Vocabulary and Terminology Chapter 5: Syntax

Question 1

Adjunct

Answer 1

A linguistic expression whose occurrence in a sentence is optional; also called a modifier

Question 2

Adverb

Answer 2

The name of a lexical category and syntactic category that consists of expressions such as quickly, well, furiously, etc.

Question 3

Agreement

Answer 3

The phenomenon by which certain expressions in a sentence must be inflectionally marked for the same person, number, gender, etc

Question 4

Ambiguity

Answer 4

The phenomenon by which a single linguistic form can be the from of more than one distinct linguistic expression.

Question 5

Argument

Answer 5

A linguistic expression that must occur in a sentence if some other expression occurs in that sentence as well.

Question 6

Cleft

Answer 6

A type of sentence that has the general form

Question 7

Count nouns

Answer 7

A noun that can be counted and pluralized

Question 8

Determiners

Answer 8

The name of a lexical category and a syntactic category that consists of expression such as the, a, this, all, etc.

Question 9

Ditransitive Verb

Answer 9

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.

Question 10

Grammatical

Answer 10

A term used to describe a sentence that is in accordance with descriptive grammatical rules of some language, especially syntactic rules.

Question 11

Grammatical judgment

Answer 11

An instance of a native speaker of some language deciding whether some string of words corresponds to a syntactically well-formed or grammatical phrasal expression in their native language.

Question 12

Intransitive verbs

Answer 12

The name for the set of lexical expressions whose syntactic category is verb phrase

Question 13

Lexical ambiguity

Answer 13

The phenomenon where a single word is the form of two or more distinct linguistic expressions that differ in meaning or syntactic properties.

Question 14

Lexical expressions

Answer 14

A linguistic expression that has to be listed in the mental lexicon, e.g, single-word expressions and idioms.

Question 15

Lexicon

Answer 15

A mental repository of linguistic information about words and other lexical expressions, including their form and meaning and their morphological, and syntactic properties.

Question 16

Linguistic expression

Answer 16

A piece of language with a form, a meaning, and syntactic properties.

Question 17

Mass nouns

Answer 17

A noun that can not be counted and can not be pluralized normally.

Question 18

Nouns

Answer 18

The name given of a lexical category and a syntactic category.

Question 19

Phrasal expressions

Answer 19

A linguistic expression that results from syntactic combination of smaller expressions. A multi-word linguistic expression.

Question 20

Phrase structure rules

Answer 20

A recipe for syntactically combining expressions of certain syntactic categories.

Question 21

Phrase structure tree

Answer 21

A visual representation of how phrases are constructed within a descriptive grammar, given the lexicon and the phrase structure rules.

Question 22

Prepositions

Answer 22

The name of a lexical category and a syntactic category that consists of expressions such as of, as, in, for, with, etc.

Question 23

Prepositional phrase

Answer 23

The name of a syntactic category that consists of those expressions that contain a preposition and a noun phrase.

Question 24

Principle of compositionality

Answer 24

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.

Question 25

pro-form

Answer 25

A word that can replace a syntactic constituent.

Question 26

semantics

Answer 26

The study of linguistic meaning.

Question 27

Sentence

Answer 27

A syntactical category that consists of all phrasal expressions that can grammatically occur.

Question 28

Sentential Complement Verb

Answer 28

The name of a syntactic category that consists of those expressions that if combined with a sentence to their right result in a verb phrase; a verb that needs a sentence as its complement.

Question 29

Structural ambiguity

Answer 29

The phenomenon where a single string of words is the form of more than one distinct phrasal expression.

Question 30

Substitution

Answer 30

In syntax, a constituency test that involves replacing a constituent with a single word, such as a pro-form.

Question 31

Syntactic categories

Answer 31

A group of expressions that have very similar syntactic properties.

Question 32

Syntactic constituent

Answer 32

A group of linguistic expressions that function as a syntactic unit within some larger expression; the smaller expressions out of which some larger phrasal expression was constructed in accordance with the phrase structure rules.

Question 33

Syntactic distribution

Answer 33

Refers to the set of syntactic environments in which an expression can occur.

Question 34

Syntactic properties

Answer 34

Properties of linguistic expressions that dictate how they can syntactically combine with other expressions, namely word order and co-occurrence properties.

Question 35

Syntax

Answer 35

A component of mental grammar that deals with constructing phrasal expressions out of smaller expressions.

Question 36

Topicalization

Answer 36

A syntactic process by which a syntactic constituent occurs at the beginning of a sentence in order to highlight the topic under discussion.

Question 37

Transitive verbs

Answer 37

The name of a syntactic category that consists of those expressions that if combined with an expression of category noun phrase to their result in a verb phrase.

Question 38

Ungrammatical

Answer 38

Not in accordance with the descriptive grammatical rules of some language, especially syntactic rules.

Question 39

Verb phrase

Answer 39

The name of a syntactic category that consists of all expressions that, if combined with a noun phrase to their left, result in a sentence.

Question 40

Word order

Answer 40

The linear order in which words can occur in some phrasal expression. Also, the set of syntactic properties of expressions that dictates how they can be ordered with respect to other expressions.