Chapter 5- Syntax Flashcards
Linguistic expression
A piece of language- it has a certain form, a certain meaning, and most relevantly, some sytactic properties as well.
Principle of compositionality
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
Syntactic properties
Properties of linguistic expressions that dictate how they can syntactically combine with other expressions, namely, word order and co-occurence properties
Word order
How are expressions allowed to be ordered with respect to one another
Co-occurance
The set of syntactic properties that determines which expressions may or have to co-occur with some other expressions in a sentence
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, gender number, etc,
Morphosyntax
The name for syntax and morphology considered jointly as a single component of grammar
Syntactic constituent
A group of linguistic expressions that function as a syntactic unit within within some larger expressions; the smaller expressions out of which some larger phrasal expression was constructed in accordance with the phrase structure rules
Cleft
A type of sentence that has the general for it is/ was
Conjuncts
An argument of a coordinating conjunction such as and or or
Syntactic categories
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 distribution
Refers to the set of syntactic environments in which an expression can occur
Noun phrases
Consists of personal pronouns, proper names, and any other expressions that have the same distribution
Determiners
The name of a lexical category and a syntactic category that consists of expressions such as the, a, this, all, etc.
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
Intransitive verb
The name for the set of lexical expressions whose syntactic category is verb phrase
Ditransitive verb
The name of a syntactic category that consists of those expressions that if combined with two expressions that if combined with two expressions of category noun phrase to their right result in a verb phrase
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
Lexicon
A mental repository of linguistic information about words and other lexical expressions, including their form, meaning, morphological, and syntactic properties.
Lexical entries
A representation of a lexical expression and its linguistic properties within a descriptive grammar of some language
Phrase structure rules
A recipe for syntactically combining expressions of certain syntactic categories
Phrase structure tree
A visual representation of how phrases are constructed within a descriptive grammar, given the lexicon and the phrase structure rule
Ambiguous
Linguistic forms that can correspond to more than one distinct expression
Lexical ambiguity
The phenomenon where a single word is the form of tow or more distinct linguistic expressions that differ in meaning or syntactic properties
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.
Structural ambiguity
The phenomenon where a single string of words (or morphemes) is the form of more than one distinct phrasal expression (or word)
Argument
A linguistic expression that must occur in a sentence if some other expression occurs in that sentence as well
Complement
A non-subject argument of some expression
Topicalization
A syntactic process by which (in English) a syntactic constituent occurs the beginning of a sentence in order to high-light the topic under discussion
Subject
The expression that usually occurs immediately to the left of the verb
Object
The expression that occurs immediately to the right of the verb (if any)
Grammatical
A term used to describe a sentence that is in accordance with the descriptive grammatical rules of some language, especially syntactic rules
Ungrammatical
Not in accordance with the descriptive grammatical rules of some language, especially syntactic rules
Grammaticality judgment
An instance of a native speaker of some language decided whether some string of words corresponds to a syntactically well-formed or grammatical phrasal expression in their native language
Sentence
A syntactic category that consists of all phrasal expressions that can grammatically occur in Sally things that….
Adjectives
The name of a lexical category and a syntactic category
Adverb
The name of a lexical category and a syntactic category that consists of expressions such as quickly, well, furiously, etc.
Prepositional phrase
The name of a syntactic category that consists of those expressions that contain a preposition and a noun phrase
Preposition
The name of a lexical category and a syntactic category that consists of expressions such as of, in, for, with, etc.
