Chapter 5 Flashcards
Grammaticality Judgement
An instance of a native speaker of some language deciding whether some strings of words corresponds to a syntactically well-formed or grammatical phrasal expression in their native language.
Cleft
A type sentence that has the general for It is/It was X that Y, e.g. It was sally that I wanted to meet. Can be used as a constituency test.
Object
A noun phrase that usually occurs immediately to the right of the verb in English. A noun phrase complement.
Sentence
A syntactic category that consists of all phrasal expressions that can grammatically occur in Sally thinks that _____.
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.
Verb Phrase
The name of a syntactic category that consists of all expressions that, if combined with a noun phrase to their left results in a sentence.
Verb phrase adjunct
A kind of adjunct that combines with an expression of syntactic category verb phrase with the resulting expression also being of category verb phrase.
Word order
The 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.
Argument
A linguistic expression that must occur in a sentence if some other expression occurs 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.
Agreement
The phenomenon by which certain expressions in a sentence (e.g. a verb and its subject) must be inflectionally marked for the same person, number, gender, etc.
Adjectively
Syntactically, the category consists of those expressions that can be noun adjuncts or occur in between a determiner and a noun.
Adjunct
A linguistic expression whose occurrence in a sentence is optional; also called a modifier.
Ditransitive Verb
The name of a syntactic category that consists of those expressions that if combined with two expressions of category noun phrase to their result in a verb phrase. A verb that needs two noun phrase complements.
Determiner
Syntactically, consists of those expressions that when combined with an expression of a category noun to their right result in an expression of category noun phrase.
Count noun
In simple terms, a noun that can be counted and pluralized.
Co-occurrence
The set of syntactic properties that determines which expressions may or have to co-occur with some other expressions in a sentence.
Complement
A non-subject argument of some expression
Morphosyntax
The name for syntax and morphology considered jointly as a single component of grammar.
Linguistic Expression
A piece of language with a form, a meaning, and syntactic properties.
Lexical expression
A linguistic expression that has to be listed in the mental lexicon, e.g. single-word expressions and idioms.
Lexical Entry
A representation of a lexical expression and its linguistic properties within a descriptive grammar of some language. A collection of lexical entries constitutes the lexicon. A lexical entry has the form f to X where f is the form of some particular lexical expression, and X is its syntactic category.
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.
Intransitive Verb
The name for the set of lexical expressions whose syntactic category is verb phrase.
Homophony
The phenomenon by which two or more distinct morphemes or nonphrasal linguistic expressions happen to have the same form, i.e., sound the same.
Preposition
Syntactically, this category consists of those expressions that when combined with an expression of category noun phrase to their right result in an expression of category noun phrase to their right result in an expression of category prepositional phrase.
Prepositional Phrase
The name of a syntactic category that consists of those expressions that contain a preposition and a noun phrase. Can be verb phrase adjuncts or noun adjuncts.
Phrasal Expression
A linguistic expression that results from the syntactic combination of smaller expressions. A multi-word linguistic expression. A sentence is a special kind of phrasal expression.
Phrase Structure Rule
A recipe for syntactically combining expressions of certain syntactic categories. Along with the lexicon, phrase structure categories. Along with the lexicon, phrase structure rules are a part of a descriptive grammar of some language.
Phrase Structure Tree
A visual representation of how phrases are constructed within a descriptive grammar, given the lexicon and the phrase structure rules
Ungrammatical
Not in accordance with the descriptive grammatical rules of some language, especially syntactic rules of language, we say it is ungrammatical or syntactically ill-formed.
Syntactic category
A group of expressions that have very similar syntactic properties. All expressions that belong to the syntactic category have more or less the same syntactic distribution.
Syntactic Constituent
A 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.
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 Properties
Properties of linguistic expressions that dictate how they can syntactically combine with other expressions, namely, word order and co-occurrence properties.
Syntax
A component of mental grammar that deals with constructing phrasal expressions out of smaller expressions. Also a name for the sub field of linguistics that studies how expressions can combine to form larger expressions.
Topicalization
A syntactic process by which (In English) a syntactic constituent occurs at the beginning of a sentence in order to highlight the topic under discussion.
Structural AMbiguity
The phenomenon where a single string of words (or morphemes) is the form of more that one distinct phrasal expression (or word), Arises because the same expressions can combine differently syntactically, resulting in distinct phrases that happen to have the same form.
Subject
An expression, typically a noun phrase, that occurs to the left of the verb phrase in an English sentence
Substitution
In syntax, a constituency test that involves replacing a constituent with a single word (or simple phrase) such as pro-form.
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.
