Syntax- Linguistics

syntax

how words in a sentence are combined to give
meaning

sentences can have bizarre meaning and still be

grammatically correct

hierarchy of syntax

sentence

phrase

word

morpheme

phoneme

Determiners- DET

the, a, my, those, every, many. several, few

Nouns N

person, place, thing

Pronouns PRO

he, we, she,it,they, me

Adjectives ADJ

describing a noun— lazy, awesome, big, small

main verbs

eat, sleep, discover

intransitive verbs

does not require a noun phrase

transitive verbs

requires a NP

ditransitive verbs

require two noun phrases

auxillary verbs

helping verbs— will rain, was running

adverbs

describing verbs- quickly

prepositions

in, on, about, with, at, to

conjunctions

and, but, or, yet

open class words

parts of speech gaining new words

closed class words

cannot add on

phrases

A group of one or more words that function together in a

meaningful way

• Phrases combine to form sentences

what makes up a phrase

head +modifier

head- gives the phrase its name

modifier- adds semantic information

the expensive car

modifier/DET

modifier/ DET

head/N

noun phrase

simplest contains only a noun

the purple book

DET. ADJ. N

verb phrase

simplest verb phrase only verb

*adverbs can be on either side*

quickly left

ADV. V

verbs can be modified by an infinite amount of PP’s

frequently got his buckets from the store for a dollar

prepositional phrase format

PP- P NP

Constituents

certain groups of words that are
smaller than the entire sentence and function as a unit

The cat slept

the cat slept

arguments

an expression that is required for
the grammar of the sentence

adjuncts

an expression that, if omitted,
would not affect the grammar of the sentence

Sally had a good day yesterday

yesterday is an adjunct

Yesterday was a great day

Yesterday is an argument

ambiguity

The property of

having two or more

meanings

lexical ambiguity

semantic ambiguity—- The priest married my sister

structural ambiguity

syntactic structure can have different meanings

Recursion

Embedding of a structure within another structure of the same type

Tracy asked if [Noelle said [Carey taught the first class]].

Recursion in action

Generativity (productivity)

The ability to produce sentences never said before , and to
understand sentences never heard before