Syntax

Question 1

syntax

Answer 1

it is concerned with how people produce well-formed utterances, notably with word order.

syntax = rules according to which linguistic elements can be combined to form acceptable sentences in a given language

Question 2

generative grammar

Answer 2

grammar is an abstract set of rues that makes explicit the knowledge that speakers of a language implicitly have
> generative : we are able to produce, not just describe

syntactitians have many tasks :
> describe the rules by which sentences are well formed in a given language
> make the implicit knowledge of speakers explicit
> propose a system of rules that allows us to generate all the grammatical sentences of a language

Question 3

universal features of languages

Answer 3

> language sounds
grammatical categories
pronominal co-reference
linear order
constituency
hierarchical structure

absolute universals : shared by all languages

implicational universals : features that follow from other features

Question 4

linear order

Answer 4

words are produced linearly, which means we pronounce them one after the other

this constraint can be used to express difference in meaning
> ex. “Lily kissed Sam on the cheek” VS “Sam kissed Lily on the cheek”

Question 5

constituency

Answer 5

process by which words clump together to form a larger unit

Question 6

hierarchical structure

Answer 6

clumps of words are structured into a hierarchical way. they also tend to be embedded within one another
> this is probably a consequence of our cognitive limitations, as we can’t deal with a high number of things at the same time

structural ambiguity may be explained by assessing hierarchy

Question 7

word categories

Answer 7

words belong to a category (what they are) and fulfill a function (what they do)

> lexical categories : they refer to a position in a syntactic structure -> they don’t have internal syntactic structure
phrasal categories : they have internal structure because they are composed of different units

Question 8

clause

Answer 8

it’s the grammatical expression of a proposition

unit in which we consider syntactical relations between the elements within it (grammatical notion)

Question 9

proposition

Answer 9

unit with a semantic meaning (semantic notion)

it’s a sort of “complete thought” : it refers to entities of the world and semantic relations among them

Question 10

functions of syntax

Answer 10

syntax needs to describe units (what they are), but it also needs to explain how they behave (what they do)
> head : syntactic and semantic
> determination
> complementation
> grammatical relations
> predication
> modification

Question 11

head

Answer 11

syntactic head determines syntactic properties and the meaning expressed by the clump

the head of a constituent cannot be removed, otherwise the constituent stops being what it is
> a noun is the head of a noun phrase and that it projects its “nounness” onto the rest of the phrase

Question 12

determination function

Answer 12

determiners specify/identify/quantify noun phrases, and they belong to different syntactic categories
> articles
> demonstratives
> quantifiers
> either/neither
> some wh- words
> genitive pronouns and phrases
> some personal pronouns

Question 13

complementation

Answer 13

any element of a phrase that is not the head but that is required in order to complete the phrase is a complement

Question 14

grammatical functions

Answer 14

they refer to the syntactic functions of nominal elements inside clauses

both oblique and indirect objects are fulfilled by NPs complementing the head of a PP. indirect objects are required to complete a 3-argument construction around the predicate, but oblique constituents are not required to
> some verbs like “give”/”sell” semantically involve 3 participants : the giver, the receiver and the thing given.
> for these verbs, a PP is needed to fulfill the function of indirect object (= complements)

Question 15

predication

Answer 15

the functions in a clause are subject and predictable. the minimal import for a clause to convey information is an entity of which it is said something

a predicate is a characteristic/property asserted to a single entity or a relation assert to hold between entities

in syntax, inflected verb phrases (IPs) and uninflected verb phrases (VPs) fulfill the function of predicate

Question 16

modification

Answer 16

it is an optional syntactic function, and it is not required to express a complete thought

Question 17

head of a sentence

Answer 17

the head of a sentence is the auxiliary (ex. will, have, be). they convey the grammatical information and specify a time for the sentence
> sentences are about a situation/state of affairs that occur at some point in time

sentences without auxiliaries still have a time reference. the head of the sentence will be its tense, because the verb still needs to agree with the tense
> agreements in terms of person/number

