Chapter 5

Question 1

Syntax

Answer 1

component of mental grammar that deals with constructing phrasal expressions out of smaller expressions. Subfield of linguistics that studies how expressions can combine to form larger expressions

Question 2

principle of compositionality

Answer 2

the fact that the meaning of a sentence depends on the meanings of the expressions it contains and on the way they are syntactically combined

Question 3

linguistic expressions

Answer 3

piece of language that has a certain form, a certain meaning and, most relevantly, has some syntactic properties

Question 4

grammaticality judgement

Answer 4

instance where a native speaker of some language decides whether some string of words corresponds to a syntactically well-formed or grammatical phrasal expression in their language

Question 5

grammatical

Answer 5

describes a sentence that is in accordance with the descriptive grammar rules of some language, especially syntactic rules

Question 6

subject

Answer 6

the expression (usually noun phrase) that occurs to the left of a verb phrase

Question 7

object

Answer 7

the expression that occurs to the right of the verb phrase

Question 8

syntactic properties

Answer 8

properties of linguistic expressions that dictate how they can syntactically combine with other expressions, namely, word order and co-occurrence properties

Question 9

word order

Answer 9

linear order in which words can occur in some phrasal expression; also, the set of syntactic properties of expressions that dictates how they can be ordered with respect to other expressions

Question 10

co-occurrence

Answer 10

set of syntactic properties that determines which expressions may or have to co-occur with some other expressions in a sentence

Question 11

argument

Answer 11

linguistic expression that must occur in a sentence if some other expression occurs in that sentence as well. If occurrence of x requires occurrence of y then y is an argument of x

Question 12

adjunct

Answer 12

linguistic expression whose occurrence in a sentence is optional

Question 13

agreement

Answer 13

the phenomenon by which certain expressions in a sentence must be inflectionally marked for the same person, number, gender, etc

Question 14

syntactic constituent

Answer 14

group of linguistic expressions that function as a syntactic unit within some larger expression; the smaller expressions out of which some larger phrasal expression was constructed in accordance with the phrase structure rules

Question 15

cleft

Answer 15

A kind of sentence in which some constituent is displaced to the left

Question 16

conjuncts

Answer 16

an argument of a coordinating conjunction such as and or or

Question 17

syntactic categories

Answer 17

group of expressions that have very similar syntactic properties. All expressions that belong to the same syntactic category have more or less the same syntactic distribution.

Question 18

syntactic distribution

Answer 18

refers to the set of environments in which an expression can occur.

Question 19

sentence

Answer 19

syntactic category that consists of all phrasal expressions that can grammatically occur in Sally thinks that _____

Question 20

noun phrases

Answer 20

the name of a syntactic category that consists of proper names, pronouns, and all other expressions with the same syntactic distribution

Question 21

determiners

Answer 21

expressions such as the, a, this , all, etc. Consists of those expressions that when combined with an expression of category noun to their right result in a n expression of category noun phrase

Question 22

nouns

Answer 22

syntactically, consists of expressions that can combine with determiners to their left, the resulting expression being of category noun phrase

Question 23

adjectives

Answer 23

expressions that can be noun adjuncts or occur in between a determiner and a noun

Question 24

verb phrase

Answer 24

the name of a syntactic category that consists of all expressions which if combined with a noun phrase to their left result in a sentence

Question 25

intransitive verbs

Answer 25

name for the set of lexical expressions whose syntactic category is verb phrase, require no complement

Question 26

distransitive verbs

Answer 26

verb that needs two noun phrase complements

Question 27

sentential complement verbs

Answer 27

syntactic category that consists of those expressions that if combined with a sentence to their right result in a verb phrase; a verb that needs a sentence as its complement

Question 28

adverb

Answer 28

verb phrase adjuncts such as quickly, well, furiously, etc.

Question 29

VP adjuncts

Answer 29

kind of adjunct that combines with an expression of syntactic category verb phrase with the resulting expression also being of category verb phrase

Question 30

N adjuncts

Answer 30

kind of adjunct that combines with an expression of syntactic category noun with the resulting expression being of category noun phrase

Question 31

prepositional phrase

Answer 31

the name of a syntactic category that consists of those expressions that contain a preposition and a noun phrase

Question 32

lexical entries

Answer 32

representation of a lexical expression and its linguistic properties within a descriptive grammar of some language

Question 33

phrase structure rules

Answer 33

a recipe for syntactically combining expressions of certain syntactic categories, part of descriptive grammar

Question 34

phrase structure tree

Answer 34

visual representation of how phrases are constructed within a descriptive grammar given the lexicon and the phrase structure rules

Question 35

ambiguity

Answer 35

phenomenon by which a single linguistic form can be the form of more than one distinct linguistic expression

Question 36

lexical ambiguity

Answer 36

phenomenon where a single word is the form of two or more distinct linguistic expressions that differ in meaning or syntactic properties

Question 37

structural ambiguity

Answer 37

the phenomenon where a single string of words is the form of more than one distinct phrasal expression or word. Arises because the expressions can combine differently syntactically, resulting in distinct phrases that happen to have the same form

Question 38

lexicon

Answer 38

mental repository of linguistic information about words and other lexical expressions, including their form, meaning, morphological and syntactic properties

Question 39

preposition

Answer 39

lexical and syntactic category that consists of expressions such as of, in , for, with, etc.

Question 40

ungrammatical

Answer 40

not in accordance with the descriptive grammar rules of some language, especially syntactic rules