Syntax Flashcards
What does ‘to parse’ mean?
to break down into smallest segments and understand them
What is the difference between tacit and explicit knowledge?
tacit knowledge being unconscious information about language, not taught, studying linguistics makes the rules explicit
What are paradigmatic relations/relations in absentia?
refer to choices made when word chosen to fit particular slot in sentence, word substitution, paradigmatically related words do not co-occur. Examples are synonyms and antonyms
What are syntagmatic relations?
refer to possibilities of combinations of words, order of words, syntagmatic structure in a language is the combination of words according to the rules of syntax for that language. For example, English uses determiner + adjective + noun, e.g. the big house.
what are distributional criteria?
where the word occurs, what modifies it (Tallerman 2020)
What are functional criteria?
what is the function of the word in the phrase (Tallerman 2020)
What are morphosyntactic criteria?
what different forms can words take in different contexts, what affixes can it take (Tallerman 2020)
Give some examples of grammatical categories
- prepositions
- determiners
- auxiliaries
- conjunctions
What questions are used in a grammaticality judgement?
- is it grammatically acceptable?
- have you heard it before?
- could a native speaker say it?
Give some examples of phrasal categories
- Noun phrase NP
- Verb phrase VP
- Adjective phrase AdjP
- Pre/postpositional phrase PP
- Adverbial phrase AdvP
- Complementiser Phrase CP (subordinate)
Give some examples of lexical categories
- Noun N
- Verb V
- Pre/postposition P
- Adjective A
- Adverb Adv
Give an example of a count noun
cat - cats
dog - dogs
can say ‘a cat’ but not ‘a sugar’
Give an example of a non-count/mass noun
food, advice, grass, milk, information
What is subject-auxiliary inversion?
how questions are formed in English ‘did he eat?’
What are the 4 types of determiners?
-articles
-demonstratives
-quantifiers
-numerals
what are the 2 kinds of article?
definite (the) and indefinite (a/an)
What is a constituent?
A single piece of information eg He/that guy/all those girls
What is a phrase?
will have one constituent as a head (obligatory) and everything else is a dependant (usually optional), eg a noun phrase
What is S-selection?
S-selection is the conditions which a head imposes on its immediate context through its argument structure, for example ‘to persuade’ requires a subject and object ‘he persuaded her’
what does paucal mean?
number category, greater than two but not many (so more than dual less than plural)
What are declensions?
phonological forms that result from case inflections, eg I/me/my/mine
What does nominative mean?
case for noun being subject of clause, He/she/I/It
what does accusative mean?
case used when noun is object of clause, Him/Her/Me/it
What does genitive mean?
case used when noun is a possessor or holds similar relationship with another noun ‘brother’s book’
What does locative mean?
case used when noun is a location, corresponds in english roughly to in/on/at/by
What is the difference between proximal and distal demonstrative pronouns?
this vs that
What are ideophones?
representation of an idea in sound, words conveying sensory perception of colour/size/shape, don’t really exist in english
What is an attributive adjective?
comes before the noun
What is a degree adverb?
very or extremely, coming before attributives
What is a predicative adjective?
comes after the verb ‘the woman seems happy’, can only ever have one adjective in this position
What does adposition mean?
general term for a pre or post position
What are PSRs?
Phrase Structure Rules, a chomsky thing. eg NP -> (D)(ADJ) N (PP)
list coordinating conjunctions
For
And
Nor
But
Or
Yet
So
List subordinating conjunctions
because, despite, even though, if, whereas, since
What is Do-So substitution
if a string X can be replaced by do so, this provides evidence that X is a VP eg Hannah holds an umbrella, Holly does so too (Eppler and Ozon 2013)
what is the question test?
Create a Q and if X answers the Q, it is a phrasal constituent
John took his mail to the office.
What did John take to the office? His mail.
What is the cleft test?
move X into focus position to test if it’s a constituent eg it is X that Y becomes it is Y that X
Explain finite/tensed verbs
verbs that carry tense, opposite of non-finite verbs, finite verb in a sequence of English verbs is the first one, helps to identify subordinate clauses because they don’t always have finite verbs, negation does not count as finite
explain infinitive/non-finite verbs
verbs not carrying tense markers, “John remembers to pick up”, “John remembers leaving it” (Tallerman, 2013)
What is a gerund-participal clause?
“John remembers leaving it”, Huddleston and Pullum argue English has no difference between gerund and present participle (Tallerman, 2013)
What is valency/argument structure
number of arguments that a verb requires, ‘sleep’ only requires one argument which is the subject such as ‘I sleep’, ‘devour’ requires two arguments which are the subject and object such as ‘I devoured the soup’, passivisation affects valency
What are arguments?
obligatory, participants associated with given verb, have particular grammatical status in relation to verb,
What are dependants?
Adjuncts and complements
what are adjuncts/adverbial clauses?
don’t hold grammatical relationships with the verb, provide extra information on time, place, manner, etc, can be omitted: ‘Thea always eats her dinner at the table’, majority AdvP or PP
What are complements
elements required by the verb, direct objects, indirect objects, subject and object complements
adverbial complement/obligatory adverbial: adverbial that is required by the verb and therefore not an adjunct such as ‘We are in Paris.’
What are subject complements?
description following a linking verb such as ‘the box looks funny’ or ‘she became a dancer.’
what is transitivity?
whether or not a verb requires an object
What are transitive verbs?
will take a NP complement as DO ‘She imitated him.’
What are intransitive verbs?
Take no complement, only argument is the subject. May take adjunct within the VP “the stomach gurgled (noisily)”
What are di-transiitive verbs?
