File 5 Syntax Vocabulary

Question 1

Syntax

Answer 1

component of grammar that deals with how words and phrases are combined int larger phrases

Question 2

linguistic expressions

Answer 2

a piece of language with a form, a meaning, and syntactic properties.

Question 3

Grammaticality judgement

Answer 3

decision of a speaker of a certain language whether strings of words correspond to grammatical phrasal expression in their native language.

Question 4

Principle of compositionality

Answer 4

meaning of a phrasal expression is predictable from meanings of expressions it contains and how they were syntactically combined

Question 5

lexical expression

Answer 5

linguistic expression that has to be listed in the mental lexicon

Question 6

phrasal expressions

Answer 6

linguistic expression that results from syntactic combination of smaller expressions

Question 7

Syntactic Properties

Answer 7

properties of linguistic expressions that dictate how they can syntactically combine with other expressions

Question 8

Word order

Answer 8

linear order in which words can occur in some phrasal expression

Question 9

Co-occurrence

Answer 9

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

Question 10

Topicalization

Answer 10

syntactic process by which a syntactic constituent occurs at the beginning of a sentence in order to highlight the topic under discussion.

Question 11

Argument

Answer 11

linguistic expression that must occur in a sentence if some other expression occurs in that sentence as well

Question 12

Complements

Answer 12

a non-subject argument of some expression

Question 13

Adjuncts

Answer 13

linguistic expression whose occurrence in a sentence is optional; modifier

Question 14

Agreement

Answer 14

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

Question 15

Morphosyntax

Answer 15

name for syntax and morphology considered jointly as a single component of grammar

Question 16

Syntactic Consitituent

Answer 16

group of inguistic expressions that function as a syntactic unit within larger expression; the smaller expressions out of which larger phrasal expressions was constructed

Question 17

Cleft

Answer 17

a kind of sentence in which some constituent is displaced (moved) to the left.

Question 18

Substitution

Answer 18

test that involved replacing a constituent with a single word (or simple phrase)

Question 19

Pro-form

Answer 19

a word that can replace a syntactic constituent

Question 20

Syntactic Categories

Answer 20

group of expressions that have similar syntactic properties

Question 21

Syntactic distribution

Answer 21

set of syntactic environments in which an expression can occur

Question 22

Noun phrases (NP)

Answer 22

syntactic category that consists of of proper names, pronouns, and expressions that have the same distribution

Question 23

Determiners (Det)

Answer 23

lexical and syntactical category consisting of expressions such as the, a, this, all, etc. Syntactically combine with a noun to its right

Question 24

Mass nouns

Answer 24

nouns that cannot be counted

Question 25

count nouns

Answer 25

nouns that can be counted

Question 26

Verb phrase (VP)

Answer 26

syntactic category that consists of all expressions that, if combined with an NP to their left, results in a sentence

Question 27

Intransitive Verbs

Answer 27

set of lexical expressions whose syntactic category is VP; verbs that require no complements

Question 28

Transitive Verbs (TV)

Answer 28

verbs that require an NP complement to form a VP

Question 29

Distransitive verbs (DTV)

Answer 29

syntactic category consisting of expressions that is combined with two expressions of NP to their right results in VP; a verb that needs two NP complements

Question 30

Sentential Complement Verbs (SV)

Answer 30

verbs that require complement of category S to form a VP

Question 31

VP Adjucts

Answer 31

adjunct that combined with an expression of VP with the resulting expression also being a VP

Question 32

N Adjuncts

Answer 32

adjunct that combines with an expression of syntactic category N with resulting expression also being of category N

Question 33

Prepositional Phrase (PP)

Answer 33

syntactic category consisitng of expressions that contain a preposition and a noun phrase

Question 34

Preposition (P)

Answer 34

lexical category and syntactic category consisting of expressions which as of, in, for, with, etc.; Syntactically combines with NP to their right resulting in expression of PP

Question 35

Lexical entries

Answer 35

representation of lexical expression and its linguistic properties within descriptive grammar

Question 36

Phrase Structure Rules

Answer 36

recipe for syntactically combining expressions of certain syntactic categories

Question 37

Phrase Structure Tree

Answer 37

visual representation of how phrases are constructed within a descriptive grammar

Question 38

Ambuguity

Answer 38

linguistic forms that can correspond to more than one distinct expression

Question 39

Lexical ambiguity/ Homophony

Answer 39

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

Question 40

Structural Ambiguity

Answer 40

phenomenon where a single string of words (or morphemes) is the form of more than one distinct phrasal expression (or word)