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Chapter 4
Syntax
What is syntax?
?
----a branch of linguistics
that studies how words are combined to form
sentences and the rules that govern the
formation of sentences.
?
The term syntax
is from the ancient Greek word
syntaxis
, which literally
means “arrangement” or “setting
out
together”.
?
Traditionally, it refers to the branch
of grammar dealing with the ways in which words,
with or without
appropriate
inflections, are arranged to show connections of
meaning within the sentence.
?
Syntax is
a branch of linguistics that analyzes
the structure of sentences
.
?
What is a
sentence?
?
Syntax is the analysis of sentence
structure. A sentence is a sequence of words
arranged in a certain
order in
accordance with grammatical rules.
A
sequence
can
be
either
well-
formed
or
ill-formed.
Native
speakers
of
a
language
know
intuitively
what
strings of words are
grammatical and what are ungrammatical.
?
Knowledge of sentence structure
?
Structural ambiguity
?
Structural
ambiguity
is
one
or
more
string(s)
of
words
has/have
more
than
one
meaning.
For
example, the sentence
Tom
said he would come yesterday
can be
interpreted in different ways.
?
Word order
?
Different
arrangements of the same words have different
meanings. For example, with the words
Tom, love
and
Mary
, we may say
Tom loves Mary
or
Mary loves Tom
.
?
Grammatical
relations
?
Native
speakers
know
what
element
relates
to
what
other
element
directly
or
indirectly.
For
example, in
The boats are
not big enough
and
We don’t
have enough boats
, the word
enough
is
related
to different words in the two sentences.
?
Recursion
?
The same rule
can be used repeatedly to create infinite
sentences. For example,
I know that you
are happy. He knows that I know that
you are happy. She knows that he knows that I know
that you
are happy.
?
Sentence
relatedness
?
Sentences may be structurally variant
but semantically related.
?
Syntactic categories
?
A syntactic
category is a class of words or phrases that can
substitute for one another without loss
of grammaticality. For example,
consider the following sentences:
?
The
child
found the knife.
?
A
policeman
found the knife.
?
The man who
just left here
found the knife.
?
He
found the knife.
?
All the italicized parts belong to the
same syntactic category called noun phrase (NP).
The noun
phrases in these sentences
function as subject.
The
knife
, also a noun phrase, functions as
object.
?
Traditional grammar
?
In traditional
grammar, a sentence is considered a sequence of
words which are classified into parts of
speech.
?
Sentences
are
analyzed
in
terms
of
grammatical
functions
of
words:
subjects,
objects,
verbs
(predicates), predicatives,
…
?
Structural grammar
?
Structural
grammar
arose
out
of
an
attempt
to
deviate
from
traditional
grammar.
It
deals
with
the
inter-relationships of
different grammatical units. In the concern of
structural grammar, words are not
just
independent grammatical units, but are inter-
related to one another.
?
Transformational-generative (TG)
grammar
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8
.
?
Chomsky (1957)
–
grammar is the knowledge of native speakers.
?
Adequacy of
observation
?
Adequacy of description
?
Adequacy of
explanation
?
Writing
a
TG
grammar
means
working
out
two
sets
of
rules
–
phrase
structure
rules
and
transformation rules
–
which are followed by
speakers of the language.
?
TG grammar must account for all and
only grammatical sentences.
?
TG grammar
accounts for the mental process of our speaking.
?
Systematic-functional grammar
?
Background and the goal of systemic-
functional grammar
?
M. A. K.
Halliday
?
Language is a system of meaning
potential and a network of meaning as
choices.
?
Meaning determines form, not vice
versa. Meaning is realized through
forms.
?
The
goal
of
systemic-functional
grammar
is
to
see
how
function
and
meaning
are
realized
through
forms.
?
The three meta-functions of
language
?
Ideational function
?
Interpersonal
function
?
Textual function
Categories
?
Category
refers
to
a
group
of
linguistic
items
which
fulfill
the
same
or
similar
functions
in
a
particular
language such as
a sentence, a noun phrase or a verb. The most
central categories to the syntactic study are the
word-level categories (traditionally,
parts of speech)
Word-level categories
?
Major lexical categories:
N, V
, Adj, Prep.
?
Minor Lexical categories:
Det, Deg, Qual, Auxi, Conj.
The criteria on which
categories are determined
?
Meaning
?
Inflection
?
Distribution
?
Note: The most reliable
criter
ion of determining a word’s
category is its distribution.
Phrase categories and their
structures
?
Phrase
categories----the
syntactic
units
that
are
built
around
a
certain
word
category
are
called
phrase
categories, such as NP(N), VP(V),
AP(A), PP(P).
?
The structure: specifier +
head + complement
?
Head---- the word around
which a phrase is formed
?
Specifier---- the words on
the left side of the heads
?
