File 5 Syntax Flashcards
Grammar
refers to the complete system of phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic information and rules that speakers of a given language possess.
Syntax
The structure of sentences and the core of a languages grammar.
Constituents/Phrases
Syntactic units.
pronominalisation
the substitution of a constituent by a
pronoun.
Movement
a string of words can be moved to other sentential positions,
Coordination test
the third kind of test, constituents that can be coordinated by the coordinating conjunction and. This conjunction has the wonderful property of combining only constituents
of the same kind.
Gapping
gapping behaviour is a fourth kind of test, which
works with certain types of phrases
structural ambiguity
In which different interpretations arise through
different sentence structures assigned to the same strings of words.
Head (Linguistic Definition)
The most important element of a phrase.
Noun Phrases
Phrases headed by a noun.
Adjective Phrases
Phrases headed by Adjectives.
Verb Phrases
Phrases headed by Verbs.
Projections
When the head projects its properties onto the phrases as a whole.
word-classes
noun, a preposition, an adjective or a verb.
determiners
When my, this and the, form a larger class
phrase structure rules
Rules for phrase structure grammars to create sentences.
subordinate clauses
Sentences inside other sentences.
Clause
a syntactic unit that consists minimally of a verb phrase and its subject.
Sentences
the largest syntactic units and they are made up of one or more clauses.
matrix clause
a superordinate clause
main clause
which refers to clauses that can stand on their own.
Predicate
a predicate is that part of a sentence that says something about the subject.
subject-verb agreement
a syntactic process which requires
subject and verb to share the same person and number features.
Case Forms
forms that mark the grammatical function of noun phrases
in a sentence or phrase
transitive verbs
Verbs that need an object.
intransitive verbs
Verbs that cannot take an object.
ditransitive
verbs that can take two objects, like give, or show.
direct object
One of the objects denotes an entity that
undergoes the action or process denoted by the verb.
Indirect object
The other object denotes the goal, the recipient
or the benificiary of the event denoted by the verb
adverbial (or adjunct)
as constituents that provide information about the circumstances of the action denoted by the verb and its subject and object(s).
Complement
the term can also
be usefully applied to APs and PPs. Some adjectives like proud can take a complement PP, and prepositions standardly take NPs as their complements.
predicative complements
There is
only one participant involved and the NPs that follow the verbs is and became
provide information about the subject.
Pro-form
use it interchangeably with the established term pronoun, keeping in mind
that a ‘pro-noun’ is actually a pro-phrase.
Wh-Pronoun
pronouns who, whose, which, and what, which can be the subject or object of a verb.
syntactic categories
noun, a preposition, an adjective or a verb.
lexical categories
noun, a preposition, an adjective or a verb.
prepositional phrases
Phrases headed by prepositions.
Form
a meaningful unit of speech (such as a morpheme, word, or sentence)
Function
general uses of language
parts-of-speech
noun, a preposition, an adjective or a verb.
