Syntax: The Sentence Patters of Language Flashcards
wh questions
Interrogative sentences beginning with one or more of the words who(m), what, where, when, and how, and their equivalents in languages that do not have wh-words, such as quién in Spanish: ¿A quién le gusta? ‘Who(m) do you like?’
arbitrary
Describes the property of language, including sign language, whereby there is no natural or intrinsic relationship between the way a word is pronounced (or signed) and its meaning.
auxiliary
A verbal element, traditionally called a “helping verb,” that co-occurs with, and qualifies, the main verb in a verb phrase with regard to such properties as tense: e.g., have, be, will.
c-selection
The classifying of verbs and other lexical items in terms of the syntactic category of the complements that they accept (C stands for categorial), sometimes called subcategorization: e.g., the verb find C-selects, or is subcategorized for, a noun phrase complement.
complement
The constituent(s) in a phrase other than the head that complete(s) the meaning of the phrase and which is C-selected by the verb. The right sister to the head in the X-bar schema. In the verb phrase found a puppy, the noun phrase a puppy is a complement of the verb found.
constituent
A syntactic unit in a phrase structure tree: e.g., the girl is a noun phrase constituent in the sentence the boy loves the girl.
constituent structure
The hierarchically arranged syntactic units such as noun phrase and verb phrase that underlie every sentence.
constituent structure tree
A tree diagram with syntactic categories at each node that reveals both the linear and hierarchical structure of phrases and sentences.
d-structure
Any phrase structure tree generated by the phrase structure rules (i.e., by the X-bar schema) of a transformational grammar; the basic syntactic structures of the grammar. Also called deep structure.
declarative sentence
A sentence that asserts that a particular situation exists.
deep structure
Any phrase structure tree generated by the phrase structure rules (i.e., by the X-bar schema) of a transformational grammar; the basic syntactic structures of the grammar.
demonstratives
Words such as this, that, those, and these that function syntactically as articles but are semantically deictic because context is needed to determine the referents of the noun phrases in which they occur.
determiner (Det)
The syntactic category, also functional category, of words and expressions, which when combined with a noun form a noun phrase. Includes the articles the and a, demonstratives such as this and that, quantifiers such as each and every, etc.
direct object
The grammatical relation of a noun phrase when it appears immediately below the verb phrase (VP) and next to the verb in deep structure; the noun phrase complement of a transitive verb: e.g., the puppy in the boy found the puppy.
functional category
One of the categories of function words, including determiner, Aux, complementizer, and preposition. These categories are not lexical or phrasal categories.
grammatical relations
Any of several structural positions that a noun phrase may assume in a sentence, such as subject or direct object.
head (of a phrase)
The central word of a phrase whose lexical category defines the type of phrase: e.g., the noun man is the head of the noun phrase the man who came to dinner; the verb wrote is the head of the verb phrase wrote a letter to his mother; the adjective red is the head of the adjective phrase very bright red in the face.
immediately dominate
If a node labeled A is directly above a node labeled B in a phrase structure tree, then A immediately dominates B.
intransitive verb
A verb that must not have (does not C-select for) a direct object NP complement: e.g., sleep, rise.
lexical category
A general term for the word-level syntactic categories of noun, verb, adjective, and adverb. These are the categories of content words like man, run, large, and rapidly, as opposed to functional category words such as the and and.
meaning
The conceptual or semantic aspect of a sign or utterance that permits us to comprehend the message being conveyed. Expressions in language generally have both form—pronunciation or gesture—and meaning.
modal
An auxiliary verb other than be, have, and do, such as can, could, will, would, or must.
Move
Sometimes called “Move X” or “Move α (alpha)”; relocates elements placed by the X-bar schema (the phrase structure rules) to different parts of the structure to help account for sentence relatedness such as a declarative sentence and the corresponding yes-no question.
node
A labeled branch point in a phrase structure tree; part of the graphical depiction of a transition network represented as a circle, pairs of which are connected by arcs.
noun phrase (NP)
The syntactic category, also phrasal category, of expressions containing some form of a noun or pronoun as its head, and which functions as the subject or as various objects in a sentence
parameters
The small set of alternatives for a particular phenomenon made available by Universal Grammar. For example, Universal Grammar specifies that a phrase must have a head and possibly complements; a parameter states whether the complement(s) precedes or follows the head.
phrasal category
The class of syntactic categories that comprise the root of an X-bar structure including NP, VP, AP, PP, and AdvP.
phrase structure (PS) rules
Principles of grammar that specify the constituency of syntactic categories and of phrase structure trees: e.g., NP → Det N – , or VP → V– NP in the X-bar schema.
