are grouped
- easy to see parts and subparts of a sentence in a tree diagram
- we are unconsciously aware of how words are grouped together
- some sentences ambiguous depending on how you groups words together
o I saw (large bottles and cups)
o I saw ((large bottles) and cups)
-
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Syntactic categories
- Syntactic category: family of expressions that can substitute for one without
loss of grammaticality
- we spoke about lexical categories: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs → open
class
- lexical categories make up syntactic categories that function as units in
sentences
o syntactic categories include noun phrases (NP), verb phrases (VP),
adjective phrases (AP), adverbial phrases (AdvP), prepositional
phrases (PP)
o functional categories are syntactic categories, in that they are units
that belong in a sentence
o other syntactic categories include sentences (S), nouns (N), adjectives
(Adj), adverbs (Adv), determiners (D), prepositions (P) and auxiliary
verbs (Aux)
- Noun phrases (NP)
o Contain a noun and may be preceded by a determiner (the, a, this,
that, those, my, you, his, her, some) or a pronoun (you, he, she, I, it, we,
they)
o NP can be subjects or objects of the sentence, so they could be the
opens that do the action of the verbs or are affected by the verb so can
go before or after the verb
- Verb phrases (VP)
o Contain a verb and may be precede by other verbs like may, should,
can, have, and may be followed by a NP or PP
- Adjective phrases (AP)
o Adjective, may be followed by a noun and preceded by an adverb
- Adverbial phrases (AdvP)
o Contain an adverb which may come before an adjective or may follow
anoter adverb. May also come before or after a verb. They modify
verbs and adjectives
▪ Ec. Alex walked the very puppy
▪ This is highly accurate
- Prepositional phrases (PP)
o Contain a preposition, followed by a NP
▪ Propositions in, with and for appear before noun phrase
- Sentence (S)
- Determiner (det)
- Preposition (P)
- Auxiliary verb (Aux)
Phase structure tree
- a tree diagram with syntactic category information – PST
- tree shows that a sentence is both a linear string of words and a hierarchical
structure with phrases nested in phrases
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Unit 3: syntax sentences rather than true ungrammaticality. Examines how words combine to form phases, which in turn combine to form traditional prescriptive rule: infinitives (cid:498)to + verb(cid:499) should not be split up, Grammars of all languages include rules of syntax that represent speakers". Syntax: represents a speakers knowledge of sentences and their structures. Mechanisms: modification, coordination and clause insertion that make knowledge of these facts number of sentences limitless. Every sentence is a sequence of words, but not every sequence of words is a sentence. Sequences of words that conform to the rules of syntax are well formed or grammatical and those that violate the syntactic rules are ill formed or ungrammatical. Grammatical judgements don"t depend on whether the sentence is. Syntactic knowledge goes beyond being able to decide which strings are meaningful or not grammatical and which are not: accounts for multiple meanings or ambiguity of expressions.
