Syntax Flashcards
4 basic strategies to express grammatical relations
- word order
- inflection
- function words/free grammatical morphemes
- intonation
identify the odd one out ans explain why:
- ) could – may – should – will – want
- ) after – at – during – into – upwards
- ) angry - hungry - lonely - obviously - silly
- ) cause - insist - must persuade - suggest
- ) afterwards - badly - friendly - now - soon
- ) want –> full verb vs. modal verb
- ) upwards –> adverb vs. preopssitions
- ) obviously –> adverb vs. adjectives
- ) must –> modal verb vs. full verbs
- ) friendly –> adjective vs. adverbs
def. Syntax
Kortmann:
Syntax (greek: order, arrangement) refers to both the study of the rules which make it possible to combine smaller linguistic units into well-formed sentences and the rule system itself.
sentence: the largest independent (!) syntactic unit of a language which is not embedded in any larger construction.
def.: clause
Clauses are groups of words that contain both a subject and a predicate.
There are two main types of clauses: independent clauses, which can function independently as sentences, and dependent clauses, which depend on an independent clause to form a sentence.
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/clause
what is the hierarchical order of constituents in a sentence?
- sentences
- clauses
- phrases
- words
- morphemes
difference between phrase and clause: phrases have no subject-predicate structure
syntactic analysis of the following sentence:
A very old man left after the bus had arrived at the station.
phrases: square brackets
clause: angle brackets
sentence: curly brackets
{ [((A very old man) left)]after ((the bus) had arrived) (at the station)}
Identify all inflected forms and all function words in the following sentences. What do
inflectional endings and function words have in common?
- ) Sue showed the picture to her friend.
- ) They’re one of the loudest bands in town.
1.) Sue showed the picture to her friend.
- -ed in showed: inflectional ending (past tense of verbs)
- the: function word (determiner/definite article)
- to: function word (grammatical rather than spacial meaning)
- her: function word (possessive pronoun)
2.) They’re one of the loudest bands in town.
- they: function word (personal pronoun)
- -re: inflected form of be, here realized as a clitic attached to they
- one: function word (here functioning as part of the determiner)
- of: grammatical relation in a noun phrase (here: partitive geneitive)
- the: function word (determiner/definite article>)
- -est: inflectional ending (comparison of adjectives: superlative)
- -s in bands: inflectional ending (plural)
______
both inflectional endings and function words (like word order) represent strategies for the expression of grammatical relations. In many cases, grammatical information can be coded by means of inflection <8i.e.synthetically) or by means of function words (analytically), e.g. narrower vs. more narrow: the book’s title vs the title of the book.
form and function
A useful distinction in grammar is that of form and function. Grammatical form is concerned with the description of linguistic units in terms of what they are, and grammatical function is concerned with the description of what these linguistic units do. Note that we use capital letters at the beginning of function labels.
Understanding the way that form and function relate to one another has important implications for text production and comprehension, and enables students to more accurately discuss how grammatical structure relates to meaning.
Let’s see how form-function operates in language. Consider the following two sentences:
The boy kissed the girl. The girl kissed the boy.
In (1), the boy is doing the kissing, meaning it is the Subject; whereas in (2), the boy is being kissed, meaning it is the Object.
But the boy is a noun phrase in both examples.
_________
Form
- Word classes
noun, adjective, verb, adverb, determiner, pronoun, conjunction, preposition
- Phrases
noun phrase, adjective phrase, adverb phrase, preposition phrase
- Clauses
main clause, subordinate clause, relative clause
\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_
Function
- Subject
- Predicator
- Object
- Adverbial
- Complement
Modifier
syntactic categories/functions vs common semantc functions
syntactic:
- subject (unusual subjects), verb, object, adverbial, complement
semantic:
- agent, patient, action, experiencer, place, time, stimulus, instrument….
correlations (but not 1:1 relation) to syntactic categories
sentence types
simple, compound, complex, compound-complex
also important: word order in English (and German)
____
compound sentence:
A compound sentence has at least two independent clauses that have related ideas and can be joined by a coordinating conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so) or by a semicolon.
complex compound:
- A compound sentence is made of two simple sentences joined by a conjunction.
- A complex sentence is made of a simple sentence and a dependent, or subordinate, clause (has a subject and a verb but does not express a complete thought.
–> So, a compound complex sentence is made up of more than one sentence joined by a conjunction, and at least one of those sentence is complex. In other words, it is a compound sentence with a dependent, or subordinate clause.
def.: adverbial
a word (an adverb) or a group of words (an adverbial phrase or an adverbial clause) that modifies or more closely defines the sentence or the verb.
term adverbial classifies word form to its syntactic function
def.: subordination (syntactics)
a principle of the hierarchical organization of linguistic units. While the principle is applicable in semantics, syntax, morphology, and phonology, most work in linguistics employs the term “subordination” in the context of syntax, and that is the context in which it is considered here. The syntactic units of sentences are often either subordinate or coordinate to each other. Hence an understanding of subordination is promoted by an understanding of coordination, and vice versa.
One clause is subordinate to another if it depends on it. The dependent clause is called a subordinate clause and the independent clause is called the main clause (= matrix clause). Subordinate clauses are usually introduced by subordinators (= subordinate conjunctions) such as after, because, before, if, so that, that, when, while, etc.
