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Linguistics 001

Syntax 1

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Syntax

Syntax is that part of a persons grammatical knowledge

(i.e. grammar) that is concerned with phrase and sentence

structure

In addition, the term syntax may refer to the branch of

linguistics that studies this part of grammar.

In the simplest cases, one can think of syntax as studying

the ways in which words combine to produce larger

linguistic expressions.

Linguists model syntax as a system of rules and principles

which generate the innitely large class of sentences a

speaker would accept as grammatical

Linguistics 001 page 2

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Grammaticality

Not all strings of words are acceptable sentences:

Sally wants to buy cheese at the market.

a. *Sally wants cheese at the market to buy.words in wrong order

b. *Sally cheese at the market. something is missing

c. *Sally Bill wants buys cheese meat milk. too many things

d. *Sally want to buy cheese at the market.wantinstead ofwants

Sentences can be ungrammatical for different reasons.


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Ungrammaticality vs. other types of ill-formedness

1. Sentences can be structurally well-formed but lack a meaning

compatible with the way the world works:

? Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

Well-formed in structure nonsense in meaning

2. Other sentences are structurally well-formed but too difficult toprocess mentally and so are never used:

Sally bought the cheese that the mouse ate.

? Sally bought the cheese that the mouse that the catcaught ate.

Sally bought the cheese that the mouse that the cat that

everyone pets caught ate.


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Constituent structure

Like words, sentences have a constituent structure:

Every sentence is composed of subparts

Identical strings of words may have distinct semantic interpretations:

Flying airplanes can be dangerous.1: It can be dangerous to y an airplane.

2: Airplanes which are ying can be dangerous.

Language users are unconsciously aware of constituent structure

Otherwise they would not be able to detect ambiguities in

sentences which consist of identical sequences of words.


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Constituent structure and meaning

Differences in constituent structures may correspond with differ-

ences in the meaning of the expression.

Moreover, we are obviously capable of assigning meaning to

sentences we have never encountered before.

[ green [eggs and ham] ] eggs and ham that are both green

[ [green eggs] [and ham]] ham along with green eggs

Language users determine the meaning of an expression bycombining the meanings of its subpartsin some way.

Compositional semantics studies how this works.


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Syntax is generative In principle sentences can be ofunbounded length

The cat that ate the mouse that ate the cheese that came from the

farm that Sally bought from the man who owned the cat that ate the

mouse that ate the cheese that

A speaker cannot simply have memorized all sentences.

The grammar cannot be just a list of memorized sentences

The syntax must be system of generative rules

The grammar generates an innite set of well-formedexpressions in a language.


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Weak and Strong Generation

A grammar with weak generation

generates strings of words

does not assign structure to these strings

A grammar with strong generation

also assigns structural descriptions to expressions

Structural descriptions include at least:

(1) constituent structure

(2) category labels for the constituents

categories include noun phrase, verb phrase etc.

Parsing

Assigning a structural description to a linguistic expression


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Basic syntactic units

Words are normally the smallest constituents of syntacticexpressions

In some theories, sub-parts of words (stems and certain

affixes) can be syntactic constituents.

Head (also called X-zero or zero-level projection):

Neutral term for the smallest size of unit relevant for syntax.

Word-sized examples: bird Mary sing orange

a the when up well

Sub-word examples: -ed s


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Phrases and heads of phrases Head is the obligatory part of a phrase.

Phrases are the next size of constituent larger than a head.

Every phrase has a head as a subpart.

phrase headNP: noun phrase yellow submarine submarine noun

VP: verb phrase buy green cheese buy verb

VP: verb phrase always laugh laugh verb

AP: adjective phrase incredibly huge huge adjectiveAP: adjective phrase proud of his son proud adjective

PP: prepositional phrase in Hoboken in preposition

PP: prepositional phrase with the cat with preposition


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Identifying the head

Head: the chiefor obligatory part of a phrase

The head of a phrase is also unique

One and only one head per phrase.

The head of any given phrase is a kind of concept Other elements in the phrase make the reference of the

head more specic or modify it in some way:

yellow submarine a submarine that is yellow

the cats tail a tail belonging to the cat

buy cheese buying of cheese

incredibly huge huge incredibly so


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Heads of function word phrases

The head of a phrase is modied by other elements in thephrase is less obvious with certain phrase types

In a prepositional phrase like with the cat

the head is the preposition with The reason is because with is the only part of the phrase

that makes it a prepositional phrase.

Some people nd it helpful to see the logic behind this by

asking:

Is with the cat a type of cat, or a type of with ?

Other function words (or parts of words) can also be headsof phrases.


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Tests for Constituent Structure Tests for constituency are used to determine what parts of a

sentence are constituents

1. Question formation: a constituent can be questioned.

2. Coordination: constituents can be coordinated usingconjunctions such as and, or

3. Clefting: It wasX thatYconstruction shows that X is aconstituent

4. Pro-forms: certain phrases have pro-forms that can

substitute for them, including pronouns andso.5. Inversion structures: constituents of certain kinds can be

moved to the beginning of a sentence or clause.


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Question Test A constituent can often be questioned by substituting a wh-word

(question word) for it

wh-words: what, who, when, how, why, where

Tomorrow Sally wants to buy cheese at the market.

Who wants to buy cheese at the market tomorow? Sally.

What does Sally want to buy at the market tomorrow? Cheese.

