Linguistics Syntax

lexical ambiguity

word has multiple possible meanings in a sentence

structural ambiguity

phrase has multiple meanings in a sentence

how phrases interact

determines meaning of a sentence

word classes=

parts of speech=syntactic categories

lexical categories

N, V, adj, adv

phrasal categories

NP, VP, PP

morphological frame

position of a word with respect to bound morphemes (e.g. plural morpheme -s to book(s))

syntactic frame

position of a word with respect to other classes of words (e.g. the big book (N))

constituency tests

1. When? What? Where? Who?

2. Sub: Pronouns (they), Proverbs (do, have, be), Proadverbs (here, then, there)

3. Movement: It was X that Y; X is what Y

Determiners

articles, demonstratives (this/that), possessives (his/her), quantifiers (each, every)

auxiliary verbs

shall, must, have, should, ought, do, can

conjunctions

join words/phrases of the same category