Syntax Ch. 5 Flashcards
Argument
A linguistic expression that must occur in a sentence if some other expression occurs in that sentence as well. If the occurrence of an expression X in a sentence requires the occurrence of an expression Y in that sentence, we say that Y is an argument of X.
Adjunct
A linguistic expression whose occurrence in a sentence is optional
Agreement
The phenomenon by which certain expressions in a sentence must be inflectionally marked for the same person, number, gender, etc.
Ambiguity
The phenomenon by which a single linguistic form can be the form of more than one distinct linguistic expression. The form that is shared by more than one expression is said to be ambiguous.
Co-occurrence
The set of syntactic properties that determines which expressions may or have to co-occur with some other expressions in a sentence.
Cleft
A type of sentence that has the general form It is/was X that Y, e.g. It was Sally that I wanted to meet. Can be used as a constituency test.
Count Nouns
In simple terms, a noun that can be counted and pluralized.
Determiner
The name of a lexical category and a syntactic category that consists of expressions such as the, a, this, all, etc. Syntactically, consists of those expressions that when combined with an expression of category noun to their right result in an expression of category noun phrase.
Ditransitive Verb
The name of a syntactic category that consists of those expressions that if combined with two expressions of category noun phrase to their right result in a verb phrase. A verb that needs two noun phrase complements.
Grammaticality judgement
An instance of a native speaker of some language deciding whether some sting of words corresponds to a syntactically well-formed of grammatical phrasal expression in their native language.
Homophony
The phenomenon by which two or more distinct morphemes of nonphrasal linguistic expressions happen to have the same form, i.e. sound the same.
Intransitive verb
The name for the set of lexical expressions whose syntactic category is verb phrase.
Linguistic Expression
A piece of language with a form, a meaning, and syntactic properties.
Lexical Expression
A linguistic expression that has to be listed in the mental lexicon, e.g. single-word expressions and idioms.
Lexical Ambiguity
The phenomenon where a single word is the form of two or more distinct linguistic expressions that differ in meaning or syntactic properties.
Modifier
A linguistic expression whose occurrence in a sentence is optional (also known as an adjunct)
Morphosyntax
The name of syntax and morphology considered jointly as a single component of grammar
Mass nouns
In simple terms, a noun that cannot be counted and cannot (normally) be pluralized
Noun phrase (NP)
The name of syntactic category that consists of proper names, pronouns, and all other expressions with the same syntactic distribution
Noun Adjunct
A kind of adjunct that combines with an expression of syntactic category noun with the resulting expression also being of category noun
Principle of compositionality
The notion that the meaning of a phrasal expression is predictable from the meanings of the expressions it contains and how they were syntactically combined.
phrasal expressions
A linguistic expression that results from the syntactic combination of smaller expressions. A multi-word linguistic expression. A sentence is a special kind of phrasal expression.
Pro-form
A word that can replace a syntactic constituent
Prepositional phrase
The name of a syntactic category that consists of those expressions that contain a preposition and a noun phrase. Can be verb phrase adjuncts or noun adjuncts.
