SYNTAX Flashcards
Syntax
the arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language.
grammar
the whole system and structure of a language or of languages in general, usually taken as consisting of syntax and morphology (including inflections) and sometimes also phonology and semantics.
phonological
relating to the system of contrastive relationships among the speech sounds that constitute the fundamental components of a language.
morphological
relating to the forms of words, in particular inflected forms.
semantic information
the meaningful knowledge that is encoded in memory and is crucial for accessing and retrieving memories.
syntactic argumentation
an expression that helps complete the meaning of a predicate, the latter referring in this context to a main verb
syntactic analysis
is the relationship between words and focuses on understanding the logical meaning of sentences or parts of sentences.
internal structure
the arrangement and organization of the different components within a word
constituents
is a word or a group of words that function as a single unit within a hierarchical structure
phrases
any group of words, or sometimes a single word, which plays a particular role within the syntactic structure of a sentence
hypothesise
an assumption or concession made for the sake of argument
pronominalisation
the process or fact of using a pronoun instead of another sentence constituent
pro-form
a word or phrase that can take the place of another word (or word group) in a sentence
wh-pronoun
who, which, whom, what and whose
argumentation
an expression that helps complete the meaning of a predicate
coordination test
one of the traditional diagnostic tests for constituent structure
conjunction
a part of speech that connects words, phrases, or clauses, which are called its conjuncts
gapping
a type of ellipsis that occurs in the non-initial conjuncts of coordinate structures
sentence-fragment test
a sentence that is missing either its subject or its main verb
empirical evidence
information gathered directly or indirectly through observation or experimentation that may be used to confirm or disconfirm a scientific theory or to help justify, or establish as reasonable, a person’s belief in a given proposition
interpretations
Language has many different functions and Linguistic Interpretation attempts to connect language with meaning
structural ambiguity
the presence of two or more possible meanings within a single sentence or sequence of words
head
In linguistics, the head or nucleus of a phrase is the word that determines the syntactic category of that phrase
prepositional phrases
a group of words consisting of a preposition, its object, and any words that modify the object
adjective phrases
is a phrase that’s headed by an adjective and provides context, clarity, or details that support that adjective.
verb phrases
the part of a sentence containing the verb and any direct or indirect object, but not the subject
adverb phrases
a group of words that acts as an adverb to modify the main clause of a sentence
Syntactician
the study of the structure of language, the study of how words can be combined together into sentences
word-classes
the different categories of words used in grammar
syntactic categories
is a syntactic unit that theories of syntax assume
parts-of-speech
lexical category to which a word is assigned based on its function in a sentence
lexical categories
a syntactic category for elements that are part of the lexicon of a language
past tense suffix
Adding the suffix -ed to a verb can form the past tense of that verb
predicate
The predicate of a sentence describes either what the subject is doing or the state of the subject
adverbials
a term used in both general and academic writing to describe a word that can modify an adjective, verb, or entire sentence
matrix clause
a clause that contains a subordinate clause
main clause
a group of words that includes a subject and a verb and can form a sentence
subordinate clauses
a clause in a sentence which adds to or completes the information given in the main clause
subject-verb agreement
the grammatical rule that the subject and verb in a sentence should use the same number, person, and gender
case forms
a change in the form of a word which indicates how that word is used in a sentence