2 complements, either a NP and a PP, or 2 NPs
“Cody gave # the chips # to Alex”
donner qqch a qqn
what are ambitransitive verbs?
some verbs can change depending on implied meaning
- Mary left her husband – transitive
- Mary left – intransitive
what are complex transitive verbs?
‘They elected him president’, direct object is ‘him’, object complement is ‘president’
What does coreferential mean?
‘the same as’, “John took his coat and left” – subject of left is coreferential to subject of took
What are the different kinds of subordiate clauses?
-adverbial
-complement/nominal
-relative
-clausal/sentential subject
What is an adverbial clause?
introduced by conjunctions, can be removed from sentence, where why when how
what are complement/nominal clauses?
‘I know that I know nothing.’ can have same function as NP/be argument of verb, “I know (that) he likes cheesecake. (that deletion)”, obligatory clauses unlike adverbial clauses
what are relative clauses?
modify head noun, embedded
- How to identify: subordinating conjunction (that, whether, if, because, as long as…), maybe non-finite verb such as past participle or infinitive form (main/matrix clauses always have finite)
what are clausal/sentential subject clauses?
a subordinate clause that also fulfils the requirement of the matrix verb to have a subject: For Mel to act so recklessly shocked everyone.
what is syndetic coordination
coordination that uses overt markers such as coordinating conjunctions
what are correlative conjunctions?
serve to strengthen coordinating conjunctions such as ‘Both Adam and Eve’ or ‘either this or that.’
what is asyndetic coordination
no lexical markers of coordination, eg might only use punctuation
what is polysyndetic coordination?
repeated use of coordination markers, listing with and
What is a zero-relative clause?
a clause where the relative pronoun has been ommitted “She told him (that) she like him”
what is a nominal relative clause?
relative clause acts as a subject “when you saw me doesn’t matter”
What is a simple sentence?
consists of one clause and therefore one predicate
what is an independent sentence
stand alone, usually has a finite verb
what are aspectual auxiliaries?
auxiliary that helps show whether a verb is completed or ongoing, “she was finishing.”
What is a matrix clause?
Main clause that subordinate is embedded into
What are root clauses?
a main clause which is not embedded, only ones that can have subject-auxiliary inversion, only ones that can be tag questions
What is apposition?
“I would like to thank my parents, homer and marge, for their support” = my parents, that is to say Homer and Marge. This is prevented by using oxford comma: “I would like to thank my parents, Homer, and Marge” = 4 different people
What are tautologies/analytic sentences?
- sentences that are always true regardless of circumstances “circles are round”, opposite of contradictions “bachelors are always married”
What are synonymous sentences?
- 2 sentences are synonymous if they entail each other (Fromkin), Jack postponed the meeting and jack put off the meeting- when one is true the other must also be true
what are contradictory sentences?
- 2 sentences are contradictory if one entails the negation of the other – Jack is alive and Jack is dead
what is the principle of compositionality
the meaning of an expression is composed of the meaning of its parts and its structural combination
what does polysemous mean?
multiple meanings related conceptually or historically
What are eventive verbs?
Mary kissed John
what are stative verbs?
mary knew john
what are Grice’s 4 maxims/cooperative principles?
Truth
Information
Relevance
Clarity
List the 12 thematic relations
- Agent: carries out action with volition “Sarah ran the marathon”
- Patient: entity that undergoes the action “Sergio wrote a letter”
- Instrument: entity used to carry out the action “She opened doors with a key”
- Theme: entity undergoing motion or being located “His car rolled down the hill”
- Recipient: entity receiving a physical object/theme “I gave money to Patrick”
- Benefactive: entity for which action is performed “Sing this for Ella”
- Experiencer: entity experiences physical or emotional state “Shelly heard a fox”
- Stimulus: cause of experience “Shelly heard a fox”
- Temporal: location in time “The party is on Tuesday”
- Location: static spatial location “Apollo 13 never reached the moon”
- Source: beginning point of a motion trajectory “He drove from Texas to Arkansas”
- Goal: endpoint of motion trajectory “He drove from Texas to Arkansas”
- In ‘Sarah ran the marathon’ and ‘Brad felt depressed’, Sarah and brad are both subjects, but their semantic roles are different, Sarah is an agent and brad is an experiencer.
What is a clitic?
a word that is treated in pronunciation as forming a part of a neighbouring word and that is often unaccented or contracted. Examples: In “what’s happening?” the “s” in “what’s” is a clitic, ‘n’t’ in ‘isn’t’ is a clitic
Explain the difference between function and structure
- He is going, function-statement & structure-declarative
- Did Jane find a puppy? function-question & structure-interrogative
List the 8 kinds of interrogative
o SAI (subject auxiliary inversion except when…?)
o alternative: look like y/n but wider set of answers
o Rhetorical question: not expecting a response
o Echo questions: Peter fired Paul. Peter fired who? Expressing disbelief/shock or lack of understanding
o Open/Constituent interrogatives: Wh- questions eg “NP [Who] won the match?”
o wh- subordinates: When Mary would get her glasses worried her
o Declarative interrogatives: statement as a question “He walked to school?”
o Tag question: Isn’t it? Often demonstrate reverse polarity- He is happy, isn’t he?
what is passivisation?
NP subject demoted to optional PP headed with ‘by’, NP direct object promoted to subject, will contain auxiliary and past participle of main verb, changes the argument structure, doesn’t work with intransitive or copular verbs, patient is more topical/more important for the discourse
What are comment clauses?
“I suppose.”
explain gradeability of adjectives
with -er -est suffix, or with more/most pre-modifying, a defining characteristic of adj
what are prepositional verbs?
“They depend on something”, can’t just be “They depend”
