week 1- syntax 1

Question 1

what is pedagogical grammar?

Answer 1

Grammatical analysis and instruction designed for second-language students.
Explains how to form sentences and helps people to build grammatical structure.
Not used often.

Question 2

what is theoretical grammar?

Answer 2

derive theory of how certain patterns came about

Question 3

what is prescriptive grammar?

Answer 3

focuses on the distinction between what some people do with language and what they ought to do with it. Tells people what they should and shouldn’t do. Don’t use much.

Question 4

what is descriptive grammar?

Answer 4

find out how people use language and how we describe it. very important.

Question 5

what is wide meaning?

Answer 5

covers all patterns, rules and regularities of language. includes phonetics, phonology, morphology etc.

Question 6

what is narrow meaning?

Answer 6

only about the structure. above word level.

Question 7

What might a theory of sentence structure look like?

Answer 7

D= determiner 
N= noun 
V= verb 
VP= verb phrase 
NP= noun phrase 
S= sentence 

The cat sleeps
- given these rules: 
VP = V 
NP = Det + N 
S = NP + VP

• the S is the largest bit of the sentence. S branches to NP and VP.
  NP branches to D and N.
  VP branches to V.

Question 8

what is a sentence?

How may this definition vary depending on what you’re investigating?

Answer 8

Oxford definition:
A set of words that is complete in itself, typically containing a subject and predicate, conveying a statement, question, exclamation, or command, and consisting of a main clause and sometimes one or more subordinate clauses.

Depends on what you are interested in investigating •  in syntactic theory: typically the largest unit over which rules of syntax operate (e.g. as we will see later: things that fit into a tree structure)

Question 9

what is the predicate?

Answer 9

the bit that comes after the subject.

Question 10

what are the open word classes?

Answer 10

N- Noun (boy, table, school, dog, roughness, earthquake, love, Bob)
PN- Proper noun (Bob, Cardiff) works like a N  
V- Verb (go, talk, be, have)
A- Adjective (large, happy, smelly)
Adv- Adverb (slowly, yesterday, really)

Question 11

what are the closed word classes?

Answer 11

Pro- Pronoun (she, herself, they, it, you) works like a N
D- Determiner (a, the, this, these) incl. possessive pronouns (my, your, our, her)
Deg- Degree adverb (too, so, very, more, quite) sometimes: ‘particle’
Aux- Auxiliary verb (will, can, may, must, should, could)
Con- Conjunction (and, or, but)
P- Preposition (at 4.00, on the table, with a knife)*
C- Complementiser (that, whether, if, since, because)

Question 12

what is the infinitive ‘to’

Answer 12

Infinitive ‘to’ is not a preposition, but part of the verb

Question 13

How do we identify meaning–based parts of speech?

Answer 13

•  nouns: things
•  verbs: actions
•  adjectives: attributes of nouns
•  adverbs: attributes of verbs
•  prepositions: indicating location in space/time

Question 14

How do we identify inflection type in parts of speech?

Answer 14

•  nouns: plural -s
•  verbs: past tense –ed / 3rd person sing. –s
•  adjectives: comparative –er / -est
•  adverbs: derived from adjectives with –ly
•  prepositions: no inflection possible

Question 15

How do we identify distribution in parts of speech?

Answer 15

•  nouns: with a determiner (the bus)
•  verbs: with an auxiliary (can sing)
•  adjectives: with a degree word (very rich)
•  adverbs: with a verb (breathe slowly)