Week 9: Morphology and Syntax

Question 1

In compound nouns, the main noun (or head) is found where?

Answer 1

To the right (it is always the rightmost word)

Question 2

How are compounds formed?

Answer 2

by joining two or more words

Question 3

The part of a compound that carries the basic information is called what? What two things does the head determine?

Answer 3

• The head

- The broad meaning and grammatical category of the compound

Question 4

Give an example of structural ambiguity

Answer 4

yellow car key (it can mean that the key is yellow or the car is yellow)

Question 5

Define syntax

Answer 5

a traditional term for the study of the rules governing the the way words are combined to form sentences in a language

Question 6

How are ungrammatical sentences graphically represented?

Answer 6

with a star (*)

Question 7

What’s the difference between descriptive and prescriptive grammar?

Answer 7

• descriptive grammar is a study of a language, its structure, and its rules as they are used in daily life by its speakers
• prescriptive grammar specifies how a language and its grammar rules should be used

Question 8

What is generative grammar?

Answer 8

grammar (the set of language rules) that indicates the structure and interpretation of sentences that native speakers of a language accept as belonging to their language.

Question 9

Our “tacit knowledge” (I-language) includes not only knowledge of words and sounds, but also knowledge of a finite number of rules to combine them. What are these rules described as? What are they?

Answer 9

• Recursive - they generate an infinite number of sentences, giving human languages their creative aspect
• They are the principles and parameters of Universal Grammar, which form our I-language

Question 10

What is a constituent?

Answer 10

A group of words that function together as a unit

Question 11

How do the different elements of a sentence (in terms of constituents) fit together?

Answer 11

Words > Phrases > Clauses > Sentence

Question 12

What are the 7 syntactic categories?

Answer 12

• verbs
• nouns
• determiners
• adjectives
• adverbs
• prepositions
• conjunctions

Question 13

What are the four lexical categories (in terms of Syntactic categories)?

Answer 13

• Verbs
• Nouns
• Adjectives
• Adverbs

Question 14

What are the two functional categories (in terms of syntactic categories)?

Answer 14

• Determiners

- Conjunctions

Question 15

Are prepositions a functional or lexical category?

Answer 15

• There is some debate as some say one and some say the other (so basically both)

Question 16

How do you represent constituents? (2 ways)

Answer 16

• With square brackets

- With a tree structure

Question 17

What are the 6 constituency tests and how do you apply them?

Answer 17

• Stand alone test - Form a question (the answer to which is a constituent of a given sentence)
• Substitution test - Substitute a constituent in a given sentence with a pronoun or an adverb and get a grammatical sentence
• Movement - move a constituent to another position in the sentence and get a grammatical sentence
• Co-ordination - Join a constituent with another (new) phrase with the same grammatical category using the conjunction AND, OR, BUT
• Ellipsis - Eliminate the constituent from the sentence to obtain a grammatical sentence
• Clefting - involves restructuring the sentence

Question 18

What are the three ways to apply the substitution test to constituents?

Answer 18

• a pronoun (NP) replaces another Noun Phrase
• an adverb (Adv) replaces a Prepositional Phrase (PP) or a Noun Phrase
• Do so/Do it replaces a Verb Phrase (VP)

Question 19

What are the two ways to apply the clefting test (in terms of constituents)?

Answer 19

• It-clefting - it’s…[constituent] that… [rest of sentence]
• Pseudo-clefting - what/who… [rest of sentence] is… [constituent]

Question 20

Not all constituency test may give the same result. How do you ensure you are accurate?

Answer 20

• You need at least three tests with the same result to confirm