Syntax Flashcards
syntax
sentence structure
grammar
phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic information and rules that speakers of a given language possess
pronominalisation
the substitution of a constituent by a pronoun.
pro-form
also known as pronoun
movement
test for constituency
coordination test
test that states it is
only constituents that can be coordinated by the coordinating conjunction
and
sentence-fragment test
test for a group of words that lacks one or more of three things
structural ambiguity
different interpretations arise through different sentence structures assigned to the same strings of words
head
most important element of a phrase
noun phrases
phrases headed by a noun
PPs
prepositional phrases
APs
adjective phrases
ADVPs
adverb phrases
projections
head projects its properties onto the phrase as a whole
word-classes, syntactic categories, parts-of-speech, or lexical categories
adjectives, nouns, verbs, prepositions
determiners
a larger class
phrase structure rules
generates sentences
subordinate clauses
sentences inside other sentences
clause
syntactic unit that consists minimally of a verb phrase and its subject.
Sentences
largest syntactic units and they are made up of one or more clauses
matrix clause
superordinate clause
main clause
clauses that can stand on their own
predicate
auxiliary and main verbs in a sentence
subject-verb agreement
syntactic process which requires subject and verb to share the same person and number features.
case forms
forms that mark the grammatical function of noun phrases in a sentence or phrase
transitive verbs
Verbs that need an object
intransitive verbs
verbs that cannot take
an object
ditransitive
verbs that can take two objects
direct object
One of the objects denotes an entity that
undergoes the action or process denoted by the verb.
indirect object
the other object denotes the goal, the recipient or the beneficiary of the event denoted by the verb
adverbial
constituents that provide information about the circumstances of the
action denoted by the verb and its subject and object(s)
adverb
name of a word-class
complement
semantically and structurally highly dependent
sister constituents of heads
predicative complements
do not behave like objects also in an important other respect, i.e. they cannot be
passivised
modifier
a word or phrase intended to change, or modify, another part of the sentence, typically the subject
Diction
defines the style of written or spoken language, representing the choices a speaker or writer makes within the rules of grammar and syntax
run-on sentence
absence of punctuation
Oxford comma
(also called the serial comma) to separate the last item on the list
word choice
the rules of syntax offer the most leeway
Sentence Structure
syntax; makes sentences clear and consistent
