Syntax Flashcards
syntax
a component of mental grammar that deals with constructing phrasal expressions out of smaller expressions
linguistic expression
a piece of language with a form, a meaning and syntactic properties
grammatical
a term used to describe a sentence that is in accordance with the descriptive grammatical rules of some lang, especially syntactic rules
ungrammatical
not in accordance with the descriptive grammatical rules of some lang, especially syntactic rules
grammaticality judgment
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
subject
an expression, typically a noun phrase, that occurs to the left of the verb phrase in an English sentence
object
a noun phrase that usually occurs immediately to the right of the verb in English
principle of compositionality
notion that the meaning of a phrasal expression is predictable from the meanings of the expressions it contains and how they were syntactically combined
lexical expressions
a linguistic expression that has to be listed in the mental lexicon
phrasal expressions
a linguistic expression that results from the syntactic combination of small expressions
syntactic properties
properties of linguistic expressions that dictate how they can syntactically combine with other expressions, namely word order and co-occurence properties
word order
the linear order in which words can occur in some phrasal expression
co-occurence
set of syntactic properties that determines which expressions may or have to co-occur with some other expressions in a sentence
arguements
a linguistic expression that must occur in a sentence if some other expression occurs in that sentence as well
complements
a non-subject argument of some expression
topicalization
a syntactic process by which a syntactic constituent occurs at the beginning of a sentence in order to highlight the topic under discussion
adjuncts
a linguistic expression whose occurrence in a sentence is optional; also called a modifier
agreement
a phenomenon by which certain expressions in a sentence must be inflectionally marked for the same person, number, gender
morpho-syntax
name for syntax and morphology considered jointly as a single component of grammar
syntactic constituent
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
cleft
a type of sentence that has the general form
substitution
in syntax, a constituency test that involves replacing a constituent with a single word, such as a pro-form
pro-forms
a word that can replace a syntactic constituent
syntactic categories
group of expressions that have very similar syntactic properties
syntactic distribution
refers to the set of syntactic environments in which an expression can occur
sentence
a syntactic category that consists of all phrasal expressions that can grammatically occur in George thinks that ____
noun phrase
the name of a syntactic category that consists of proper names, pronouns, and all other expressions with the same syntactic distribution
count nouns
in simple terms, a noun that can be counted and pluralized
mass nouns
in simple terms, a noun that cannot be counted and cannot be pluralized
intransitive verbs
name for the set of lexical expressions whose syntactic category is verb phrase
transitive verbs
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
ditransitive verbs
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
sentential complement verb
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
adverb
name of lexical category and a syntactic category that consists of expression such as quickly, well, furiously, etc
lexical entries
class of words grouped together based on morphological properties
phrase structure rules
a recipe for syntactically combining expressions of certain syntactic categories
phrase structure tree
a visual representation of how phrases are constructed within a descriptive grammar, given the lexicon and the phrase structure rules
structural ambiguity
phenomenon where a single string of words is the form of more than one distinct phrasal expression
lexical ambiguity
phenomenon where a single word is the form of tow or more distinct linguistic expressions that differ in meaning or syntactic properties
homophony
phenomenon by which two or more distinct morphemes or non-phrasal linguistic expressions happen to have the same form
