Syntax Flashcards
Syntax
A component of mental grammar that deals with constructing phrasal expressions out of smaller expressions.
Linguistic expression
A piece of language with a form, a meaning and syntactic properties.
Grammatical
A term used to describe a sentence that is in accordance with the descriptive grammatical rules of some language, especially syntactic rules.
Ungrammatical
Not in accordance with the descriptive grammatical rules of some language, especially syntactic rules.
Subject
An expression, typically a noun phrase, that occurs to the left of the verb phrase in an English sentence.
Object
A noun phrase that usually occurs immediately to the right of the verb in English.
Principle of Compositionality
The notion that the meaning of a phrasal expression is predictable from the meanings of the expressions it contains and how they were syntactically combined
Lexical expressions
A linguistic expression that has to be lifted in the mental lexicon; single-word expressions and idioms.
Phrasal expressions
A linguistic expression that results from the syntactic combination of smaller expressions; a multi-word linguistic expression.
Syntactic properties
Properties of linguistic expressions that dictate how they can syntactically combine with other expressions, namely, word order and co-occurrence properties.
Word order
The linear order in which words can occur in some phrasal expression.
Co-occurrence
The set of syntactic properties that determines which expressions may or have to co-occur with some other expressions in a sentence.
Arguments
A linguistic expression that must occur in a sentence if some other expression occurs in that sentence as well. If the occurrence of an expression X in a sentence requires the occurrence of an expression Y in that sentence, we say that Y is an argument of X.
Complement
A non-subject argument of some expression.
Adjuncts
A linguistic expression whose occurrence in a sentence is optional; also called modifier.
Agreement
The phenomenon by which certain expressions in a sentence must be inflectionally marked for the same person, number gender, etc…
Syntactic constituent
A group of linguistic expressions that function as a syntactic unit within some larger expression; the smaller expressions out of which some larger phrasal expression was constructed in accordance with the phrase structure rule.
Substitution
A constituency test that involves replacing a constituent with a single word, such as a pro-form.
Pro-forms
A word that can replace a syntactic constituent.
Syntactic categories
A group of expressions that have very similar syntactic properties. All expressions that belong to the same syntactic category have more or less the same syntactic distribution.
Sentence
A syntactic category that consists of all phrasal expressions that can grammatically occur in Sally thinks that _____.
Noun phrases (NP)
The name of a syntactic category that consists of proper names, pronouns, and all other expressions with the same syntactic distribution.
Nouns (N)
The name of a lexical category and a syntactic category. Morphologically, consists of words to which the plural suffix -s or the suffix -like can be added.
Determiners
The name of a lexical category and a syntactic category that consists of expressions such as the, a, this, all, etc…
Adjectives
The name of a lexical category and a syntactic category. Morphologically, consists of words to which the comparative suffix -er or the suffix -ness can be added.
Verb phrases
The name of a syntactic category that consists of all expressions that, if combined with a noun phrase to their left, result in a sentence.
Intransitive verbs
The name for the set of lexical expressions whose syntactic category is verb phrase.
Transitive verbs (TV)
The name of a syntactic category that consists of those expressions that if combined with an expression of category noun phrase to their right result in a verb phrase.
Ditransitive verbs
The name of a syntactic category that consists of those expressions that if combined with two expressions of category noun phrase to their right result in a verb phrase.
Sentential complement verbs
The name of a syntactic category that consists of those expressions that if combined with a sentence to their right result in a verb phrase.
Adverb
The name of a lexical category and a syntactic category that consists of expressions such as quickly, well, furiously, etc…
VP Adjuncts
A kind of adjunct that combines with an expression of syntactic category verb phrase with the resulting expression also being of category verb phrase.
N Adjuncts
A kind of adjunct that combines with an expression of syntactic category noun with the resulting expression also being of category noun.
Prepositional phrase (PP)
The name of a syntactic category that consists of those expressions that contain a preposition and a noun phrase.
Lexicon
A mental repository of linguistic information about words and other lexical expressions, including their form and meaning and their morphological and syntactic properties.
Phrase structure rules
A recipe for syntactically combining expressions of certain syntactic categories. Along with the lexicon, phrase structure rules are a part of a descriptive grammar of some language. Phrase structure rules have the general form X -> Y1…Yn where X is a syntactic category and Y1…Yn is a sequence of syntactic categories. The categories to the right of the arrow Y1…Yn correspond to the immediate syntactic constituents of the expression whose category is X.
Phrase structure tree
A visual representation of how phrases are constructed within a descriptive grammar, given the lexicon and the phrase structure rules.
Ambiguous
The phenomenon by which a single linguistic form can be the form of more than one distinct linguistic expression. The form that is shared by more than one expression is said to be ambiguous.
Homophony
The phenomenon by which two or more distinct morphemes or nonphrasal linguistic expressions happen to have the same form; sound the same.
Structural ambiguity
The phenomenon where a single string of words is the form of more than one distinct phrasal expression. Arises because the same expressions can combine differently syntactically, resulting in distinct phrases that happen to have the same form.