Complement---- the words on
the right side of the heads
Phrase structure rules
?
The
grammatical
mechanism
that
regulates
the
arrangement
of
elements
that
make
up
a
phrase
is
called
a
phrase structure rule,
such as:
?
NP
?
(Det) + N
+(PP)……e.g. those people, the fish on the plate,
pretty girls.
?
VP
?
(Qual) + V +
(NP)……e.g. always play games, finish
assignments.
?
AP
?
(Deg) + A +
(PP)……very handsome, very pessimistic, familiar
with, very close to
?
PP
?
(Deg) + P + (NP)……on the shelf, in the
boat, quite near the station.
2
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8
.
The
XP rule
Note: The phrase
structure rules can be summed up as XP rule shown
in the diagram, in which X stands for N,
V
, A or P.
Coordination rule
?
Coordination structures
-----the structures that are formed by joining two
or more elements of the same type
with
the help of a conjunction such as and, or, etc.
----Coordination has four important
properties:
?
no limit on the
number of coordinated categories before the
conjunction;
?
a category at
any level can be coordinated;
?
the categories must be of
the same type;
?
the category
type of the coordinate phrase is identical to the
category type of the elements being conjoined.
Phrase elements
?
Specifier
?
Head
?
Complement
Specifiers
?
----
Semantically, specifiers make more precise the
meaning of the head; syntactically, they typically
mark a
phrase boundary. Specifiers can
be determiners as in NP, qulifiers as in VP and
degree words as in AP.
Complements
?
----
Complements themselves can be a phrase, they
provide information about
entities and
locations
whose
existence
is
implied
by
the
meaning
of
the
head,
e.g.
a
story
about
a
sentimental
girl;
There
can
be
no
complement,
one
complement,
or
more
than
one
complement
in
a
phrase,
e.g.
appear,
break,
put…;
a
sentence-
like construction
may also function as a complement such as in
“
I believed that she was
innocent.
I
doubt
if
she
will
come.
They
are
keen
for
you
to
show
up.”
That/if
/for
are
complementizers,
the
clauses
introduced by
complementizers are complement clause.
Modifiers
?
----
Modifiers specify optionally expressible
properties of heads.
Sentences (the S rule)
?
S
?
NP VP
?
S
?
NP infl VP
?
Many linguists
believe that sentences, like other phrases, also
have their own heads. Infl is an abstract
category inflection (dubbed ‘Infl’) as
their heads, which indicates the
sentence’
s tense and agreement.
Infl realized by a tense
label
Infl realized by an
auxiliary
Transformations
?
Auxiliary movement
(inversion)
?
Do
insertion
?
Deep structure
& surface structure
?
Wh-movement
?
Move α and constraints on
transformations
Auxiliary movement (inversion)
< br>?
Inversion
?
Move Infl to the left of the subject NP.
?
Inversion
(revised)
?
Move Infl to C.
?
Auxiliary movement
(inversion)
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8
.
?
Do
insertion
?
Do
insertion----
Insert interrogative
do
into
an empty Infl position.
Deep structure & surface structure
?
Consider the
following pair of sentences:
John is easy to
please.
John is eager to please.
?
Structurally
similar
sentences
might
be
very
different
in
their
meanings,
for
they
have
quite
different
deep
structures.
?
Consider one more
sentence:
Flying planes can be dangerous.
?
It can mean either that
if you fly planes you are engaged in a
dangerous activity
or
Planes
that are flying are
dangerous.
?
Deep
structure----
formed
by
the
XP
rule
in
accordance
with
the
head’s
sub
-categorization
properties;
it
contains all the units and
relationships that are necessary for interpreting
the meaning of the sentence.
?
Surface
structure----corresponding to the final syntactic
form of the sentence which results from
appropriate
transformations; it is that
of the sentence as it is pronounced or written.
D-structure and S-structure
Two levels of syntactic representation
of a sentence structure:
One that
exists before movement takes place
The
other that occurs after movement takes place
Formal linguistic exploration:
D-structure: phrase structure rules +
lexicon
Sentence at the level of
D-structure
The application of
syntactic movement rules transforms a sentence
from
D-structure level to
S-structure level
Transformational-
generative line of analysis
The
organization of the syntactic component
Wh-movement
?
Consider the derivation of
the following sentences:
What languages can you
speak?
What can you talk about?
?
These sentences may
originate as:
You can speak what languages.
You
can talk about what.
?
Wh-movement---- Move a
wh
phrase to the beginning
of the sentence.
What language can you
speak
?
What can you
talk about
?
?
Wh-movement---- Move a
wh
phrase to the specifier
position under CP. (Revised)
Move α and constraints on
transformations
?
Inversion can move an
auxiliary from the Infl to the nearest C position,
but not to a more distant C position.
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