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