普通语言学第二章概括Summary of Chapter Four

Summary of Chapter Four

In this chapter, we mainly focus on the syntax, which is a branch of linguistics that

studies the rules that govern the formation of sentences.

And the 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.

A

fundamental

fact

about

words

in

all

human

languages

is

that

they

can

be

grouped

together

into

a

relatively

small

number

of

classes

called

syntactic

categories.

The

most central categories to the syntactic study are the word-level categories. It can be

divided into two kinds, major lexical categories

and minor lexical categories. Major

lexical categories play a very important role in sentence formation. They differ from

minor lexical categories in that they are often assumed to be the heads around which

phrases are built. To determine a word

’

s category, three criteria are usually employed,

namely,

meaning,

inflection

and

distribution.

A

word

’

s

distributional

facts

together

with

information

about

its

meaning

and

inflectional

capabilities

help

identify

its

syntactic category.

In

the

following

part

is

talking

about

the

phrase

categories

and

their

structures,

the

most

commonly

recognized

and

discussed

phrasal

categories

are

noun

phrase

(NP),

verb

phrase

(VP),

adjective

phrase

(AP)

and

prepositional

phrase

(PP).

Phrases

usually contain the following elements: head, specifier, and complement.

Next

part

is

the

phrase

structure

rule,

which

regulates

the

arrangement

of

elements

that make up a phrase.

The XP rule: XP

→

(specifier) X (complement)

Next

part

is

coordination

rule,

which

means

some

structures

are

formed

by

joining

two or more elements of the same type with the help of a conjunction such as and or.

And

coordination

exhibits

the

following

four

important

properties:

first,

there

is

no

limit on the number of coordinated categories that can appear prior to the conjunction.

Second, a category at any level (a head or an entire XP) can be coordinated.

Third,

coordinated

categories

must

be

of

the

same

type.

Fourth,

the

category

type

of

the

coordinate phrase is identical to the category type of the elements being conjoined. So

it can be formulated as this: X

→

X * con X

In the next part, it is talking about the specifiers, which have both special semantic

and syntactic roles.

Furthermore,

it

comes

to

be

the

complements.

Words

which

introduce

the

sentence

complement

are

termed

complementizers.

Besides,

the

sentence

introduced

by

the

complementizer is called a complement clause. Thus the whole underlined part in the

above

sentence

is

called

a

complement

phrase

and

the

construction

in

which

the

complement phrase is embedded is called matrix clause..

And modifiers specify optionally expressible properties of heads.

The S rule: S

→

NP VP

And then it is the transformations. Inversion means move Infl to the left of the subject

NP. Inversion means move Infl to C. the movement of a word from the head position

in one phrase into the head position in another is also known as head movement. Do

insertion means insert interrogative do into an empty Infl position.