Syntax

Question 1

syntax

Answer 1

the structure of sentences

Question 2

grammar

Answer 2

complete system of phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic information and rules that speakers of a given language possess

Question 3

constituents

Answer 3

a word or a group of words that functions as a single unit within a hierarchical structure (syntactic units)

Question 4

phrases

Answer 4

another word for constituent; can consist of only one word

Question 5

pronominalisation

Answer 5

the substitution of a constituent by a
pronoun; if you can replace a string of words by
a pronoun, this string must be a constituent (ex: THEY will go there–instead of: MANY PEOPLE will go there.

Question 6

pro-form

Answer 6

renaming pronouns; same thing as pro-phrase

Question 7

movement

Answer 7

If a string of words can be
moved to other sentential positions, it is proof of the string’s being a constituent—test for constituency (ex: [Every morning] many people will go to the station ___.)

Question 8

coordination test

Answer 8

it is only constituents that can be coordinated by the coordinating conjunction “and”; property of combining only constituents of the same kind

Question 9

gapping

Answer 9

question leaves a gap, where we can insert missing string (ex: Many people [ [will go to the station every morning] and [may stay there until 10 p.m. every night] ].)

Question 10

sentence-fragment test

Answer 10

phrases and dependent clauses

Question 11

structural ambiguity

Answer 11

in cases in which different interpretations arise through

different sentence structures assigned to the same strings of words

Question 12

head

Answer 12

most important element of a phrase (“AT school.”)

Question 13

noun phrase

Answer 13

phrases after head (“At SCHOOL”) –>prepositional phrase

Question 14

projections

Answer 14

properties that are put onto the phrase as a whole

Question 15

word-class

Answer 15

category of words of similar form or function

Question 16

syntactic category

Answer 16

type of syntactic unit that theories of syntax assume. Word classes, largely corresponding to traditional parts of speech, are syntactic categories. In phrase structure grammars, the phrasal categories are also syntactic categories

Question 17

parts of speech

Answer 17

noun, pronoun, adjective, determiner, verb, adverb, preposition, conjunction, and interjection

Question 18

determiners

Answer 18

a modifying word that determines the kind of reference a noun or noun group has, for example a, the, every;word, phrase, or affix that occurs together with a noun or noun phrase and serves to express the reference of that noun or noun phrase in the context

Question 19

phrase structure rules

Answer 19

word, phrase, or affix that occurs together with a noun or noun phrase and serves to express the reference of that noun or noun phrase in the context

Question 20

subordinate clauses

Answer 20

a clause, typically introduced by a conjunction, that forms part of and is dependent on a main clause (e.g., “when it rang” in “she answered the phone when it rang”)

Question 21

clause

Answer 21

syntactic unit that consists minimally of a verb phrase and its subject

Question 22

sentences

Answer 22

largest syntactic units and they are made up of one or more clauses

Question 23

main clause

Answer 23

sentence that can stand alone

Question 24

predicate

Answer 24

basically another term for verb– everything in a sentence apart from the subject

Question 25

subject-verb agreement

Answer 25

syntactic process which requires subject and verb to share the same person and number features. If the subject is, for example, third person singular, the verb has to be marked as third person singular, too

Question 26

case forms

Answer 26

forms that mark the grammatical function of noun phrases in a sentence or phrase

Question 27

transitive verbs

Answer 27

Verbs that need an object

Question 28

intransitive verbs

Answer 28

verbs that cannot take an object (e.g. sleep, laugh)

Question 29

ditransitive

Answer 29

the verbs write, prepare and introduce have one object each, but there are also verbs that can take two objects, like give, or show

Question 30

direct object

Answer 30

One of the objects denotes an entity that undergoes the action or process denoted by the verb

Question 31

indirect object

Answer 31

The other object denotes the goal, the recipient

or the benificiary of the event denoted by the verb

Question 32

adverbial

Answer 32

modifiers of the clause or phrase verb (ex: concern time, location, manner, cause or purpose)

Question 33

complement

Answer 33

semantically and structurally highly dependent

sister constituents of heads (ex: [proud [of her achievements]PP ]AP)

Question 34

predictive complements

Answer 34

(ex: Melanie is a bad cook.&Leo became captain of his team)—do not behave like objects also in an important other respect, i.e. they cannot be passivised (cf. *Captain of his team was become by Leo)

Question 35

sentence rules

Answer 35

describe/produce native sentences in a language

Question 36

small clause

Answer 36

infinitive-basic verb without finite information (“TO GO to the store”)

Question 37

embedding

Answer 37

putting phrases within phrases (prepositional phrase: To—>the store.)

Question 38

dependencies

Answer 38

link individual words

Question 39

inversion

Answer 39

switching the place of two words

Question 40

be/have question rule

Answer 40

english inverts the subject and the verb to ask a question