Syntax

Syntax

Grammatical arrangement of words in a sentence, their connections and dependencies

Major classes

1. Nouns
2. Verbs
3. Adjectives
4. Adverbs

Nouns

1. Person, place, thing
2. Can be inflected for case and number
3. May be preceded by article or adjective, may be subject/object

Verbs

1. Act, event, emotion, state
2. Inflected for person, number, tense, aspect
3. Predicate, usually follows subject, may precede object, may be modified by adverb

Adjectives

1. Modify/describe nouns
2. Inflected for comparison
3. Attribute adjectives (before noun), predicate adjectives (modify subject)

Adverbs

1. Modify
2. No inflections
3. Sentence adverbs (modify sentences), manner adverbs (modify verbs), degree adverbs (modify adjectives, adverbs, prepositions)

Minor classes

1. Pronouns
2. Prepositions
3. Auxiliaries
4. Determiners
5. Conjunctions

Pronouns

1. Words that substitute for nouns
2. Can be inflected for case
3. No co-occurence with determiners and adjectives

Prepositions

1. Indicate relationship between noun and some other element in sentence
2. Followed immediately or closely by noun (syntactic)

Auxiliaries

1. Help add meaning to verbs
2. Precede lexical verbs, can invert to form questions

Determiners

1. Words that determine nouns
2. Preceed nouns

some, my, one

Conjunctions

1. Conjoin grammatically equivalent elements

Clause

Group of words with at least a subject-verb pair

Phrase

Group of words functioning as a unit in respect to grammatical process

Co-ordinating conjunction

Connects sentences that could stand alone

Subordinating conjunction

Connects sentences that couldn’t stand alone

Phrase/syntactic constituent

* Structural unit in syntax
* Can be grouped into larger phrases
* Each phrase has a head

Noun phrase (NP)

(det) + (adj) + N + (PP/S) (pronoun can replace noun)

\

Adverb phrase (AdvP)

(deg) + Adv

Prepositional phrase (PP)

P + NP

Adjectival phrase (AP)

(AdvP) + A

Verb phrase (VP)

(aux) + V + (NP) + (PP) + (DC)

Complementiser phrase (CP)

C + S

Subject

1. Doer of action
2. Case marking visible with pronouns (I, she)
3. Follows SVO order

Object

1. Case marking visible with pronouns (him, her)
2. Follows SVO order
3. Passivisation (object to subject)

Adverbials

1. Provide info about circumstance of the action (time, location, manner)

Predicate

1. Verb/verb phrase
2. Obligatoriness

Complement

1. Add to meaning of subject or object
2. Obligatory