Syntax 1 - Formal approaches, Categories & Constituents, PS Rules & Constituency Tests Flashcards

1
Q

Language vs language

A

The capacity that clearly distinguishes man from other animals / a specific instance of this capacity against the background of a specific culture.

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2
Q

Natural vs artificial language

A

Spoken as mother tongue, capable of fulfilling all communicative functions, origins obscure / designed for a purpose, restricted in terms of function, invented.

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3
Q

Behaviourist view of language

A

Skinner’s Verbal Behaviour, largely dismissed

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4
Q

Functionalist view of language

A

studies language in the way it fulfils functions (informative, affective, directive, topicalisation)
form>function relation

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5
Q

Formal, cognitive view

A

Language is a form of knowledge
Language capacity is cognitive.

people discuss generativists vs cognitivists: generativists believe there is a language specific cognitive faculty, cognitivists believe it’s just a result of our normal cognitive makeup.

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6
Q

According to the formal cognitive view of language, what 3 sources are behind our ability to use language.

A

1 - Experience (input - primary linguistic data)
2 - innate set of linguistic abilities (Universal Grammar)
3 - general cognitive capacities

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7
Q

Chomsky: difference between I-Language & E-Language?

A

I-Language: internal, individual knowledge of language (use to make grammaticality judgements) < this is studied by universal grammarians.
E-language - external manifestations of language (subject to speech errors, social cues etc) - the idea of a social collective language is more Saussure than Chomsky.

These two ideas can be linked to competence and performance.

Dell Hymes:
Hymes formulated a response to Noam Chomsky’s influential distinction between competence (knowledge of grammatical rules necessary to decoding and producing language) and performance (actual language use in context). Hymes objected to the marginalization of performance from the center of linguistic inquiry and proposed the notion of communicative competence, or knowledge necessary to use language in social context, as an object of linguistic inquiry. (pragmatic rules are a part of speaker competence)

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8
Q

What do recursive structures show?

A

productive - can create and understand totally novel structures
systematic - create certain meaning in certain way

language is compositional rather than adjacent (hierarchies not sequences)

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9
Q

Formal, cognitive view of being an ‘English’ speaker:

A

Having a specific I-language which generally corresponds to the socio-cultural construct of English shared by other ‘English speakers’.

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10
Q

if NP and VP are grammatical categories what are their functions?

A

subject & predicate

Traditionally that is! in a sentence such as [ S [NP I ] [VP eat hummus] ]

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11
Q

Relative Clauses also have subject and predicate, how to represent: ‘The mouse the cat chased died.’

A

[ s [ np the mouse [ cp [ np the cat ] [ vp chased t ] ] [ vp died ] ]

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12
Q

Universal Grammar:

according to principles & parameters approach

A

Universal Grammar is the idea that some linguistic rules are universal and that humans have an innate species-specific Language Acquisition Device containing universal principles as well as parameters by which languages vary (for example whether languages have null subjects) which are set during FLA.

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13
Q

Generative Grammar:

A

Generative grammar is a theory in which grammar is thought to consist of a collection of explicit rules for generating meaningful sentences in a language. The system is computational, and generative linguists would suggest a system like this existing in the mental language faculty.

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14
Q

Poverty of the Stimulus:

A

Poverty of the stimulus refers to the idea that the quantity and content of the PLD children are exposed to is not sufficient for them to learn all the rules of language they eventually know. It is argued that distinctions such as that between the words probable and likely would not be exposed by the limited data, however all native English speakers (without any linguistic impairment) know the structural contexts in which each one should be used. (An argument for UG)

  • Degeneracy of the stimulus: People speak ungrammatically
  • Variability of the stimulus: ‘motherese’ means that input isn’t what children end up learning. (also imperatives statistics from lang ac).
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15
Q

Constituent Structure:

A

The way in which words group into intermediate phrases which fall into different syntactic categories.

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16
Q

Categories:

A

2 types: lexical & functional

lexical: noun, verb, adj, adv, preposition
shows content information (relation to world)
except prepositions, these are open classes
they are near universal

functional: auxiliaries, determiners, complementisers
shows grammatical information (units' relation to eachother) 
closed class 
vary between langs
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17
Q

Category tests for nouns

A
  • regular count nouns take -s plural (other plurals under pink post-it)
  • only NPs can be subjects before aux
  • list (pink post it) of derivational suffix
  • after determiners and adjectives
  • negated with ‘no’
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18
Q

Category tests for adverbs

as distinct from adjectives

A
  • regular adverbs end in -ly (but nouns can take this suffix to become adjectives!)
  • CANNOT appear between determiner and noun or after copulas
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19
Q

Category tests for lexical verbs (but lots apply to auxiliaries as well!)

A
  • verbs inflect for past tense, for regular verbs this is -ed
  • can’t follow verbs like ‘seem’
  • only verbs and vps can appear between an auxiliary and a manner adverb
  • words ending in -ate or -ise are usually verbs
  • 3rd person singular present tense -s (regular)
  • negated with ‘not’
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20
Q

Category tests for prepositions

A
  • prepositions are invariant forms

- can sometimes be intensified by ‘right’ or ‘straight’

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21
Q

Problems with category tests

A
Generally apply to lexical categories 
Often not effective
Can only categorise if test does work
should use lots of tests
Phonological (stress based distinctions) and semantic (meaning based distinctions) are only relevant for some words. 
Can also do substitution tests!!!
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22
Q

Category tests for auxiliaries (as distinct from lexical verbs)

A
  • Auxiliaries but not lexical verbs will invert in yes-no qs
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23
Q

What is a terminal node?

