Module 5: Syntax

Question 1

syntax

Answer 1

the grammatical rules that are concerned with the structure of sentences.

Question 2

grammar

Answer 2

complete system of phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic information and rules that speakers of a given language possess.

Question 3

structure

Answer 3

organised … combination of mutually connected and dependent parts or elements

Question 4

constituents/phrases

Answer 4

a word or a group of words that function as a single unit within a hierarchical structure

Question 5

pronominalisation

Answer 5

the substitution of a constituent by a pronoun.

Question 6

pro-form

Answer 6

a type of function word or expression that stands in for another word

Question 7

wh-pronoun

Answer 7

a wh- word that’s a pronoun. There are four main pronouns used in English; what, where, which, who and whose

Question 8

movement

Answer 8

If a string of words can be moved to other sentential positions, it is proof of the string’s being a constituent

Question 9

coordination test

Answer 9

it is only constituents that can be coordinated by the coordinating conjunction and. combining only constituents of the same kind.

Question 10

gapping

Answer 10

an ellipsis in which a verb is removed in one, or more, of a series of coordinations

Question 11

sentence-fragment test

Answer 11

involves forming a question that contains a single wh-word (e.g. who, what, where, etc.). If the test string can then appear alone as the answer to such a question, then it is likely a constituent in the test sentence.

Question 12

mother node

Answer 12

node immediately above a given node

Question 13

sister node

Answer 13

nodes that share the same mother node.

Question 14

structural ambiguity

Answer 14

cases in which different interpretations arise through different sentence structures assigned to the same strings of words.

Question 15

head

Answer 15

is the word that determines the syntactic category of that phrase.

Question 16

noun phrases (NP)

Answer 16

phrases headed by a noun.

Question 17

prepositional phrases (PP)

Answer 17

phrases headed by a preposition.

Question 18

adjective phrases (AP)

Answer 18

phrases headed by an adjective.

Question 19

verb phrases (VP)

Answer 19

phrases headed by a verb.

Question 20

adverb phrases (ADVP)

Answer 20

phrases headed by a adverb.

Question 21

determiners

Answer 21

is a word, phrase, or affix that occurs together with a noun or noun phrase and generally serves to express the reference of that noun or noun phrase in the context. That is, a determiner may indicate whether the noun is referring to a definite or indefinite element of a class, to a closer or more distant element, to an element belonging to a specified person or thing, to a particular number or quantity, etc.

Question 22

phrase structure rules

Answer 22

type of rewrite rule used to describe a given language’s syntax and are closely associated with the early stages of transformational grammar, proposed by Noam Chomsky in 1957.[1] They are used to break down a natural language sentence into its constituent parts, also known as syntactic categories, including both lexical categories (parts of speech) and phrasal categories.

Question 23

subordinate clauses

Answer 23

a clause, typically introduced by a conjunction, that forms part of and is dependent on a main clause.

Question 24

clause

Answer 24

which is a syntactic unit that consists minimally of a verb phrase and its subject.

Question 25

Sentences

Answer 25

the largest syntactic units and they are made up of one or more clauses.

Question 26

main clause

Answer 26

which refers to clauses that can stand on their own.

Question 27

matrix clause

Answer 27

a clause that contains a subordinate clause.

Question 28

predicate

Answer 28

in ancient grammar ‘predicate’ refers to everything in a sentence apart from the subject. In this frame of thought, a predicate is that part of a sentence that says something about the subject. In contrast, some school grammars use ‘predicate’ to refer to auxiliary and main verbs in a sentence, while others use the term ‘predicator’ for the main verb and the term ‘predicate’ in the ancient sense.

Question 29

subject-verb agreement

Answer 29

a syntactic process which requires subject and verb to share the same person and number features.

Question 30

case forms

Answer 30

mark the grammatical function of noun phrases in a sentence or phrase

Question 31

transitive verbs

Answer 31

Verbs that need an object

Question 32

intransitive verbs

Answer 32

verbs that cannot take an object

Question 33

di-transitive

Answer 33

verbs that can take two objects

Question 34

direct object

Answer 34

One of the objects denotes an entity that undergoes the action or process denoted by the verb.

Question 35

indirect object

Answer 35

object denotes the goal, the recipient or the beneficiary of the event denoted by the verb

Question 36

adverbial (or adjunct)

Answer 36

as constituents that provide information about the circumstances of the action denoted by the verb and its subject and object(s). Adverbials are thus modifiers of the clause or the verb phrase.

Question 37

complement

Answer 37

a word, phrase, or clause that is necessary to complete the meaning of a given expression.

Question 38

predicative complements

Answer 38

completes the meaning of a sentence by giving information about a noun. Predicative complements follow linking verbs (i.e., verbs that do not denote an action but instead connect a noun to information about it)