Question 18

constituent structure

Answer 18

to know if words can be grouped and become a constituent = syntactic unit. we can use substitution, order change, addition, deletion
> we perform the transformation and see if the results is validated by a native speaker. if yes, then the word cluster is a constituent

the main tests are movement and substitution, and other tests are interposition, coordination and omissibility

Question 19

movement

Answer 19

if the target element moves with the head and gives a grammatical sentence, then it makes sense to cinsider it as a constituent

Question 20

substitution

Answer 20

if an element can be replaced by another and give a grammatical sentence, it can be considered as a constituent

Question 21

interposition

Answer 21

it’s a test that inserts an element between constituents. if the insertion does not give a grammatical sentence then it means that you have inserted it within a constituent

however, we still have to respect hierarchical structure

Question 22

coordination

Answer 22

if coordination gives a grammatical result, this tells us that the coordinated clumps are of the same category

elements of different syntactic categories cannot be coordinated, but they can look as if they are linearly coordinated when inserted in proper structures

if we try to subsitute or move the above coordinated elements, ungrammatical sentences are produced

Question 23

omissibility

Answer 23

elements in a sentence can be omitted. if they can, it says that they are constituents

however, omissibility is not the most reliable test
> ex. “How many on board, Captain?” : “people are” is missing, but it is not a constituent

Question 24

results of the experiment conducted on syntax

Answer 24

subjects noticed the clicks and recalled where they happened best when they occurred between consistent boundaries

Question 25

syntax structures and rules

Answer 25

given how syntactic trees are structured, we can identify patterns that we can interpret as phrase rules

a sentence (S) subdivides into a noun phrase (NP), an auxiiary (Aux) and a verb phrase (VP)

Question 26

noun phrase (NP) rules

Answer 26

NP -> Det N (“the boy”)

a NP consists of a determiner + a noun

yet, we can also observe that NPs (optionally) contain a prepositional complement
> NP -> Det N (PP) = “the boy with the mask”

Question 27

verb phrase (VP) rules

Answer 27

two main rules :
1. VP = V NP : a VP can consist of a verb followed by a NP
> ex. “caught a fish”
2. VP = V NP PP : a VP can consist of a verb followed by a noun phrase, itself follwed by a prepositional phrase
> ex. “caught a fish before lunch”

these two rules can be combined into one :
> VP = V NP (PP) : a VP can consist of a verb followed by a NP which can also be followed by a PP
> ex. “the men fled from the scene”

Question 28

other syntax rules

Answer 28

S = NP Aux VP : ex. “the boy has watched TV”

PP = P NP : ex. “over the fence”

AP = Adj (PP) : ex. “red”, “(a piece of cheese filled with holes”

Question 29

phrase structure rules

Answer 29

S = NP Aux VP

NP = Det N (PP)

VP = V (NP) (PP)

PP = P NP

AP = Adj (PP)

Question 30

phrasal categories in phrase structure

Answer 30

NP, VP, AP, IP

they will never be found at the bottom of a tree

Question 31

functional categories in phrase structure

Answer 31

Det, Aux, Comp

They can be found at the bottom of a tree

Question 32

why can the same phrase structure correspond to many different sentences ?

Answer 32

because nouns, verbs, adjectives can combine in many different ways

Question 33

embeddedness in phrase structure

Answer 33

a sentence can be embedded into another sentence (ex. “the teacher believes that the students know the answer”).

the “that” is a complementizer = a functional word that turns a sentence into a complement

we can see if embeddedness is present with constituency tests (question, movement, pronominal substitution)

Question 34

constituency tests

Answer 34

question for “Sam asked if he could come”
> “what did Sam ask?”

movement for “I wonder whether Sam is coming”
> “whether Sam will come is my question”

pronominal substitution for “Sam believes there is a god”
> “Sam believes it”

Question 35

CP in phrase structure

Answer 35

it’s a complementary phrase and indicates the subordinate sentence is embedded into the main one

Comp is a functional category and is the head of the CP
> now, we know that VP = V (NP) (PP) (CP)