Introduction to Syntax

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Introduction to Syntax

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Syntax

• Syntax is a part o linguistic study that
  determines how words or phrases put together
  to form a sentence.
• Syntactic rules/grammar account for the
  grammaticality/correctness of sentences, and
  the ordering of words and morphemes.

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1. I trying to help him the best I can do.
2. I wish I was the president of Indonesia
3. They are play football in the school yard.
4. This morning I see a horrible accident.
5. The book read the man.
6. John hopes to run/running
7. He is taller than I/ He is taller than me

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Syntax

• Syntax involves
• our knowledge of structural ambiguity
• our knowledge that sentences may be paraphrases
  of each other
• our knowledge of the grammatical function of each
  part of a sentence, that is, of the grammatical
  relations.

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Syntax

• It is also concerned with speakers' ability to
  produce and understand an infinite set of
  possible sentences.
• The sentence is regarded the highest-ranking unit
  of grammar, and therefore that the purpose of a
  grammatical description is to define, making use
  of whatever descriptive apparatus that may be
  necessary (rules, categories, etc).

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Sentence
Clause
Phrase/Group
Grammatical Units and Scale
Word
Morpheme
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• 8 kinds of parts of speechs
• Noun
• verb
• Pronoun
• Adverb
• Adjective
• Preposition
• Conjuction
• Articles/determiners

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Sentence Structure

• One aspect of the syntactic structure of
  sentences is the division of a sentence into
  phrases, and those phrases into further phrases,
  and so forth. Another aspect of the syntactic
  structure of a sentence is "movement" relations
  that hold between one syntactic position in a
  sentence and another.

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Constituents

• A unit forming part of a larger structure
• Chalker and Weiner 1998
• Although the term string is often used
  technically to refer to sequences of words,
  sentences are not merely strings of words in a
  permissible order and making sense.
• They are structured into successive components,
  consisting of single words or groups of words.
  These groups and single words are called
  constituents (i.e. structural units), and when
  they are considered as part of the successive
  unraveling of a sentence, they are known as its
  immediate constituents.

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Constituents

• When we consider sentence My friend came home
  late last night, we find out that it consists of
  seven word arranged in a particular order.
• In syntax, the seven words in this model
  sentence are its ultimate constituents. This
  sentence and in general any sentence of the
  language may be represented as a particular
  arrangement of the ultimate constituents, which
  are the minimal grammatical elements, of which
  the sentence is composed.
• Every sentence has therefore what we will refer
  to as a linear structure. The small units are
  known as its immediate constituents.

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Immediate Constituent Analysis

• One of the parts which a linguist unit is
  immediately divisible, by a process of immediate
  constituent analysis. IC Chalker and Weiner
• Formal accounts of syntax are based on
  establishing the basic constituents, namely,
  categories, from which word strings are formed.
  Sentences are regarded as hierarchies of
  interlocking smaller units, or constituents.
  After a sentence is cut into its constituent
  elements, the two parts that are yielded are
  called immediate constituents. Then, we get the
  smallest grammatical unit obtained through the
  division, or segmentation, which is seen as the
  ultimate constituent.

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• The segmentation of the sentence up into its
  immediate constituents by using binary cuttings
  until its ultimate constituents are obtained is
  an important approach to the realization of the
  nature of language, called Immediate Constituent
  Analysis (IC Analysis). The analysis can be
  carried out in ways of tree diagrams, bracketing
  or any other. For example
• (1) Poor John ran out.

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Immediate Constituent Analysis
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construction

• A construction is a relationship between
  constituents. Constructions are divided into two
  types endocentric constructions and exocentric
  constructions.
• Endocentric construction is one whose
  distribution is functionally equivalent to that
  of one or more of its constituents. A word or a
  group of words acts as a definable center or
  head.
• Exocentric construction refers to a group of
  syntactically related words where none of the
  words is functionally equivalent to the group as
  a whole. There is no definable center or head
  inside the group.

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Endocentric Construction

• Some types of phrase contain a HEAD word and have
  the same formal function in their clause as the
  single head would
• Too dreadful
• Rather more surprisingly
• She who must be obeyed

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Exocentric Construction

• Containing no element that is functionally
  equivalent to the whole structure (non-headed or
  unheaded)
• Some phrases are always exocentric
• The boy stood on the burning deck.
• Who was the man in the iron mask?
• A basic English sentence (consisting of subject
  and predicate) is always exocentric, since
  neither part can stand for the whole
• The boy / stood on the burning deck.

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Syntactic Rules

• Three universal basic syntactic rules
• Linear order of constituents
• Categorization of constituents
• Grouping of constituents into constituent
  structures

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Sentence Types

• Sentences in any language are constructed from a
  rather small set of basic structural patterns and
  through certain processes involving the expansion
  or transformation of these basic patterns.
• When we consider sentence types from another
  perspective, it can be shown that each of the
  longer sentences of a language (and these are in
  the majority usually) is structured in the same
  way as one of a relatively small number of short
  sentences which are impossible to reduce to a
  short form.
• These short sentences have the basic sentence
  types. There are different ways of dealing with
  sentence types.