Where does Sally want to buy cheese tomorrow? At the market.

What does Sally want to do tomorrow? Buy cheese at the market.

What does Sally want to do tomorrow at the market? Buy cheese.

When does Sally want to buy cheese at the market? Tomorrow.

We can conclude that at least the following are constituents:

[ [ Tomorrow] [ Sally ] wants to [ [ buy [ cheese ]] [ at the market ] ] ]


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Question Test (cont.)

On the other hand one cannot substitute a question word for

a non-constituent

* What/*Where does Sally want to buy market tomorrow?

*Cheese at the.

* When/*Who wants to buy cheese at the market tomorrow?

*Tomorrow Sally.

* What/*Where does Sally want to buy tomorrow?

*Cheese at the market.


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Coordination

Constituents can be co-ordinated by and or or to form aconstituent with the same distribution

Sam does not like [green eggs]. Sam does not like [ham].

Sam does not like [green eggs] and [ham].

Sam does not like [ham] and [green eggs].

Cindy Lou might [like green eggs].

Or Cindy Lou might [eat ham].

Cindy Lou might [like green eggs] or [eat ham].

Cindy Lou might [eat ham] or [like green eggs].

e Grinch [steals the presents] and [eats Roast Beast].

e Grinch [eats Roast Beast] and [steals the presents]


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Coordination (cont.)

A non-constituent cannot be coordinated or re-ordered.

Cindy Lou might like green eggs. Cindy Lou might eat ham.

* Cindy [Lou might like green eggs] and [Lou might eat ham].

e Grinch is eating [green eggs] and [Roast Beast].

e Grinch is eating [Roast Beast] and [green eggs].

* e Grinch is [Roast Beast] and [eating green eggs].

e Grinch is [eating green eggs] and [eating Roast Beast]

e Grinch [is eating green eggs] and [is eating Roast Beast].* e [Grinch is eating green eggs] and [Grinch is eating Roast Beast].

[e Grinch is eating green eggs] and [the Grinch is eating Roast Beast].


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Clefting

A cleft is a sentence of the form

It was Xthat/who Y where

X is a constituent, and

Y is the remnant

what is left behind when X is removed from the sentence

being tested.

e Grinchs dog might eat green eggs tomorrow.

It was [the Grinchs dog] who [might eat green eggs tomorrow].

It was [green eggs] that [the grinchs dog might eat tomorrow].It was [tomorrow] that [the grinchs dog might eat green eggs]

* It was [the Grinchs] that [dog might eat green eggs tomorrow].

* It was [green eggs tomorrow] that the Grinchs dog might eat.


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Phrases with more than just a head

A head may form a phrase by joining with an adjacentphrase, called the complement:

heads phrase

yr head complement

phrase

AP [AP proud [ of his son PP]] [ A [ PP ]]

AP [AP open [ to the public PP]] [ A [ PP ]]

NP [NP queen [of England PP]] [ N [ PP ]]

NP [NP danger [to himself and others PP]] [ N [ PP ]]

NP [NP student [ of nuclear physics PP]] [ N [ PP ]]


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Nodes, sisters, mothers and daughters A phrase-structure tree (also called phrase-marker or syntactic

tree) clearly depicts constituent structure:

NP [ queen N [of England PP ] NP]

yr N PP

| |queen [of England]

Here N, PP and NP are constituents:

each constituent is said to be a node in the syntactic tree

NP is the mother of N and PP, and NP dominates N and PP

N and PP are daughters of NP, and N and PP are sisters.


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Adjuncts vs. Complements

The sister of a head is therefore its complement.

A phrase can also be enlarged by joining as a sister to another

constituent, which is then called an adjunct.

head phrase

cz adjunct head phrase

yr

head complementphrase

An adjunct attaches to a constituent to create a larger constituentof the same type

Adjuncts are phrase-sized constituents (but possibly containing only a

head, which makes them look like like they are merely heads)


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Adjuncts and Complements Supose we label the head as X, and a phrase headed by X as XP.

Then:

XP

cz adjunct XP

yrX complement

A complementjoins with a head X to make an XP.

An adjunctjoins with an XP to make a (larger) XP

In English: complement usually follows the head

an adjunct can precede or follow the head, depending on

various other conditions.


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Example: NP with adjunct

NP

cz AP NP

| |crazy N|

student

An AP may left-adjoin to an NP to give a larger NP


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Examples of DPs

DP

cz DP DP

cz cz

D NP D NP

t yr t |

the N PP s N

| fs cz

queen of England A N| |

yellow submarine


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Examples of NegP and TP

NegP

czNeg VP

t yrnot V DP

| fs

buy a submarine

TP In English, Tense is a bound morpheme.

cz When there is no verb for Tense to aach to,T NegP it has to be supported by the stem do,

t cz which has no meaning in and of itself

did Neg VP but is only a prop for expressing Tense.t yr

not V DP

| fs

buy a submarine


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Sentence Subjects

In English, the subject of a sentence or clause normally appearsleft-adjoined to TP.

A subject is normally an obligatory element in any sentence.

Consequently the TP is the smallest sized constituent which

TP qualies as a complete sentence.cz

DP TP fs cz

the queen T NegP

t cz

did Neg VP

t yrnot V DP

| fs

buy the submarine


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Phrase Structure RulesLinguistics 001 page 37

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