The strings in bold are subordinate clauses, and the strings in non-bold are the main clauses. Sentences must consist of at least one main clause, whereas the number of subordinate clauses is hypothetically without limitation.
Long sentences that contain many subordinate clauses are characterized in terms of hypotaxis, the Greek term meaning the grammatical arrangement of “unequal” constructs (hypo=”beneath”, taxis=”arrangement”).
Sentences that contain few or no subordinate clauses but that may contain coordinated clauses are characterized in terms of parataxis.
def.: noun phrase (+ example)
A noun phrase or nominal (phrase) is a phrase that has a noun (or indefinite pronoun) as its head or performs the same grammatical function as such a phrase
Noun phrases can be embedded inside each other; for instance, the noun phrase some of his constituents contains the shorter noun phrase his constituents.
A typical noun phrase consists of a noun (the head of the phrase) together with zero or more dependents of various types. (These dependents, since they modify a noun, are called adnominal.)
Function:
Noun phrases typically bear argument functions.[3] That is, the syntactic functions that they fulfill are those of the arguments of the main clause predicate
Sometimes a noun phrase can also function as an adjunct of the main clause predicate, thus taking on an adverbial function, e.g.
Most days I read the newspaper.
verb phrase, adjective phrase, adverb phrase, prepositional phrase
In linguistics, a verb phrase (VP) is a syntactic unit composed of at least one verb and its dependents—objects, complements and other modifiers—but not always including the subject.
A verb phrase is similar to what is considered a predicate in more traditional grammars.
in the sentence A fat man put the money quickly in the box, the words put the money quickly in the box are a verb phrase; it consists of the verb put and its dependents, but not the subject a fat man.
def.: constituent
In syntactic analysis, a constituent is a word or a group of words that functions as a single unit within a hierarchical structure.
What kind of morphemes are function words?
Free grammatical morphemes.
They’re usually identical in form to prepositions, but differ from them in that they have lost their concrete spatial or temporal meanings and are used to express purely grammatical relations.
Word order in modE
English word order (or more precisely, the order of constituents or phrases) is one of the most important ways of coding grammatical relations in a sentence.
Changes in order almost always is associated with changes in meaning or lead to ungrammaticality.
endocentric and exocentric phrases
noun, verb, adjective, adverb phrase –> endocentric
(compare ‘The man was reading a book’ vs. John was reading Shakespeare.)
propositional phrase –> exocentric
exocentric: phrases don’t show the same distribution as only of their parts
finite and non-finite verbs
Finite verbs:
- inflected
- -> form of the verb that has a subject and can function as the root of an independent clause.
- -> in many lgs, they are the locus of grammatical info, such as gender, number, person, tense, aspect, mood and voice.
Non-finite verbs:
- gerund
- infinitive
- participles
What is a predicate?
The predicate of a sentence is the part that modifies the subject in some way. Because the subject is the person, place, or thing that a sentence is about, the predicate must contain a verb explaining what the subject does and can also include a modifier.
Sytactic versus semantic function
syntacitc:
- form: noun phrase, verb phrase, etc..
- function: subject, predicate, object
semantic: patient, agent
Function words
Free grammatical morphemes
Identical in form to prepositions but lost their concrete spatial or temporal meanings, are used to express purely grammatical relations
E.g
To, on, of, more, most
Give example sentences to demonstrate how they lost spacial meaning
How can Intonation Express grammatical relations in English?
Turning a statement into a question
Distinguishing between restrictive relative clauses (which are integrated into the contour of the higher clause) and non-restrictive
The students who were waiting in the lobby were sent home
The students,who were waiting in the lobby, were sent home
Aspect, detailed explanation
Aspect is a grammatical category that expresses how an action, event, or state, denoted by a verb, extends over time.
The marking of aspect is often conflated with the marking of tense and mood (see tense–aspect–mood).
group of grammatical categories that covers the expression of tense (location in time), aspect (fabric of time – a single block of time, continuous flow of time, or repetitive occurrence), and mood or modality (degree of necessity, obligation, probability, ability).
Perfective aspect is used in referring to an event conceived as bounded and unitary, without reference to any flow of time during (“I helped him”). Imperfective aspect is used for situations conceived as existing continuously or repetitively as time flows (“I was helping him”; “I used to help people”).
Further distinctions can be made, for example, to distinguish states and ongoing actions (continuous and progressive aspects) from repetitive actions (habitual aspect).
Certain aspectual distinctions express a relation in time between the event and the time of reference. This is the case with the perfect aspect, which indicates that an event occurred prior to (but has continuing relevance at) the time of reference: “I have eaten”; “I had eaten”; “I will have eaten”.[1]
Aspect
A grammatical category that expressed how an action, event or state, denoted by a verb, extends over time.
Like tense, aspect is a way that verbs represent time. However, rather than locating an event or state in time, the way tense does, aspect described “the internal temporal constituency of a situation”, or in other words, aspect is a way “of conceiving the flow of the process itself”
Form-Function mapping in English?
It’s development?
The decreasing number of forms had to carry an increasing functional load, i.e. number of functions and meanings - which is why in less than a thousand years English developed form a “tight-fit” inflectional language into a “loose-fit”, largely isolating language.
Tight-/loose-fit describing how well form and meaning fit.
