Chapter 5 Flashcards
lexical entries
a representation of a lexical expression and its linguistic properties within a descriptive grammar of some language
lexicon
a mental repository of linguistic information about words and other lexical expressions including their form, meaning, morphological, and syntactic properties
linguistic expression
a piece of language with a form, a meaning, and syntactic properties
lexical ambiguity
the phenomenon where a single word is the form of two or more distinct linguistic expressions that differ in meaning or syntactic properties.
lexical expression
a linguistic expression that has to be listed in the mental lexicon
determiner
the name of a lexical category and a syntactic category that consists of expressions such as the, a, this, all, etc.
ditransitive verb
the name of a syntactic category that consists of those expressions of category non phrase to their right result in a verb phrase
verb phrase
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
principle of compositionality
the notion that the meaning of a phrasal expression is predictable from the meanings of the expressions it contains and how they were syntactically combined
phrase structural rules
a recipe for syntactically combining expressions of certain syntactic categories
phrasal expression
a linguistic expression that results from the syntactic combination of smaller expressions
prepositional phrase
the name of a syntactic category that consists of those expressions that contain a preposition and a noun phrase.
phrase structure tree
a visual representation of how phrases are constructed within a descriptive grammar, given the lexicon and the phrase structure rules
sentential complement verb
the name of a 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
syntactic constituent
a group of linguistic expressions that function as a syntactic unit within some larger expression
syntactic distribution
refers to the set of syntactic environments in which an expression can occur. If two expressions are interchangeable in all syntactic environments, we say that they have the same syntactic distribution, and therefore belong to the same syntactic category.
syntactic category
a 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.
syntactic properties
properties of linguistic expressions that dictate how they can syntactically combine with other expressions, namely, word order and co-occurrence properties
sentence
a syntactic category that consists of all phrasal expressions that can grammatically occur in sally thinks that ___________
homophony
the phenomenon by which two or more distinct morphemes or nonphrasal linguistic expressions happen to have the same form
argument
a linguistic expression that must occur in a sentence if some other expression occur in that sentence as well. If the occurrence of an expression X in a sentence requires the occurrence of an expression Y in that sentence, we say that Y is an argument of X.
adjuncts
a linguistic expression whose occurrence in a sentence is optional; also called modifier
agreement
the phenomenon by which certain expressions in a sentence must be inflectionally marked for the same person, number, gender.
adjective
the name of a lexical category and a syntactic category. Morphologically, consists of words to which the comparative suffix -er or the suffix -ness can be added
adverb
the name of a lexical category and a syntactic category that consists of expressions such as quickly, well, furiously, etc.
co-occurrence
the set of syntactic properties that determines which expressions may or have to co-occur with some other expressions in a sentence
conjunct
an argument of a coordinating conjunction such as and or or
cleft
a type of sentence that has the general form It is/was X that Y, e.g. It was sally that I wanted to meet. Can be used as a constituency test.
grammatical
a term used to describe a sentence that is in accordance with the descriptive grammatical rules of some language, especially syntactic rules.
grammaticality judgment
an instance of a native speaker of some language deciding whether some string of words corresponds to a syntactically well-formed or grammatical phrasal expression in their native language.
nouns
the name of a lexical category and a syntactic category. Morphologically, consists of words to which the plural suffix -s or the suffix -like can be added
noun phrases
the name of a syntactic category that consists of proper names, pronouns, and all other expressions with the same syntactic distribution
word order
the linear order in which words can occur in some phrasal expression
modifier
adjunct
ambiguity
the phenomenon by which a single linguistic form can be the form of more than one distinct linguistic expression
object
a noun phrase that usually occurs immediately to the right of the verb in English
subject
an expression, typically a noun phrase, that occurs to the left of the verb phrase in an English sentence
preposition
the name of a lexical category and a syntactic category that consists of expressions such as of, in, for, with, etc.
VP adjuncts
adverbs combine with a VP to form an expression of category VP
intransitive verbs
verbs that require no complements
