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LIN 1310BIntroduction to Linguistics

Prof: Nikolay SlavkovTA: Qinghua Tang

CLASS 11, Feb 9, 2007

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Today• Announcements and Reminders:

-Start reading chapter 5.-DGDs resume as of next week (Feb 13)

• Today’s Lecture: - Start Syntax- Start going over Test 1

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Syntax

• Syntax is the study of sentence structure.• It examines the rules for sentence

formation, i.e. how words are combined.• It seeks to find out why certain sentences

are grammatical and others ungrammatical.• It tries to explain why and how we create an

infinite number of grammatical utterances with a finite number of resources.

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Key terms in syntactic theory

• lexicon• computational system• merge• move• Universal Grammar (UG)• transformations

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Syntax

• One of the main issues syntax deals with is word order. But not necessarily only linear word order.

• Syntactic structure is not linear – i.e. it does not consist of a string of words put together in one line or on one level.

• Syntactic structure is hierarchical and works at more than one level; it consists of groups of words or phrases that act like units.

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Examples

Consider the following data:I wore these boots last week.I wore them last week. them = these boots ‘these boots’ acts as a unit ‘last week’ also seems to be a unit intuitively but ‘boots last’ does not seem to be a unit.

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ExamplesCompare these data:John went to the store. Mary did so too. did so = went to the store ‘went to the store’ is a unit. Mary went there. there=to the store ‘to the store’ is a unitMary went to itit=the store=> ‘the store’ is a unit

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Examples

Compare these data:John went to the store on Rideau street to buy eggs. Mary did so too. did so = went to the store on Rideau street to buy eggs‘went to the store on Rideau street to buy eggs’ is a

unit.

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Constituents

• The above examples illustrate that syntactic structure is not linear. It is organized in units, called constituents, which combine with one another.

• Constituents can be smaller or bigger (e.g. two words vs. three words, etc.)

• A larger constituent can contain several smaller constituents.

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Syntactic trees

• Because syntax structure is not linear, we use syntactic trees to analyse sentences.

• A syntactic tree has a hierarchical structure combining the different constituents at different levels.

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Example of a syntactic tree

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Syntactic categories

• Before we get to analysing constituents and different levels of structure, and before we learn how to build syntactic trees, we have to consider the different syntactic categories (parts of speech) first. We have to be able to identify syntactic categories.

• Syntactic categories can be divided into lexical categories and non-lexical or functional categories.

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Syntactic categories

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Determining syntactic categories

• Three different criteria can be used to determine reliably a syntactic category:

1) Meaning2) Inflection3) Distribution

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1) Meaning

Nouns: name entities –objects (book) –people (Mary)

Verbs: designate –actions (eat) –sensations (feel)–states (be, seem)

Adjectives: designate properties and attributes of what nouns name (heavy book)

Adverbs: Denote properties and attributes of what verbs designate (eat quickly) Adverbs tell us ‘how, why, where, when’.

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However…

• Meaning alone is not always enough to determine the word category.

e.g. difficulty, truth, likelihoodbrush, run, work, etc…like vs. fond

We can’t determine if these are nouns or verbs based only on the meaning of the word in isolation.

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2) Inflection

• Inflection can sometimes help determine the word category.

e.g. nouns take plural –sverbs take –ing, ed, -s,adjectives take –er, -est.

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However…

• Inflection alone is not always reliablee.g. intelligent, beautiful (*-er *-est)

bravery, knowledge, moisture (* pl -s)overreacting (-ing derivational or

inflectional???)

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3) Distribution

• Nouns occur with a determiner• Verbs occur with an auxiliary• Adjectives occur with a degree wordE.g. a car, the book

has gone, will stayvery beautiful, so lucky

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However…

• Distribution alone is not enough to determine the category unambiguously

E.g. degree words can occur not only with adjectives, but also with adverbs (very quick, very quickly)

E.g. determiners don’t always appear next to nouns: an adjective may intervene (a quick car).