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Sentence Types

• The structure of every sentence is a lesson in
  logic.
• John Stuart Mill
• Simple Sentence
• Coordinate Sentence
• Complex Sentence

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Simple Sentence

• A simple sentence contains only one clause with a
  single verb group.
• Dora yelled.
• Christ resembled his father.
• Jack and Jill love each other.
• A runner from Ethiopia won the New York
  marathon this year.
• The students should have been working on the term
  paper.

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Coordinate Sentence(Compound Sentence)

• A coordinate sentence has two clauses conjoined
  into one by a coordinating conjunction. (and,
  but, or). They hold equal status.
• Christ resembled his father, but his
  brother resembled his mother.
• Mark loves Dora, and she feels it.

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Complex Sentence

• A complex sentence is composed of two clauses
  with one holding main status (matrix clause) and
  the other incorporated or embedded into it
  (embedded clause), which is often introduced by a
  subordinator (who, that, though, when, because,
  as, since, although)
• Mark denied that Dora yelled.
• The murderer escaped when the police arrived at
  the scene.

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Syntactic Function

• The traditional approach to syntactic function
  identifies constituents of the sentence, states
  the part of speech each word belongs to,
  describes the inflexion involved, and explains
  the relationship each word related to the others.
  
• According to its relation to other constituents,
  a constituent may serve certain syntactic
  function in a clause.

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Constituency and Hierarchy

• A constituency refers to the whole body of a
  sentence which is made up of lexical items
  (constituents) that are hierarchically ordered
  with respect to each other

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Constituency and Hierarchy diagram

• A B C D E

• This diagram formally reads as
• B and C are constituents of A
• D and E are constituents of C.
• D and E are not constituents of B as they are not
  linked to B.

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Tree Diagrams

• Who climbs the Grammar-Tree distinctly knows
• Where Noun and Verb and Participle grows.
• John Dryden
• In describing the constituent of a structure, a
  tree diagram is employed as a tool to link
  members of a structure.

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I think that I shall never seeA poem lovely as
a tree Joyce Kilmer
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Phrase Structure Rule

• A rule which states that a phrase of a specific
  category. E.g. a rule NPVP,
• S must consist of a NP followed by VP
• Phrase Marker a string of elements
• Phrase structure tree a tree diagram which shows
  the division of a form into successively smaller
  constituents and labels each as belonging to one
  or more categories
• Also labelled bracketing boys play well

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Tree Diagrams and Phrase-Markers

• Phrase-markers can be related to each other by
  dominance and precedence.
• Dominance
• 1. VP node dominates all the other nodes.
• 2. VP node immediately dominates the nodes
  labeled V and PP.

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Tree Diagrams and Phrase-Markers

• Precedence
• 1. V node precedes the nodes labeled PP, P, NP,
  det, and N as well as in, the and house.
• 2. V node immediately precedes the PP, P and in.

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Grammatical Categories Number and Gender

• Number is a grammatical category for the analysis
  of such contrasts as singular and plural of
  certain word classes. In English, number is a
  feature of nouns and verbs.
• Gender demonstrates such contrasts as "masculine,
  feminine, and neuter", and "animate inanimate",
  etc. for the analysis of certain word classes. In
  most languages, grammatical gender has little to
  do with the biological sex. For instance, in
  French, the moon, which has nothing to do with
  the biological sex, is grammatically feminine.

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Case

• Inflectional category, basically of nouns, which
  typically marks their role in relation to other
  parts of the sentence.
• The case category is often used in the analysis
  of word classes to identify the syntactic
  relationship between words in a sentence.

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Tense and Aspect

• Inflectional category whose basic role is to
  indicate the time of an event etc. in relation to
  the moment of speaking
• Divided notionally present, past, future
• Inflectional distinction past , present loved,
  love
• Verbal categories that distinguish the status of
  events, etc. in relation to specific period of
  time, as opposed to their simple location in the
  present, past, or future I am reading your paperI
  have read your pap

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Chomskyan Syntax

• Syntax is seen to be a fundamental principle for
  encoding and decoding meaning and is the part of
  grammar shared by speakers and listeners in
  communication. In 1957, the American linguist
  Chomsky proposed the transformational-generative
  grammar (TG), thus providing a model for the
  description of human languages. The goal of TG is
  to find out a system of rules to account for the
  linguistic competence of native speakers of a
  language to form grammatical sentences.

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Chomskyan Syntax

• It is called "transformational-generative"
  grammar because it attempts to do two things
• to provide the rules that can be used to generate
  grammatical sentences
• how basic sentences can be transformed into
  either synonymous phrases or more complex
  sentences.

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Deep Structure and Surface Structure

• Abstract syntactic representation posited to
  explain the way in which actual sentences are
  interpreted
• Visiting aunts can be boring
• John is eager to please
• John is easy to please
• Flying planes can be dangerous

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• Surface structure is the actually produced
  structure.
• directly observable actual form of sentences as
  they are used in communication

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• The relationship between deep structure and
  surface structure is that of transformation.
  Since the relationship is usually a complicated
  one, we can best use transformational rules in
  the total process of relating deep structure to
  surface structures.

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• Thanks for your patience