“I don't want to talk grammar. I want to talk like a lady in a

flower shop.” (Eliza Doolitle)

SYNTAX

A noun is a name of anything

A school, a garden, kites or kings.

Adjectives tell the kind of noun,

As great, small, pretty, white or brown

Instead of a noun the pronoun stands,

As his head, her face, your arm, my

hand.

Verbs tell of something being done,

To read, count, carry, laugh or run.

How things are done the adverbs tell,

As slowly, quickly, ill or well.

Conjunctions join the words together

As men or women, wind and weather.

The preposition stands before the noun

As in or through the door.

The interjection shows surprise as

Wow! How pretty! Oh, how wise!

Three little words you often see

Are articles a, an and the

The whole are English Parts of Speech.

Which reading, writing, speaking teach.

Descriptive Linguistics: What IS IT?

Franz Boas

1858-1942 Edward Sapir

1884-1939

What is Behaviorism?

"Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own

specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take

any one at random and train him to become any type of

specialist I might select -- doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-

chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his

talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race

of his ancestors."

John Watson, Behaviorism, 1930

Noam Chomsky

1928 -

The Concept of Language

Chomsky’s Trees

S is a sentence.

NP is a noun phrase, and in this case, it has only a noun, “John”

VP is a verb phrase “lost his pants”, which, in its turn, is subdivided

into the V (verb) “lost” and an NP (noun phrase) “his pants”. This

noun phrase has a DET, determiner, the pronoun “his”, and the N

(noun) “pants.”

Categories of Nouns

Nouns can be:

Singular or plural (apple – apples)

Common – proper (a girl – Mary; a lake – Lake Arrowhead)

Concrete – abstract ( a chair – love, animosity)

Count – non-count ( boy/s; child/ren – hair, furniture, water)

“fewer” is used for count nouns; “less” for non-count

A noun phrase (NP) must contain a noun, but other elements

(determiners, adjectives) are optional. Consider the following NP

where optional elements are in parenthesis.

(A beautiful) view (Six ripe) apples

WHAT IS A PREDICATE?

A Predicate’s function in a sentence is to show what

happens to the subject. It may consist of a verb, but not

necessarily. Consider the sentences:

I have taken my lunch. (the predicate is the verb “take” in

Present Perfect Tense)

Jogging is healthy. (the predicate is: is healthy, consisting

of the adjective “healthy” and the linking verb “be”)

The truth can hurt. (the predicate is can hurt ; that is 2 verbs)

Knowledge is power. (the predicate is is power, consisting

of the noun “power “ and the linking verb “be”)

A Predicate can include MORE than just a verb!

“What can I say? I was an English major.”

Categories of Verbs

Verbs can be:

Main ( conveying the meaning: I usually eat lunch at work.;

Auxiliary ( forming tenses: I have eaten lunch;

Modal (conveying the attitude of the speaker: You must do it!

Most verbs are transitive, that is conveying the action to

the object (take a test; drink water; follow rules), but some are

intransitive because they have no object to follow (sleep, die)

Consider the following VP (verb phrases) with optional elements

in parenthesis:

Went (to school) Woke up (early)

Clauses

A syntactic phrase made up of at least an NP (the subject) and

a VP (the predicate) is called a clause. Clauses can be:

Independent: not contained inside another constituent; for

example:

Mary missed school today.

Subordinate: contained inside another constituent; for

example:

I know that Mary missed school today.

Universal Grammar: How Universal Is It?

Subject-Verb-Object (ex.: John bought the book) will be

rendered as John the book bought in Japanese because in

this language the verb comes after the object.

I often go there in French, the sentence will become

I go often there.

Ambiguity

Renoir enjoyed painting his models nude.

My son has grown another foot.

Visiting relatives can be boring.

Vegetarians don't know how good meat tastes.

I saw the man with the binoculars.

The summary of information contains totals of the number of

students broken down by sex, marital status, and age.

Pinker on Chomsky