Linguistics 110 Zhang/Öztürk/Quinn

Class 16 (11/20/02)

Syntax Introduction

(1) Syntax:
• the way in which words are put together to form phrases and sentences;
• the branch of linguistics that deals with …

(2) How do we study syntax?

• Grammaticality judgments of native speakers.

E.g.: The police dispersed the crowd.

*Police crowd the dispersed the. (* = ungrammatical)
j¸#ngchá qu@sàn le rénqún.

• We say that a sentence is:

grammatical ungrammatical
acceptable unacceptable
well-formed ill-formed
in the grammar not in the grammar

(3) What is “grammatical”?

• “Grammatical” in the linguistic sense ≠ “grammatical” in the sense of school grammar.

Proscribed as ‘colloquial’: Where do you live at?

Me and Bill went to the movies.

Proscribed as ‘non-standard’: I ain’t never been there before.

I seen him yesterday.

• “Grammatical” ≠ “meaningful”

(a) The child seems sleeping.

It raining.
This sentence no verb.
Don’t giggle me.
John ate five cookie.
I put the book.
Welcome to Chinese Restaurant. Please try your Nice Chinese Food with Chopsticks:
the traditional and typical of Chinese glorious history and culture.

(b) Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

The lizard conveys excellent essays.
The table eats the concept on which rules are painted.

(c) Cats fly.

Four plus five is ten.
The earth is flat.

1
 This triangle has four sides.
Jie must speak many languages since he’s a linguist.

(4) What kind structure does syntax have? Can it be a word chain?
• Part of a possible word-chain device for English:

happy
the boy ice cream
a girl eats hot dogs
one dog candy

• Crucial properties of a word-chain device:

➥ A realistic word-chain (e.g., used in industry) encodes “transition probabilities”
between one word and another.
➥ Local dependency/Linearity.

(5) Transition probability is not a valid notion in grammaticality judgment:

• Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

• House to ask for is to earn our living by working towards a goal for his team in old New-
York was a wonderful place wasn’t it even pleasant to talk about and laugh hard when he tells
lies he should not tell me that reason why you are is evident.

(6) Long distance dependency in natural language:

• Friends who loved and trusted John were startled by his arrest.
Daddy, what did you bring that book that I don’t want to be read to out of up for?
If the boys eat ice cream, then the girls eat candy.
Either if the boys eat ice cream, then the girls eat candy, or if the girls eat ice cream, then the
boys eat candy.

• How can the if-then, either-or sentences be incorporated in a word-chain device?

• What’s missing from the system?

• Anyway to solve the problem within the word-chain device?

• What’s wrong the fix-up?

(7) Ambiguity in natural language:

• I saw the man with a telescope.
Do you have any books on antique furniture?
We will sell gasoline to anyone in a glass container.
I shot an elephant in my pajamas.
For sale: Mixing bowl set designed to please a cook with round bottom for efficient
beating.
Yoko Ono will talk about her husband John Lennon who was killed in an interview with
Barbara Walters.

• Can the ambiguity be expressed by a word chain device?

2
(8) Lessons learned:
• We identify categories such as noun, verb, adjective, etc.

• The word categories are not linearly pieced together, there must be an overarching structure
to the sentence.

(9) Some word categories:

Noun (N) → boy, girl, balloon, ideas, ice cream, candy, basketball, dam, exam

Verb (V) → eats, likes, play, pass, build, turn, write, attack, fall, burglarized

Adjective (A) → happy, big, colorless, green, wonderful, erudite, tall, beautiful

Adverb (Adv) → carefully, slowly, very, never, again, luckily

Determiner (D) → a, the, one, this, that

Preposition (P) → at, about, for, on, in onto, under, of

Pronoun (Prn) → I, me, we, we, us, you, he, him, she, her, it, they, them

(10) Constituent—a group of words function together as a unit; overarching structure

beyond word categories
• What’s in common between the big white balloon and a colorless green idea?

Preliminary rule notation: NP → Det A* N (to be revised)

Preliminary tree structure: (to be revised)

NP
rgu
D A N
| | |
the big balloon

• What’s in common among play basketball, pass the exam, build a dam, turn the doorknob,
and write a book?

Preliminary rule notation: VP → V NP

Preliminary tree structure:

VP
ei
V NP
| ty
pass D N
| |
the exam

• What’s in common among the following grammatical sentences?

3
 Two students passed the difficult exam.
The beavers built a dam.
An invisible man turned the doorknob.
The erudite historian wrote a wonderful book.

Preliminary rule notation: S → NP VP

Can you draw the tree for:

Two students passed the difficult exam.
The erudite historian wrote a wonderful book.

(11) Properties of constituent structures:

• Constituent structure is hierarchical:
(a) Words combine to form constituents.
(b) Constituents combine to form larger constituents.
I.e., constituents may be contained within other constituents.
• A constituent consists minimally of just a head, and maximally of a head and several
dependents.

[ badgers ]
[ large brown badgers ]
[ those large brown badgers ]
[ those large brown badgers from Wisconsin ]

The head of a constituent determines the environment where that constituent can
occur—this captures long distance dependency.

Environments for different constituents:

Noun Phrase: Can be the subject of a sentence

[ badgers ] came into the room

[ large brown badgers ] came into the room
[ those large brown badgers ] came into the room
[ those large brown badgers from Wisconsin ] came into the room
[ Carlos ] came into the room
[ we ] came into the room

Verb Phrase: Can come after auxiliaries like “must”

Gunther must [ leave ]

Gunther must [ leave right now ]
Gunther must [ finish the assignment ]
Gunther must [ eventually finish the assignment ]

Prepositional Phrase: Can come after the direct object of the verb “put”

Gunther put the book [ outside ]

Gunther put the book [ on the table ]
Gunther put the book [ right beside the window ]

4
 Exercise: Identify the head of the constituent and assign it its proper label:

this book
David’s older brother
on the table
extremely fat
just above the bookcase
kill the cobra with a stick
the destruction of the city
dance all night long
an old wrinkled newspaper
come slowly into the ballroom

(12) How is recursion handled in constituent structure?

• Recursion: A syntactic category can contain a category of the same type which can contain
a category of the same type which can contain a category of the same type which …

• How should the if-then, either-or sentences be expressed structure-wise?

• Can you draw the tree for:

If the boys eat ice cream, then the girls eat candy?

• How about:
Either if the boys eat ice cream, then the girls eat candy, or if the girls eat ice cream, then the
boys eat candy.

• What is the constituent structure for:

on the desk;
in the pond;
next to the garden;
for Jason.

• What is the constituent structure for:

the book on the desk;
the fish in the pond;
the tall building next to the garden;
a beautiful cake for Jason.

• What kind of recursion do we have now?

• Can you draw the tree for:

the lizard on the rock in the grass near the pond in the park …

(13) How is ambiguity handled in constituent structure?

I saw the man with a telescope.

• What are the two readings?

• What does “with a telescope” modify in the two readings?

• Can you account for the ambiguity for different constituent structures?

5
(14) Interim conclusion:
• Sentences are formed by putting constituents together.

• Constituents refer to word categories.

• The head of a constituent determines where it can occur.

➥ Handles long-distance dependency

• Constituents are hierarchically structured.

➥ Allows recursion
➥ Handles ambiguity

(15) Where are we heading?

• How to identify constituents.
• Detailed structure within a constituent—Trees.