Syntax Vocab 40 Flashcards
syntax
concerned with rules of sentence structure
grammar
(linguistic definition)
Rules one needs to follow in order to use and understand language. Phonological, morphological, syntactic, sematic information
grammar
(scientific definition)
I set of rules in a physical book in which
one needs to obey in order to use language correctly.
grammar book
usually consulted (rather than read) if
one is not sure about how to use a particular word or expression. In other words,
the grammar book contains a description of the system of rules.
constituents
syntactic units
phrases
specific term for constituents
pronominalisation
substitution of a constituent by a
pronoun
wh-pronoun
answers who, what, where, when
pro-form
pronoun or prophrase
movement
test for constituency in which if a string of words can be
moved to other sentential positions, it is proof of the string’s being a constituent.
coordination test
Test for constituency in which only constituents that can be coordinated by the coordinating conjunction “and”.
gapping
Constituency test in which if the tag question leaves a gap, we could insert the missing string.
sentence-fragment test
When you apply this test, you’re asking whether the string of words in question can stand on its own.
structural ambiguity
In cases in which different interpretations arise through
different sentence structures assigned to the same strings of words.
noun phrases
(NP) phrases headed by a noun
head
most important element of a phrase
prepositional phrase
(PP) phrase headed by preposition
adjective phrase
(AP) phrase headed by adjective
verb phrase
(VP) phrase headed by verb
adverb phrase
(AVP) phrase headed by adverb
projections
Syntacticians say that the head projects its properties onto the phrase as a whole (which is also the reason
why phrases are often called projections of their head).
word-classes
(syntactic categories, parts-of-speech, or lexical categories) adjectives, nouns, verbs, prepositions, pronouns etc.
determiners
subclasses such as definite and in-definite articles, possessives and demonstratives.
phrase structure rules
grammar used to generate sentences
subordinate clauses
sentences inside sentences
clause
syntactic unit that consists of a verb phrase and its subject.
sentences
the largest syntactic units and they are made up of one or more clauses
matrix clause
a superordinate clause
main clause
two clauses that can stand on their own
predicate
In ancient grammar ‘predicate’ refers to everything in a sentence apart from the subject. School grammars use ‘predicate’ to refer to auxiliary and main verbs in a sentence.
subject verb agreement
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 (ex: sleep, laugh)
ditransitive verbs
verbs that can take two objects, like give, or show
direct object
One of the objects denotes an entity that
undergoes the action or process denoted by the verb.
indirect object
other object denotes the goal, the recipient
or the beneficiary of the event denoted by the verb.
adverbial
modifiers of the clause or the verb phrase
complement
general term used in linguistics for such semantically and structurally highly dependent sister constituents of heads
predicative complements
the notion of ‘object’ does not really
fit, and the complements of verbs
