Chapter 5

File 5.0 - What is Syntax? Syntax : The organization of words into phrases, and phrases into sentences. File 5.1 - Basic Ideas of Syntax The structure of a sentence is the way that the words are organized into phrases, and the way those phrases are organized into larger phrases Different languages have different sentence structures, and any sentence in a particular language will follow certain rules - some of which include word order, lexical categories, agreement, constituency and hierarchical structure
Word order Acceptable word order changes from language to language, so not every string of words in a language is a sentence - those that form actual sentences are called grammatical Sentences that do not conform to a language's word order rules are ungrammatical Lexical categories Also called syntactic categories, or parts of speech - nouns, verbs, etc.

To determine whether two words are from the same lexical category, substitute one for the other - if the sentence still makes grammatical sense, then they are likely part of the same lexical category Not all languages have the same lexical categories - most, however, have nouns and verbs Agreement Agreement is the principle that says that certain words need to have a specific property (an affix, for example) in order to work in a certain sentence While this is a big part of prescriptive grammar, agreement is an important part of syntax in many languages Constituency and hierarchical structure Structural ambiguity: The meaning of the sentence depends on how the words are put together - word order alone is not enough to tell you the intended meaning
The meaning depends on the sequence in which the words were combined - [more intelligent] administrators is different from more [intelligent administrators] Constituent: The group of words inside a bracket, which function as a discrete unit in the sentence Hierarchical structure: The order in which constituents were combined - often, constituents will be nested inside each other File 5.2 - How Sentences Express Ideas Syntax isn't necessarily about meaning - sentences may be grammatical, but they are semantically anomalous - it conforms to syntactical rules, but the meaning doesn't

Syntax is just about the structure of phrases and sentences, and how constituents are allowed to
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Syntax is just about the structure of phrases and sentences, and how constituents are allowed to be put together Role: The function that something has in a sentence Agent: Person, animal, etc. that does an action Patient: Thing that action happens to
Instrument: Thing involved in performing the action Theme: Thing that is in a state/location or undergoes a change - experienced by the experiencer Experiencer: Animate being that has a perceptual/mental experience - experiences the theme Source: Where a change of possession begins Recipient: Individual that comes into possession of something Subject: Phrase immediately before the verb

Object: Noun phrase right after a verb Roles expressed represent things that are important to people There are several ways to express the same role using different resources - you can make a sentence with the same meaning, but a completely different structure File 5.3 - Lexical Categories Content words: Contribute to the meaning of a sentence Open lexical category: New words can be added to these categories - verbs, nouns, etc. Function words: Grammatical words, similar to function morphemes Closed lexical category: It's rare that a new word is added to this category - these are grammatical function words Words of the same lexical category can function the same way in a sentence - you can replace one with the other
Nouns (N): Real/imaginary/abstract things, the only category in English that can be pluralized, and can be modified by descriptive words Verbs (V): Actions, events, states - express time and take particular forms based on time, and can work with auxillaries Adjectives (Adj): Describe things, come in comparative and superlative forms, and can also be modified (very, more)

Adverbs (Adv): Used to express manner, describe attitude or judgement, indicate temporal frequency many are formed with -ly, and can also be modified themselves Determiners (Det): Express definiteness, indefiniteness, possession, quantity - always appear before nouns Prepositions (Prep): Express many roles such as possessor, instrument, spatial/temporal relations appear before noun phrases

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appear before noun phrases Auxillary verbs (Aux): Express notions of time, necessity, possibility - used alongside other verbs Pronouns (Pron): Refer to particular nouns or noun phrases Conjunctions (Conj): Used to link together different elements within a phrase or sentence Some words are members of multiple categories - category can only be determined by how something is used in a sentence
File 5.4 - Phrase Structure Every word is a member of a lexical category - this determines what kind of phrases it can form A phrase is a string of words that functions as a unit in a sentence A phrase is built around a single word - its head There are specific ways in which phrases can be combined, called the phrase structure rules of a language - Phrase structure of a sentence is determined by the way in which the phrase was combined

Head: Member of a lexical category, has other words attached according to phrase structure rules creating a phrase of a certain type

Nodes: Labels in a phrase structure tree, indicates the category of the word or group of words below Phrase structure rules: Determine what goes into a phrase and how the parts are ordered - written as VP -> V (NP) - the arrow means 'may consist of' and the brackets mean that part is optional The syntactical rules in our mental grammars have to be pretty specific, because not all words work together in terms of meaning Conjunctions form larger phrases of the same category - these are called conjoined phrases Recursion: Using the same structures over and over again to make long, complex sentences - NP -> DET N PP -> P NP - a noun phrase has a determiner, a noun, a prepositional phrase, and the PP can contain a preposition and a noun phrase, which can contain a DET, N, and PP, etc. etc. File 5.5 - Tests for Structure and Constituency
Constituents: Either a word or a phrase from a category - the structure of these can be identified by a number of tests Substitution: Taking a word or phrase and substituting it for a longer phrase - if the sentence still works, then the piece you removed is a constituent Deletion: Leaving out a phrase - if it's a constituent, then the phrase will still make sense Ellipsis: When a VP can be deleted because there is another VP that can supply its meaning Movement: Positioning of a constituent other than where it would normally go

If a sequence of words can't be used to answer a question, then it's not a constituent - to test this, substitute an interrogative word for what you're testing, then move it to make a question VP Topicalization: You can move a VP to the front of a sentence File 5.6 - Word Order Typology Typology: Looks at ways that grammars of languages are similar Word order shorthand: S - subject, V - Verb, O - Object

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Word order shorthand: S - subject, V - Verb, O - Object Classification of languages: English is an SVO language, like 35% of languages 19% of languages are VSO Only 2% of languages are VOS - this is very rare 44% of languages are SOV Only a few languages are OSV or OVS

Free word order languages exist, but they tend to have a preferred order, and that's how they're categorized Languages tend to place the head of a phrase before/after its modifier and complements - they are either head-initial or head-final Head: Central obligatory member of a phrase (the N to an NP) Prepositions, when occurring in head-final languages, are called post-positions - they serve the same function as prepositions but occur after the NP

Languages are categorized according to the majority of their ordering relations

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