Syntax Flashcards
Goal of syntax
Task of syntactic analysis is to explain what is structurally possible in a language and what is not.
Constituent
a word or a group of words that functions as a unit within a sentence. Can be proven by constituent tests.
Which word in a phrase determines its type?
the most important word in the phrase
What causes ambiguity?
Often caused by two possible constituent analyses for the same string of words, this is true for all languages
World knowledge biases us to one constituent structure, but two are theoretically possible.
Uniformity
believe a natural system will be uniform, following a small number of principles
A child C-commands:
it’s sister and it’s children
Head movement
Move the left leaf directly under a bar to a empty head, that head needs to c-command the old head. Leave a trace
Subject movement
??
What are the syntactic processes?
Substitution, movement and adjunction
What is substitution?
Used for our CFG grammars
Replace a non-terminal node with 1-2 non-terminal nodes OR with one terminal node
What is movement?
Used to share information about linguistic units between other units (can be in two places at the same time). Also used to maintain morphological integrity
What is adjunction?
Used for adding information, when the unit that is added to retains the same function
For theta and grammatical roles: which entities do we separate?
agent, patient, goal, experiencer and theme
What is important with verbs selecting θ-roles?
They must be assigned
θ-Criterion
Every θ-role selected by a verb must be assigned to an argument in any sentence where that verb occurs
