40 syntax vocab

Question 1

Syntax

Answer 1

structure of sentences.

Question 2

Grammar

Answer 2

In linguistics ‘grammar’ refers to the complete system of phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic information and rules that speakers of a given language possess.

Question 3

Constituents

Answer 3

In synthetic analysis, a constituent is a word or a group of words that function as a single unit within a hierarchy of structure

Question 4

Phrases

Answer 4

more syntax-specific terminology.

Question 5

Pronominalisation

Answer 5

the substitution of a constituent by a pronoun.

Question 6

Pro-form

Answer 6

Type of function word or expression that stands in for another word, phrase, clause or sentence where the meaning is recoverable from the context.

Question 7

Wh-pronun

Answer 7

we use interrogative pronouns to ask questions. They are: who, was, which, whom, what and whose.

Question 8

Movement

Answer 8

what type of linguistic structure in which a synthetic unit occurs in a position that is distinct from its expected “base“ or “logical“ position.

Question 9

Coordination Test

Answer 9

One of the traditional diagnostic tests for constituent structure.

Question 10

Gapping

Answer 10

an operation which deletes a constituent in one sentence under identity with a constituent of the same type in a preceding sentence.

Question 11

Sentence-Fragment-test

Answer 11

If the sentence is missing a subject or a verb/predicate.

Question 12

Structural ambiguity

Answer 12

is the presence of two or more possible meanings within a single sentence or sequence of words.

Question 13

Head

Answer 13

In linguistics, the head of a phrase is the word that determines the syntactic.

Question 14

Noun phrases

Answer 14

composed of a noun plus optional determinantes, adjective phrases, and prepositional phrases.

Question 15

Prepositional phrases

Answer 15

a group of words consisting of a preposition, its object, and any words that modify the object.

Question 16

Adjective phrases

Answer 16

a group of words headed by an adjective that describes a noun or a pronoun.

Question 17

Verb phrases

Answer 17

the portion of a sentence that contains both the verb and either a direct or indirect object (the verb’s dependents).

Question 18

Adverb phrases

Answer 18

is simply a group of two or more words that function as an adverb in a sentence.

Question 19

Case forms

Answer 19

forms that mark the grammatical function of noun phrases in a sentence of phrase.

Question 20

Projections

Answer 20

Syntacticians say that the head projects its properties onto the phrase as a whole (which is also the reason why phrases are often called projections of their head).

Question 21

Word classes

Answer 21

Every word belongs to a word class, which summarises the ways in which it can be used in grammar. There are four major word classes: verb, noun, adjective, adverb. There are five other word classes: determiners, preposition, pronoun, conjunction, interjection.

Question 22

Syntactic categories

Answer 22

the is a set of expressions that have very similar syntactic properties: word order, and co-occurrence requirements.

Question 23

Parts-of-speech

Answer 23

There are eight parts of speech in the English language: noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction, and interjection. The part of speech indicates how the word functions in meaning as well as grammatically within the sentence.

Question 24

Lexical categories

Answer 24

are classes of words (e.g., noun, verb, preposition), which differ in how other words can be constructed out of them.

Question 25

Determiner

Answer 25

are a nominal syntactic category distinct both from adjectives and nouns, despite the close affinity among them.

Question 26

Phrase structure rules

Answer 26

are a type of rewrite rule used to describe a given language’s syntax and are closely associated with the early stages of transformational grammar, proposed by Noam Chomsky in 1957.

Question 27

Subordinate clauses

Answer 27

(or dependent clause) is a clause that cannot stand alone as a complete sentence because it does not express a complete thought.

Question 28

Clause

Answer 28

groups of words that contain both a subject and a predicate.

Question 29

Sentences

Answer 29

are defined as the largest syntactic units and they are made up of one or more clauses.

Question 30

Matrix Clause

Answer 30

The sentences in (35) are complex sentences, consisting of two clauses, a superordinate clause (often called matrix clause) and a subordinate clause.

Question 31

Main clause

Answer 31

refers to clauses that can stand on their own.

Question 32

Predicate

Answer 32

is the grammatical term for the words in a sentence or clause that describe the action but not the subject. In other words, the predicate explains what the subject does.

Question 33

Subject verb agreement

Answer 33

a syntactic process which requires subject and verb to share the same person and number features.

Question 34

Transitive verbs

Answer 34

is a verb that requires an object to receive the action.

Question 35

Intransitive verbs

Answer 35

as a verb that does not take a direct object.

Question 36

Ditransitive verbs

Answer 36

(or bitransitive) verb is a transitive verb whose contextual use corresponds to a subject and two objects which refer to a theme and a recipient.

Question 37

Direct object

Answer 37

one of the objects denotes an entity that undergoes the action or process denoted by the verb.

Question 38

Adverbial

Answer 38

an adverbial (abbreviated adv) is a word (an adverb) or a group of words (an adverbial clause or adverbial phrase) that modifies or more closely defines the sentence or the verb.

Question 39

Complement

Answer 39

a more general term used in linguistics or such semantically and structurally highly dependent sister constituents of heads.

Question 40

Predicative complements

Answer 40

completes the meaning of a sentence by giving information about a noun.