Syntax Flashcards
Syntax
the investigation of the parts sentences consist of and thier connections and dependencies. More strict than Diction.
Sentence Structure/Syntactic Units
They are constituents or phrases that can be combined to form organised combinations of words.
Pronominalisation
A test in order to prove constituent status by substituting a constituent with a pronoun/pro-form.
Movement
A test for determining constituent/prhase status. If a string of words can be moved to other sntential positions, it is proof of the string’s being a constituent/phrase.
Sentential position of subjects in English
severely resticted, in that they generally occur before the verb complex.
Coordination test
Test to determine constituent/phrase status. Only constituents that can be coordinated by the coordinating conjunction ‘and’ (this conjunction has the wonderful property of combining only constituents of the same kind.) So, if we can coordinate two expressions with ‘and’, this is good evidence for their being constituents.
Gapping
Test to determine constituent/phrase status by adding a tag question; works with certain types of phrases/constituents.
Sentence Fragment test
Test to determine constituent/phrase status by asking a who, what, where, when question for each hypothesized constituent/phrase.
How do we determine whether a given word is the most important element?
There are a number of tests through semantics, structural relations, distribution, and projections that determine whether a given word is the most important element.
Semantic
The subfield studies meaning and can be used to indicate the head of a phrase/constituent when the word is semantically the most important element.
Head
Most important element of a phrase/constituent
PP
Prepositional phrases [to the station]
AP
Adjective phrases [proud of his results
VP
Verb Phrases [go to the station]
ADVP
Adverb Phrases [incredibly often]
Structural relation
Indicates the head of a phrase/constituent in relation to the other constituents/phrases. Ex: in VP (verb phrases) and PP (prepositional phrases) the head assigns case to the constituent to its right.
Same Distribution
Indicated head of phrase/constituent. It means that in all sentential positions where we can find a given phrase, we should also be able to find only the head of that given kind of phrase.
Projects
Indicates head of phrase/constituent. The head projects its properties onto the phrase as a whole. (Also the reason why phrases/constituents/structural units are also called projections of their head.)
Syntactic categories/Word-Class
Examples: nouns, prepositions, adjectives, verbs, etc.
How do we find out a word’s ‘word-class’?
Semantics, morphology, and syntactics
Semantic Classification
A way to find a word’s ‘word-class’ and is taught to us as children that different words express different kinds of meanings.
Ex: nouns=person, place, thing
verbs=actions or events
adjectives= properties or qualities
prepositions= relations
However, semantic classification alone is not entirely satisfactory
Morphology
Parts of words with meaning, and a way to find a word’s ‘word-class’. Words of a particular syntactic category/word-class have a specific morphological make-up.
Ex: verbs= suffix past tense -ed
Nouns= suffix -ness
Adjectives = suffix -less
However, morphology classification alone is not entirely satisfactory.
Syntactic
Sentence structure that is used to find a word’s word class. Positional considerations can show us what a word’s word class is.
English example: Subject followed by the verb
Verb followed by its object
Noun preceded by the article ‘the’ is quite common
Adjectives often immediately precede nouns and nouns often follow adjectives.
Articles, demonstratives, and possessives
Smaller subclasses of a larger class of word-class called determiners
Determiners
a nominal syntactic category distinct both from adjectives and nouns, despite the close affinity among them. They are commonly understood to comprise the word classes of article, demonstrative, and quantifier, as well as some possessives and some nominal agreement markers.
Subordinate clauses
Different from phrases; sentences inside other sentences.
Subordinate Clause Internal Structure
has a clause which is a syntactic unit that consists minimally of a verb phrase and subject.
Sentences
Largest syntactic units and they are made up of one or more clauses.
Simple Sentence
One clause
Complex sentence
Contains at least one subordinate clause
Superordinate Clause
also known as the matrix clause or main clause and are opposite of a subordinate clause. They are clauses that can stand on their own.
Subject
This is part of the functional level of syntax. The English language requires one in sentences and it occurs immediately before the verb. Criteria: Subject-verb, agreement, position, obligatoriness, and case marking.
Case Forms
Forms that mark the grammatical function of noun phrases in a sentence or phrase.
Ex; There is a morphological distinction that is only visible with pronouns between a subject case and an object case
Objects
Words at the functional level of a sentence. They are the thing/person action is done to. Criteria for objecthood: pronoun case morphology, sentential position, obligatoriness, and passivisation
Adverbials
Part of Sentence Function. Constituents that provide information about the circumstances of the action denoted by the verb and its subject and object(s). (Modifiers of the clause or verb phrase). May concern: time, place/location, manner, cause, or purpose.
Predicates
in linguistics, the part of a sentence or clause that is not the subject but asserts a property, action, or condition of the subject. The predicate of a sentence may range from a single intransitive verb (as in She smiled) to a long and complex construction.
Complement
Semantically and structurally highly dependent sister constituents of heads. Predicative complements do not behave like objects also because they cannot be passived.
Grammatical Categories like word-classes and phrases
are used to account for the patterning of words in English sentences.
Common word order in the English Language
SVO (Subject, Verb, Object)
Diction
The style of written or spoken language. Choices made within rules of grammar and syntax. It is more flexible than syntax.
