Syntax

Question 1

grammar

Answer 1

the grammar of a natural language is its set of structural constraints on speakers’ or writers’ composition of clauses, phrases, and words

Question 2

syntax

Answer 2

the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences

Question 3

constituents

Answer 3

a word or a group of words that function as a single unit within a hierarchical structure

Question 4

phrases

Answer 4

any group of words, or sometimes a single word, which plays a particular role within the syntactic structure of a sentence.

Question 5

pronominalisation

Answer 5

a rule replacing lexical items with a pronoun

Question 6

pro-form

Answer 6

a type of function word or expression that stands in for another word, phrase, clause or sentence where the meaning is recoverable from the context

Question 7

wh-pronoun

Answer 7

Wh- words can appear in both direct questions and indirect questions, and they are used to begin wh-clauses

Question 8

movement

Answer 8

the means by which some theories of syntax address discontinuities

Question 9

coordination test

Answer 9

one of the traditional diagnostic tests for constituent structure

Question 10

gapping

Answer 10

a type of ellipsis that occurs in the non-initial conjuncts of coordinate structures

Question 11

sentence-fragment test

Answer 11

If the sentence is missing a subject or a verb/predicate

Question 12

structural ambiguity

Answer 12

occurs when a phrase or sentence has more than one underlying structure

Question 13

head

Answer 13

the word that determines the syntactic category of that phrase

Question 14

noun phrases

Answer 14

a group of words, usually a noun in addition to a modifier—such as an adjective, adverb, or article—that functions just as a noun would

Question 15

prepositional phrases

Answer 15

a group of words that consists of a preposition and the object of the preposition

Question 16

adjective phrases

Answer 16

a phrase whose head is an adjective

Question 17

adverb phrases

Answer 17

a multi-word expression operating adverbially

Question 18

verb phrases

Answer 18

a syntactic unit composed of a verb and its arguments except the subject of an independent clause or coordinate clause

Question 19

projects

Answer 19

based on linguistic data and consists of an in depth description of the material or same aspects of the material using standard linguistic terminology.

Question 20

projections

Answer 20

a stipulation proposed by Noam Chomsky as part of the phrase structure component of generative-transformational grammar

Question 21

word-classes

Answer 21

a group of words that have the same basic behavior such as nouns, adjectives, or verbs.

Question 22

syntactic categories

Answer 22

the groups of words that let us state rules and constraints about the form of sentences

Question 23

parts-of-speech

Answer 23

indicates how the word functions in meaning as well as grammatically within the sentence

Question 24

lexical categories

Answer 24

classes of words (e.g., noun, verb, preposition), which differ in how other words can be constructed out of them

Question 25

determiners

Answer 25

a nominal syntactic category distinct both from adjectives and nouns, despite the close affinity among them

Question 26

phrase structure rules

Answer 26

a formal hypothesis for representing constituency using rules

Question 27

subordinate clauses

Answer 27

a clause that cannot stand alone as a complete sentence; it merely complements a sentence’s main clause, thereby adding to the whole unit of meaning

Question 28

clause

Answer 28

like a phrase, is a group of words. But unlike a phrase, a clause is pretty complete. A clause is a group of words that contains both a subject and a predicate.

Question 29

Sentences

Answer 29

a linguistic expression, such as the English example “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” In traditional grammar it is typically defined as a string of words that expresses a complete thought, or as a unit consisting of a subject and predicate

Question 30

matrix clause

Answer 30

a clause that contains a subordinate clause

Question 31

main clause

Answer 31

a group of words that contains a subject and a verb and can form a complete sentence on its own.

Question 32

predicate

Answer 32

the part of a sentence or clause that is not the subject but asserts a property, action, or condition of the subject

Question 33

transitive verbs

Answer 33

a verb that requires an object to receive the action

Question 34

intransitive verbs

Answer 34

a verb that doesn’t require a direct object (i.e., a noun, pronoun or noun phrase) to indicate the person or thing acted upon

Question 35

di-transitive

Answer 35

a transitive verb whose contextual use corresponds to a subject and two objects which refer to a theme and a recipient

Question 36

direct object

Answer 36

a word or phrase that receives the action of the verb

Question 37

indirect object

Answer 37

the word or phrase that receives the direct object

Question 38

adverbial

Answer 38

words that we use to give more information about a verb

Question 39

complement

Answer 39

a word, phrase, or clause that is necessary to complete the meaning of a given expression

Question 40

predicative complements

Answer 40

completes the meaning of a sentence by giving information about a noun