Syntax, phrase structure, grammatical relations

syntax

refers to the rules for putting sentences together

requirements of a sentence

Intonation [can be said in single utterance], Meaning [expresses a single situation], Orthography (written only) [capital letters etc]

productivity

we can easily create and understand sentences we have never heard before

constituents

units of syntactic structure that are smaller than a sentence

can be groups of words and words

a syntactic test , question test

answers to questions normally consist of valid constituents

phrase

technical term for any constituent consisting of 1 or more words

smallest syntactic constituent above level of word

can be embedded w/in other phrases

behaves as a single unit

how are phrases labelled

according to the head

a head

carries the core lexical content of the phrase

only obligatory element

dependants

everything in a phrase which is not the head

N.O depends on type of phrase

Properties of phrases

Distribution, substitution, mobility

distribution

same sequence of constituents shows up various times in different contexts referencing the same thing

Substitution

Can substitute a phrase for a single word and meaning stays relatively the same

Mobility

if a sequence of constituents ‘moves around’ together this sequence Test: rearranging sentence whilst describing the same situation

phrase structure: S →

NP VP

VP→

V(NP)(PP)

NP→

(Det)(AdjP)* N(PP)

AdjP→

(adv)Adj

PP→

Prep NP

X→

X conj X

simple sentence

Contains 1 verb and expresses 1 action, event or state (1 clause)

complex sentence

combines 2 or more actions, events or states (more than one clause)

can be joined by a conjunction

Clauses

consists of a verb an its arguments

arguments

participants required by the verb to make sense

categorisation

we categorise groups of situations as being same type of event and participants- simplify things

Verbs Valence

stored in lexicon, verbs require a certain number of arguments

Subject (what is it usually)

Likely to be the doer or performer of an action

in control of the action

human experiencer of a mental process

what are encoded as subjects

A participant that is volitional and controls the action

living entity that experiences a mental proccess

Transitivity

describes number of NP’s in a clause/sentence

usually dictated by valence of the verb

1st argument is the subject 2nd is the object

subject is obligatory, object is only present if the verbs

intransitive clause

one 1 NP

transitive clause

2 NP’s

Ditransitive clause

3 NP’s

Objects

fully physically affected or moved by the action

perceived or experienced

a participant that is the recipient of an action or similar is encoded as an indirect object

Ways to distinguish subjects and objects

• constituent order

• case marking

• verbal marking

constituent order

order of the arguments relative to the verb tel us which argument is a subject vs object

some languages may not have one set order

most commonly Subject is first (lead w/ subject then add info)

Object initial is least popular

Case markings

Nouns are marked in a way to indicate subject and object

different forms of the noun are called cases

constituent order in languages w/ case markings can be more flexible

verbal marking

markings on verbs that show the person the number of the subject (sometimes gender)

Morphological variation

isolating, Agglutinating, Fusional

isolating

each morpheme forms a seperate word

pause between words

no/few bound morphemes

Agglutinating

strings of readily identifiable morphemes

allows morphologically complex words

pause b/t words

sentence can be polysynthetic

polysynthesis

possible to express a sentence in 1 word

Fusional

words consist of multiple morphemes but the boundaries b/t them cannot be easily identified

allows morphologically complex words

bound morphemes usually have more than 1 bit of information fused together

Noun

refer to concrete, time-stable entities, among other things

can test by pluralising

Adjectives

properties of nouns eg big small green

adverbs

provides information on time, location or manner (today, nearby, quickly)

Grammatical words

Pronouns, Articles, Prepositions, Conjunctions, interjections

Lexical vs grammatical morphemes

lexical morphemes have reference, grammatical morphemes take meaning from context or relationship to other words

open vs closed word classes

open accept new members easily (eg nouns and verbs), Closed rarely add new members

where do new lexical words come from?

Borrowing [fills a lexical gap]

Coinage [making up words, words like nerd]

Clipping, acronyms, [frequently used words become shortened]

blending [combining parts of 2 words to form a new word, relates to both sources]

derivation [turning another word into a different word class]