Syntax

Question 1

syntax

Answer 1

a component of mental grammar that deals with constructing phrasal expressions out of smaller expressions

Question 2

linguistic expression

Answer 2

a piece of language with a form, a meaning and syntactic properties

Question 3

grammatical

Answer 3

a term used to describe a sentence that is in accordance with the descriptive grammatical rules of some lang, especially syntactic rules

Question 4

ungrammatical

Answer 4

not in accordance with the descriptive grammatical rules of some lang, especially syntactic rules

Question 5

grammaticality judgment

Answer 5

an instance of a native speaker of some lang deciding whether some string of words corresponds to a syntactically well-formed or grammatical phrasal expression in their native lang

Question 6

subject

Answer 6

an expression, typically a noun phrase, that occurs to the left of the verb phrase in an English sentence

Question 7

object

Answer 7

a noun phrase that usually occurs immediately to the right of the verb in English

Question 8

principle of compositionality

Answer 8

notion that the meaning of a phrasal expression is predictable from the meanings of the expressions it contains and how they were syntactically combined

Question 9

lexical expressions

Answer 9

a linguistic expression that has to be listed in the mental lexicon

Question 10

phrasal expressions

Answer 10

a linguistic expression that results from the syntactic combination of small expressions

Question 11

syntactic properties

Answer 11

properties of linguistic expressions that dictate how they can syntactically combine with other expressions, namely word order and co-occurence properties

Question 12

word order

Answer 12

the linear order in which words can occur in some phrasal expression

Question 13

co-occurence

Answer 13

set of syntactic properties that determines which expressions may or have to co-occur with some other expressions in a sentence

Question 14

arguements

Answer 14

a linguistic expression that must occur in a sentence if some other expression occurs in that sentence as well

Question 15

complements

Answer 15

a non-subject argument of some expression

Question 16

topicalization

Answer 16

a syntactic process by which a syntactic constituent occurs at the beginning of a sentence in order to highlight the topic under discussion

Question 17

adjuncts

Answer 17

a linguistic expression whose occurrence in a sentence is optional; also called a modifier

Question 18

agreement

Answer 18

a phenomenon by which certain expressions in a sentence must be inflectionally marked for the same person, number, gender

Question 19

morpho-syntax

Answer 19

name for syntax and morphology considered jointly as a single component of grammar

Question 20

syntactic constituent

Answer 20

a group of linguistic expressions taht function as a syntactic unit within some larger expression; the smaller expressions out of which some larger phrasal expression was constructed in accordance with the phrase structure rules

Question 21

cleft

Answer 21

a type of sentence that has the general form

Question 22

substitution

Answer 22

in syntax, a constituency test that involves replacing a constituent with a single word, such as a pro-form

Question 23

pro-forms

Answer 23

a word that can replace a syntactic constituent

Question 24

syntactic categories

Answer 24

group of expressions that have very similar syntactic properties

Question 25

syntactic distribution

Answer 25

refers to the set of syntactic environments in which an expression can occur

Question 26

sentence

Answer 26

a syntactic category that consists of all phrasal expressions that can grammatically occur in George thinks that ____

Question 27

noun phrase

Answer 27

the name of a syntactic category that consists of proper names, pronouns, and all other expressions with the same syntactic distribution

Question 28

count nouns

Answer 28

in simple terms, a noun that can be counted and pluralized

Question 29

mass nouns

Answer 29

in simple terms, a noun that cannot be counted and cannot be pluralized

Question 30

intransitive verbs

Answer 30

name for the set of lexical expressions whose syntactic category is verb phrase

Question 31

transitive verbs

Answer 31

the name of a syntactic category that consists of those expressions that if combined with an expression of category noun phrase to their right result in a verb phrase; a verb that needs a noun phrase complement

Question 32

ditransitive verbs

Answer 32

name of a syntactic category that consists of those expressions that if combined with two expressions of category noun phrase to their right result in a verb phrase

Question 33

sentential complement verb

Answer 33

name of a syntactic category that consists of those expressions that if combined with a sentence to their right result in a verb phrase; a verb that needs a sentence as its complement

Question 34

adverb

Answer 34

name of lexical category and a syntactic category that consists of expression such as quickly, well, furiously, etc

Question 35

lexical entries

Answer 35

class of words grouped together based on morphological properties

Question 36

phrase structure rules

Answer 36

a recipe for syntactically combining expressions of certain syntactic categories

Question 37

phrase structure tree

Answer 37

a visual representation of how phrases are constructed within a descriptive grammar, given the lexicon and the phrase structure rules

Question 38

structural ambiguity

Answer 38

phenomenon where a single string of words is the form of more than one distinct phrasal expression

Question 39

lexical ambiguity

Answer 39

phenomenon where a single word is the form of tow or more distinct linguistic expressions that differ in meaning or syntactic properties

Question 40

homophony

Answer 40

phenomenon by which two or more distinct morphemes or non-phrasal linguistic expressions happen to have the same form