Syntax

Question 1

syntax

Answer 1

the study of how words form phrases and sentences

Question 2

grammar

Answer 2

how to put words together

Question 3

grammaticality

Answer 3

judgements native speakers make regarding
whether or not a sentence follows their understanding of their
language

Question 4

grammatical meaning

Answer 4

we understand the whole meaning through the individual
pieces and how they are put together
- compositional
- meaning of words + arrangement = meaning of whole
- overlap between syntax and semantics

Question 5

parsing

Answer 5

1. sentence enters through your ears
2. sentence runs through the mental parser, which decodes
   the relationship the words and phrases
3. once the sentence is fully parsed and understood, meaning
   appears

Question 6

graden path sentences

Answer 6

sentences which trick the parser into going for an incorrect interpretation

Question 7

word classes

Answer 7

what type of word something is

Question 8

word order

Answer 8

the order in which the words appear

Question 9

co-occurence

Answer 9

which things typically go together

Question 10

syntactic distribution

Answer 10

where things usually appear

Question 11

count nouns

Answer 11

countable, individual objects; can be plural or singular

Question 12

mass nouns

Answer 12

undifferentiated masses; cannot be pluralized

Question 13

common nouns

Answer 13

regular nouns; can take determiner

Question 14

proper nouns

Answer 14

names; cannot take determiner

Question 15

modal verbs

Answer 15

express something about the probability or time
of action (e.g., will, shall, can, may, must, should, would, could, might)

Question 16

determiners

Answer 16

words used to express the scrope of a noun (e.g., the, an, that, etc.)
- articles: the, a, an
- quantifiers: some, ever, few, all, most
- demonstratives: that, this, those, these

Question 17

intransitive

Answer 17

verbs that require only 1 noun phrase
- this NP has to be the subject NP
- E.g., Julia ran. (*ran.)

Question 18

transitive

Answer 18

verbs that require 2 NPs
- these NPs are subject NP and direct object NP
- E.g., Tucker devoured the pizza. (*Tucker devoured.)

Question 19

ditransitive

Answer 19

verbs that require 3 NPs
- these NPs are subject NP, direct object NP, and indirect object
- E.g., Sally gave a book to her mom. (*Sally gave a book.)

Question 20

sentential

Answer 20

verbs that require an entire sentence as their “object”
- E.g., I think (that) Sally gave a book to her mom

Question 21

arguments

Answer 21

all of the pieces that are required by the verb
- verbs must have X amount of arguments and only that amount

Question 22

adjuncts

Answer 22

optional pieces that can be added to a sentence to
add information or modify a verb, noun, etc.
- they don’t change the predicate

Question 23

external argument

Answer 23

the argument that serves as the subject in
the subject-predicate structure

Question 24

internal argument

Answer 24

arguments within the predicate that are
complements of the verb (i.e., direct and indirect objects)

Question 25

phrase

Answer 25

chunks of words that act together as a whole
- each phrase has a head, which determines the type of phrase it is
- in english, heads are often first but not always
- each phrase is a constituent
- a unit of words that want to stick together

Question 26

auxiliary phrase

Answer 26

these phrases must include an auxiliary verb and appear at the
beginning of a VP:
- E.g., I will feed my cat.
- E.g., Tom has spoken Spanish in class.
- these verbs are commonly known as helping verbs

Question 27

recursion

Answer 27

when something contains an instance of itself
- important facet of language

Question 28

generativity

Answer 28

the ability to produce
sentences never before said, and to
understand sentences never before heard
- E.g., Tucker said that Ivy said that Sara
said that Jarett said it is cold today

Question 29

ambiguity

Answer 29

multiple possible meanings from the same sentences

Question 30

lexical ambiguity

Answer 30

ambiguity caused by the presence of two or more meanings for the same word
- e.g. DUCK!

Question 31

structural ambiguity

Answer 31

ambiguity caused by the organization of the words in the sentence