A

the bottom nodes of a tree - which are not broken down into further constituents.

24
Q

What is dominance & immediate dominance?

A

A dominates B where there is a continuous path of downwards branches from node A to node B.

A immediately dominates B where A is above B and there are no nodes between them.

25
Q

What is constituency & immediate constituency?

A

B is a constituent of A when A dominates B.

B is is an immediate constituent of A when A immediately dominates B.

26
Q

Category tests for adjectives:

A
  • the superlative affix -est can only be attached to adjectives
  • derivational suffixes under pink post-it
  • appear inside noun phrases
  • negated with un/in
27
Q

Difference between adjectives and adverbs?

A

Same forms and functions but appear in complementary distribution.
(Adv applies to VP, Adj to NP - roughly)

28
Q

What is valency?

A

The valency of a verb is the number of arguments it OBLIGATORILY takes.
Valency of 1 - intransitive (just syntactic subject)
Valency of 2 - transitive
Valency of 3 - ditransitive
These arguments can be NPs, CPs, VPs, PPs, and for copulas AdjPs.

29
Q

What is the root node?

A

The node at the top of the tree which is not dominated by any other nodes.

All other nodes in the tree are constituents of this node.

30
Q

What are non-terminal nodes?

A

Neither root nodes nor terminal.

31
Q

Branching vs non-branching nodes?

A

A node with 2+ branches below it is branching.

A node with only 1 branch below it is not branching.

32
Q

Exhaustive Domination

A

Node A exhaustively dominates a set of nodes if it dominates all members of the set and it doesn’t dominate any nodes which are not in the set.

33
Q

Constituent vs constituent of

A

A constituent is a set of terminal nodes exhaustively dominated by a particular node.
If a node is a constituent of another node it is a member of said set of nodes.

34
Q

Precedence?

A

Linear order rather than hierarchy.

A precedes B if they neither dominates the other and B appears to the right of A.

A sister precedes B if it precedes B and they are immediately dominated by the same node.

A immediately precedes B if A precedes B and there is no intermediate node which is preceded by A and precedes B.

35
Q

Phrase Structure Rules: NP >

A

(D) (AdjP+) N (PP+)

Doesn’t express relative clauses. (the chicken you ate)

36
Q

Phrase Structure Rules: AdjP >

A

(AdvP) Adj

37
Q

Phrase Structure Rules: AdvP >

A

(AdvP) Adv

38
Q

Phrase Structure Rules: PP >

A

P (NP)

39
Q

Phrase Structure Rules: VP >

A

(AdvP+) V (NP) (NP/S’) (AdvP+) (PP+) (AdvP+)

Different for copulas of course.

40
Q

Phrase Structure Rules: S >

A

NP/S’ (Aux) VP

41
Q

Phrase Structure Rules: S’ >

this is CP lol sooo confusing

A

(COMP) S

42
Q

Category tests for Determiners (articles & quantifiers)

A

in NP
cannot be stacked
precedes noun and adjs if there are any

43
Q

Constituency Tests: Ellipsis

A

Only full constituents can be elided
John can dance and mary can too.
* John can eat cake and mary can cake too.

Just create a situation of ellipsis by adding other stuff to the sentence.

44
Q

Constituency Tests: Clefting

A

It was XP that … (XP must be a full constituent)
It was the lemon cake that John ate.
*It was lemon cake that John ate the.

45
Q

Constituency Tests: Pro-form substitution

A

Substitute pronouns for NPs.
Substitute ‘do so’ for VPs.
- this is key because complements cannot be left outside of the substitution, whereas adjuncts can: I ate the cake quietly > *I did so the cake / I did so quietly.
Substitute ‘there’ for PPs.

46
Q

Constituency Tests: Wh-Questioning

A

Front with a wh question, there will be a gap ‘t’.

You sent the cake to John > What did you send t to John? / *What did you send the to John?
(‘the cake’ is a constituent, ‘the’ isn’t).

47
Q

Constituency Tests: Fronting

A

Can front a constituent.
To the beach Mary is running.
* To the Mary is running beach.

48
Q

Constituency Tests: Coordination

A

Can coordinate a constituent with another constituent of the same category.

John went to the beach and to the ice cream van.
*John went to and at the beach.

Just create a situation of coordination by adding other stuff to the sentence.

49
Q

What is structural ambiguity?

A

One sentence has two different possible hierarchical structures.

50
Q

What are the constituency tests?

A

coordination, fronting, wh-questioning, clefting, pro-form substitution, ellipsis.

51
Q

‘Pep wanted to know how much money Paul needed.’

A

‘how much money’ goes to the COMP slot and leaves a trace in the VP. ‘how’ is adv and ‘much’ is adj.

52
Q

How to deal with multiple lexical verbs?

A

it’s biclausal, use S’ with empty COMP.

53
Q

A big problem with PS rules (other than the specific problems mentioned above)

A

Can only form declaratives!
(doesn’t allow movement…) (?)
so basically they do have movement rules but they’re v lang specific
also the ‘COMP’ position as a landing spot for wh elements AND auxiliaries is ridiculous

54
Q

Represent gerund subjects? in X’ lol wrong set

A

It’s a DP! it has the properties of an NP but the constituents of a VP. So it’s a DP with a null D. This is a good argument for the DP hypothesis.

55
Q

phrase structure rules vs Phrase Structure rules

A

1 - any could even be X’

2 - PS rules!