Syntax Flashcards
syntax
has to do with how sentences and other phrases can be constructed out of smaller phrases and words
linguistic expressions
a piece of language– it has a certain form, certain meaning, and some syntactic properties as well
grammatical
when a string of words really does form a sentence of some language
ungrammatical
some string of words does not form a sentence
subject
the expression that usually occurs immediately to the left of the verb
object
the expression that occurs immediately to the right of the verb
principle of compositionality
the fact that the meaning of a sentence depends on the meanings of the expressions it contains and on the way they are syntactically combined
lexical expressions
knowing a language to then produce and understand an infinite number of sentences because you know the meanings
phrasal expressions
a fixed or semi-fixed sequence of two or more co-occurring but not necessarily contiguous words with a cohesive meaning or function that is not easily discernible by decoding the individual words alone
syntactic properties
determine how we combine lexical expressions to form sentences
word order
the linear order of words in a phrasal expression or sentence
co-occurance
refers to an above-chance frequency of occurrence of two terms
argument
an expression that helps complete the meaning of a predicate, the latter referring in this context to a main verb and its auxiliaries
complements
non-subject arguments
adjuncts
certain kinds of expressions whose occurrence in a sentence is purely optional
agreement
distinct expressions in a sentence may be required to have the same value for some grammatical feature, in which case we say that they agree with respect to that feature
morpho-syntax
morphology and syntax are often seen as tightly related components of grammar
syntactic constituent
the smaller expressions out of which the phrase was constructed
cleft
a kind of sentence in which some constituent is displaced to the left
substitution
involves replacing a constituent with a single word
pro-forms
a word or lexical unit that is dependent for its meaning on reference to some other part of the context or sentence in which it occurs
syntactic categories
consists of a set of expressions that have very similar syntactic properties; they have approximately the same word order and co-occurrence requirements
syntactic distribution
refers to the arrangement of words and other units of language in clauses and phrases and the relationships that obtain between them
noun phrases
consists of personal pronouns, proper names, and any other expressions that have the same distribution
mass nouns
can occur without a determiner and can be replaced with a pronoun; cannot be counted and cannot be pluralized
count nouns
being able to be counted; can be pluralized
verb phrase
the part of a sentence containing the verb and any direct or indirect object, but not the subject
intransitive verbs
an action verb with no direct object
transitive verbs
action verb with a direct object
ditransitive verbs
a verb which takes a subject and two objects which refer to a theme and a recipient
sentential complement verbs
the 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
VP adjuncts
adverbs combine with a VP to form an expression of category VP
prepositional phrase
a modifying phrase consisting of a preposition and its object
lexical entry
a single word, a part of a word, or a chain of words that forms the basic elements of a language’s lexicon; consists of a syntactic category name followed by an arrow followed by a word
phrase structure rules
type of rewrite rule used to describe a given language’s syntax and are closely associated with the early stages of transformational grammar
phrase structure tree
a structural representation of a sentence in the form of an inverted tree, with each node of the tree labeled according to the phrasal constituent it represents
ambiguous
linguistic forms can correspond to more than one distinct expression
lexical ambiguity/homophony
a single (phonological) word corresponds to distinct expression that differ in meaning, syntactic properties, or both
structural ambiguity
the prepositional phrase can be either a VP adjunct or a noun adjunct
preposition
a word governing, and usually preceding, a noun or pronoun and expressing a relation to another word or element in the clause
