Syntax 3/4 Flashcards
What are the three kinds of tests for phrase structures?
substitution
movement
coordination
What is substitution?
phrase structure test: can you substitute the string with a single word?
What is movement?
test for phrase structure: can you move the string to a different cart of the sentence?
What is coordination?
test for phrase structure: can you corrdinate the string with another string of the same type?
The woman in the red dress LOOKED IN THE MIRROR
The women in the red dress LOOKED IN THE MIRROR AND BRUSHED HER HAIR
What is a modifier?
Mod: an optional phrase that denotes a property of the head (ex: ap can modify the noun head within NP)
What is subcategorization?
the classification of words in terms of their complement options
What is a subject?
the noun phrase occurring immediately under the S (sentence)/ TP node
The central participant in an interaction, the only participant undergoing a state or process described by the verb
What is an indirect object?
the argument that receives the DO in a transfer event, the argument affected by the interaction between the subject and the DO
What kind of word order is English?
subject-verb object language
what is oblique object?
an NP that is the complement of a preposition
He gave his address to MARY
What is a case?
a morphological category that encodes information about a word’s grammatical relation
What is an agreement?
the result of one category being inflected to mark properties of another
(another way of indicating grammatical relations)
Ex: subject-verb agreement
What is a subject-verb agreement?
marking the verb to reflect the person, number and/or gender of the subject
What is a semantic role?
the type of role the phrase plays with respect to the verb (characterizes the way an event participant is involved in an event)
What is an agent?
an animate instigator of the action of the predicate (MARY cut the bread)
What is a patient/theme?
an event participant that undergoes the action expressed in the predicate (Mary cut THE BREAD)
What is a instrument?
an object used to perform an action (Mary cut the bread with A KNIFE)
What is an experiencer?
an animate being that experiences (but does not instigate) the action of the predicate
(TOM felt pain)
What is the location?
indicates the location of an event participant (or the location it moves to/from)
(We live in EDMONTON)
(She sent a card to HER MOTHER) goal
(She got a card from HER MOTHER) source
What is a recipient?
an event participant that receives a transferred object/ abstract entity
(They gave the money to JANE)
What is a beneficiary?
An event participant who is the beneficiary of the action expressed in the predicate
(They made soup for HER)
What is the difference between recipient and beneficiary?
distinction is blurred in English but recipient: object/abstract
Beneficiary: action
What is voice?
refers to a change in grammatical relations assigned by a verb to its arguments, can be active or passive
What is passive voice?
formed by combining a form of the auxiliary verb ‘be’ with the past participle form of a verb
(the car will BE FIXED tomorrow)
