Syntax Flashcards
syntax
the arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language
grammar
o the complete system of phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic information and rules that speakers of a given language possess
pronominalisation
the substitution of a constituent by a
pronoun
structural ambiguity
cases in which different interpretations arise through
different sentence structures assigned to the same strings of words
head
the most important element of a phrase
noun phrases
phrases headed by a noun
clause
a syntactic unit that consists minimally of a verb phrase and its subject
Sentences
the
largest syntactic units and they are made up of one or more clauses
main clause
clauses that can stand on their own
subject-verb agreement
a syntactic process which requires
subject and verb to share the same person and number features
case forms
forms that mark the grammatical function of noun phrases in a sentence or phrase
transitive verbs
Verbs that need an object
intransitive verbs
verbs that cannot take an object
ditransitive
verbs that can take two objects
direct object
an entity that
undergoes the action or process denoted by the verb
indirect object
the recipient
or the benificiary of the event denoted by the verb
adverbial
constituents that provide information about the circumstances of the
action denoted by the verb and its subject and object(s)
predicative complements
completes the meaning of a sentence by giving information about a noun
complement
a word, phrase, or clause that is necessary to complete the meaning of a given expression
predicate
the part of a sentence (or clause) that tells us what the subject does or is
matrix clause
a clause that contains a subordinate clause
subordinate clauses
a clause that cannot stand alone as a complete sentence; it merely complements a sentence’s main clause
phrase structure rules
a type of rewrite rule used to describe a given language’s syntax and are closely associated with the early stages of transformational gramma
determiners
a word placed in front of a noun to specify quantity (e.g., “one dog,” “many dogs”) or to clarify what the noun refers to (e.g., “my dog,” “that dog,” “the dog”)
word-classes
the categories all words belong to that tell the speaker what part of speech they belong to
syntactic categories
a type of syntactic unit that theories of syntax assume
lexical categories
a syntactic category for elements that are part of the lexicon of a language. These elements are at the word level.
projection
when notating the syntactic structure of a sentence such as “John runs fast.”, we must specify at every level what lexical category each piece of the sentence belongs to
prepositional phrase
a group of words containing a preposition, a noun or pronoun object of the preposition, and any modifiers of the object
adjective phrases
a group of words that describe a noun or pronoun in a sentence
verb phrases
the portion of a sentence that contains both the verb and either a direct or indirect object (the verb’s dependents)
adverb phrases
a group of words that refines the meaning of a verb, adjective, or adverb
gapping
the omission of a verb in the second of two coordinate clauses, as in I went by bus and Mary by car
movement
the means by which some theories of syntax address discontinuities
constituency tests
the testing of words that function as a single unit within a hierarchical structure
coordination test
only constituents that can be coordinated by the coordinating conjunction “and”
pro-form
a type of function word or expression that stands in for (expresses the same content as) another word, phrase, clause or sentence where the meaning is recoverable from the context.
wh-pronoun
The pronouns who, whose, which, and what
constituents
a word or a group of words that function as a single unit within a hierarchical structure
phrases
a group of words (or possibly a single word) that functions as a constituent in the syntax of a sentence, a single unit within a grammatical hierarchy
