Module 5 Syntax Vocabulary

Question 1

Syntax

Answer 1

the syntax of English, to see how sentences in this language are structured. The study of syntax is the investigation of the parts sentences consist of and their connections and dependencies.

Question 2

Constituents or phrases

Answer 2

In analogy to structural units in phonology and morphology, we will call syntactic units constituents, or, in more syntax-specific terminology, phrases.

Question 3

pronominalisation

Answer 3

Pronominalisation is a test to prove constituent status. Substitution of a constituent by a pronoun. “if you can replace a string of words by a pronoun, this string must be a constituent.”

Question 4

‘pro-phrases’ or ‘pro-forms’

Answer 4

Pronoun

Question 5

Movement test

Answer 5

If a string of words can be moved to other sentential positions, it is proof of the string’s being a constituent. This test works nicely for [to the station] and [every morning], but not really for [many people] and [will go]

Question 6

Coordination test

Answer 6

A third constituency test is the coordination test, according to which it is only constituents that can be coordinated by the coordinating conjunction and.This conjunction has the property of combining only constituents of the same kind. Such constitutents can be simple words (black and white, night and day, twist and shout, up and down), but also phrases[Many people] and [my friends] 

Question 7

‘mother’ and ‘sister’ nodes

Answer 7

A mother node is defined as the node immediately above a given node, and sister nodes are nodes that share the same mother node in a tree.

Question 8

Syntactic or structural ambiguity

Answer 8

Syntactic ambiguity, also called structural ambiguity,[1] amphiboly or amphibology, is a situation where a sentence may be interpreted in more than one way due to ambiguous sentence structure.

Syntactic ambiguity arises not from the range of meanings of single words, but from the relationship between the words and clauses of a sentence, and the sentence structure underlying the word order therein. In other words, a sentence is syntactically ambiguous when a reader or listener can reasonably interpret one sentence as having more than one possible structure.

Question 9

NP’s

Answer 9

Noun phrases. Phrases headed by a noun.

Question 10

PP’s

Answer 10

Prepositional Phrases. Modifying phrase consisting of a preposition and its object.

Question 11

AP’s

Answer 11

Adjective phrases. An adjective phrase is a phrase the head of which is an adjective, e.g. fond of steak, very happy, quite upset about it, etc. The adjective can initiate the phrase, conclude the phrase, or appear in a medial position.

Question 12

VPs

Answer 12

Verb phrases. The part of a sentence containing the verb and any direct or indirect object, but not the subject.

Question 13

ADVPs

Answer 13

Adverb phrases. An adverbial phrase is a group of words that refines the meaning of a verb, adjective, or adverb. Similar to adverbs, adverbial phrases modify other words by explaining why, how, where, or when an action occurred.

Question 14

Head

Answer 14

We will call the most important element of a phrase its HEAD and name the phrases after their heads.

Question 15

Projections of the head

Answer 15

Phrases are often called projections of their head. Syntacticians say that the head projects its properties onto the phrase as a whole.

Question 16

Word-class

Answer 16

Syntactic categories of adjectives, nouns, verbs, etc. Generally, there are three types of criteria that are used to find out about the word-class of a given word: semantic, morphological, and syntactic.

Question 17

semantic classification

Answer 17

A word-class distinction of a noun, verb, adverb, etc. (nouns refer to things or persons, verbs to actions or events, that adjectives express properties or qualities, and prepositions express relations.)

Question 18

Morphological criteria

Answer 18

Morphology analyzes the structure of words and parts of words, such as stems, root words, prefixes, and suffixes. Morphology also looks at parts of speech, intonation and stress, and the ways context can change a word’s pronunciation and meaning.

Question 19

syntactic criteria

Answer 19

Position of words in a sentence.

Question 20

phrase structure rules

Answer 20

Syntactic rules to construct sentences

Question 21

Subordinate clauses

Answer 21

Sentences inside sentences

Question 22

Clause

Answer 22

A minimal structure of a sentence that contains a verb phrase and it’s subject.

Question 23

superordinate clause or matrix clause

Answer 23

A complex sentence consisting of two clauses

Question 24

Main clause

Answer 24

Clauses that can stand on their own

Question 25

Predicate

Answer 25

Verb. the part of a sentence or clause containing a verb and stating something about the subject (e.g., went home in John went home)

Question 26

subject-verb agreement

Answer 26

a syntactic process which requires subject and verb to share the same person and number features. If the subject is, for example, third person singular, the verb has to be marked as third person singular, too.

Question 27

criteria for subjecthood, the notion of subject

Answer 27

subject-verb agreement, position, obligatoriness and case marking.

Question 28

transitive verbs

Answer 28

Verbs that need an object

Question 29

intransitive verbs

Answer 29

verbs that cannot take anobject

Question 30

Distrantive

Answer 30

Verbs that can take two objects. One of the objects denotes an entity that undergoes the action or process denoted by the verb. This object is commonly referred to as the direct object. The other object denotes the goal, the recipient or the benificiary of the event denoted by the verb, and is known as the indirect object.

Question 31

Adverbial or adjunct

Answer 31

Adverbials are defined 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. The circumstantial information they convey may, for example, concern time, location, manner, cause or purpose.

Question 32

Complement

Answer 32

dependent sister constituents of heads

Question 33

Diction

Answer 33

The style of written or spoken language, representing the choices a speaker or writer makes within the rules of grammar and syntax.

Question 34

Elizabethan Language

Answer 34

language use during the time period of Queen Elizabeth. Consisted of only 24 letters instead of 26

Question 35

Grammar

Answer 35

the set of rules which the speakers of a language follow when they speak. In linguistics, grammar refers to the complete system of phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic information and rules

Question 36

Nominative

Answer 36

relating to or denoting a case of nouns, pronouns, and adjectives (as in Latin and other inflected languages) used for the subject of a verb.

Question 37

Accusative

Answer 37

relating to or denoting a case of nouns, pronouns, and adjectives that expresses the object of an action or the goal of motion.

Question 38

Inflection

Answer 38

a change in the form of a word (typically the ending) to express a grammatical function or attribute such as tense, mood, person, number, case, and gender.

Question 39

Definite nouns

Answer 39

refer to a specific number of things. For example, a definite noun is “bird.” When readers come across this noun, they are sure of how many birds the sentence, or phrase, is referring to. Given that the word “bird” is singular, a reader knows that it refers to one bird.

Question 40

Indefinite noun

Answer 40

used before a noun that is general or when its identity is not known. a word that replaces a noun without specifying which noun it places. It does not specify the exact being, place, or object it refers to.

Question 41

Recipient noun

Answer 41

denotes a person who receives an action

Question 42

Agent noun

Answer 42

denotes a person who performs an action