6. Linguistic Chapter 8- columns wrong Flashcards
Look in the book when studiying tree diagrams it is not the same in flshcards.
What does syntax mean, what is ambiguity and what is underlying structures?
The structure and order of components within a sentence is syntax Syntax= Arrangement.
The existence of two different underlying structures is called structural ambiguity.
In the non-funny interpretation the underlying structure of the first sentence conveys the meaning that “I was in my pajamas” In the other (ho-ho) interpretation “an elephant was in my pajamas”.
If we didn’t know that there were two different underlying structures in this one sentence, we wouldn’t get the joke. Syntactic analysis is the investigation of what we know about underlying structures.
What are syntactic rules?
If we write rules for well-formed structures we have to check that those rules, when applied logically, won´t lead to ill-formed structures.
For example, informal English might say (near) before a noun (London) which forms the prepositional phrase (near London).
Many phrases are like this but it does not describe all/and only the prepositional phrases because then we would produce sentences like (*Near tree or *With dog). The asterisk * indicating that they are ungrammatical.
But we might have success with a rule stating that we put a preposition before a “noun phrase” and not just a noun. And that the revised rule can be used to produce well-formed structures: near London, with me, near a tree, with the dog.
What is generative grammar?
What is Deep structures?
A prepositional phrase consists of a preposition followed by a noun phrase. Large numbers of English phrases could be produced using this rule- unlimited number.
A small and finite/limited set of rules will be capable of producing a large and infinite/unlimited number of well-formed structures. The small and finite set of rules is described as generative grammar because we generate/produce sentence structures and not just describe them.
Specifying elements that are merged to form structures is called deep structure. Kind of like a tree diagram.
What are abbreviations?
In syntactic analysis we use abbreviations for those constituents as syntactic categories (part of speech). N= Noun Art= Article Adj= Adjective V= Verb
There are also abbreviations for phrases. NP = Noun phrase VP= Verb phrase
The verb phrase VP consists of the V plus a noun phrase NP
NP VP
V NP
John saw the big dog
What does the arrow mean?
The arrow → means “rewrite as”. The following rule states that a NP such as “the dog” consists and rewrites as
→ An article (the) + A noun (dog).
The formula is the underlying structure of NP→ Art N
But we want to be able to include other constituents such as (Adj) in the rule so it is good for phrases like (The big dog).
This constituent is optional in noun phrases so we use round brackets to indicate that it’s optional. NP→Art (Adj) N
Another symbol is the form of curly brackets {}. These indicate that only one of the elements enclosed within the curly brackets must be selected..
NP→ {Art (Adj) N, Pro, PN}
NP→ Art (Adj) N = The tall girl
NP→Pro = It
NP→PN = Sarah
What are the phrase structure rules?
What we have started to create is a set of syntactic rules called phrase structure rules.
- A sentence=
S→NP VP - NP= (Art) (Adj) (N) (Pro) (PN).
NP→{Art (Adj) N, Pro, PN} - VP= V NP
VP→V NP
What are lexical rules?
In order to turn those structures into recognizable English we need lexical rules that specify which words can be used when we rewrite constituents such as PN.
PN→ {John, Mary} Art→{a, the}
N→{Girl, dog, boy} Adj→{big, small}
V→{followed, helped, saw} Pro →{it, you}
A dog followed the boy.
*Dog followed boy
It followed Mary
*Followed Mary the big dog
The small boy helped you
*The helped you boy
What are tree diagrams?
A diagram represents all the grammatical information found in the other analysis down below. And it shows very explicitly that there are different levels in the analysis.
NP ART NOUN
A DOG
Tell me about hierachy in tree diagrams?
We can use a similar tree diagram to present the more complex structure of an English verb Phrase (VP). Once again, this type of diagram provides a way of representing the hierarchical nature of underlying structure. In this hierarchy, the (VP) is higher and contains the (V) and a (NP). The (NP) is higher and contains the (Art) and the (N).
VP
V NP
ART N
Followed the boy
Spend a few minutes analyzing the diagrams.
Hierarchically organized. Notice the same basic tree diagram structure is the foundation for all the different sentences.
S
NP VP ART N V NP
ART N
S NP VP Pro V NP
Pro You saw it
S NP VP
V NP
Art Adj N
John saw the big dog
S NP VP Pro V NP
PN It followed Mary
S
NP VP Art Adj N V NP
Pro The small boy helped you ----------------------------------------------------------------
S NP VP PN V NP
PN Mary helped John
What is the movement rule?
All verbs in English sentences have the category of Tense. If we try to make our syntactic analysis more explicit by incorporating this category as T.
Helped= Past T Helps= Present T
If the verb is “will help” we include one of the modal auxiliaries; can, will, should. In the T position.
S→NP T VP
T→Present, past, modal.
Modal→ Can, will. should.
S NP T VP
V NP
PN Mary will help John
What is movement operation?
What happens if we want to turn the sentence Mary will help John into Will Mary help John? This can be accomplished with a simple Movement operation called Move T as in this phrase structure rule:
NP T VP→ T NP VP;
One branch of the tree is moved to a new position. A special arrow symbol shows this => “Transformation” or “Inversion”.
S NP T VP
V NP
PN Mary will help John
Becomes
S T NP VP
V NP
PN Will Mary help John
