ch. 6 Flashcards
constituents
meaningful parts of a sentence; words are linked semantically and behave as coherent units, can include other constituents
replacement test
you should be able to replace the constituent with a question word (ex: who)
movement test
a constituent can occur in a different place in the sentence and be placed as a single unit
types of constituents
phrase and a clause
phrase definition
its central element is a head but it’s not a clause by itself
clause definition
usually consists of multiple phrases, not based on a head, it can be a sentence on its own
types of phrases
noun phrase, verb phrase, adjective phrase, appositional phrase, and adverbial phrase
noun phrase
has a referential function, used to refer to entities
verb phrase
has predicative function
adverbial phrase
used to specify properties of something that’s not a noun, outside the NP
postpositional
ApP comes after the NP
prepositional
ApP comes before the NP
adjective phrase
attributive in the NP
adjective phrase
attributive in the NP
adpositional phrase
relational function,
auxiliary verbs
have, be, must, will
content words
have concrete meaning, heads of phrases
demonstratives
function words that act like content words
particles
give specification
function words
string together content words, have abstract or grammatical meaning.
word categories
syntactic classes of words that are specifically geared to serving as the head of a certain phrase
breaking up sentences process
- divide clause into phrases. 2. identify the head in each phrase. 3. divide remaining material again into heads and modifiers. 4. continue until only heads are left
lexical words that constitute clause
the heads left after breaking up sentences.
