LEL1B Syntax

Hierarchical structure

The way sentences are constructed, with words grouped into phrases/constituents, which are in turn grouped into further phrases

Recursion

Phrases can contain other phrases of the same type infinitely within a language

Constituency tests

Ways of testing to see if a string of words form a constituent, which is a single unit within the hierarchical structure

Substitution

Replacing a term with another word (e.g. a pronoun) to refer to it

Fragmentation

Answering a question with a short fragment rather than a full sentence

Clefting

Shifting the focus of a sentence, such as moving the point of focus to the beginning

Movement

Moving phrases within a sentence to see if different structures are grammatical

Ellipsis

Omitting parts of a sentence

Finite-state machines

A way of modelling human grammars based on the concept of a machine that can momentarily be in only one state and changes based on inputs

N-gram model

A finite-state machine which predicts the next word used on the basis of the previous n-1, estimating probabilty from a large corpus

Chomsky’s theory

A finite-state machine is insufficient to capture the nuance of the more abstract thought used in the construction of sentences

Long-distance dependencies

• Sentence structures like “If X then Y” can have X and Y of infinite length as long as if and then are found together, meaning there must be a more abstract connection between them

• If there are multiple of these types of phrase in a sentence, they cannot cross boundaries and have fixed order

Context-free grammar

A grammar dictated by a series of rules written in terms of word and phrase class and their contents, like the simple:

• NP → D N

• D → the, my

• N → dog, cat

This can generate 4 stringsː the dog; my dog; the cat; my cat

Generation

One of the two jobs of a grammarː to create a grammatical string via a legal sequence of moves

Parsing

One of the two jobs of a grammarː to assign a given string a specific structure based on a legal sequence of moves

Overgeneration

Where a CFG generates strings that would not be grammatical in a language

Undergeneration

Where a CFG does not generate enough strings to cover all of the possible sentences in a language

Word order typology

How different languages order words and their syntax

Head

The word in a phrase which gives it its category, such as said in said his head hurts

Complement

Additional information elaborating on the meaning of the head

Complementiser

A marker that comes after a verb that serves as a link, signalling that the following information is a complement, like the word that

Tense phrase (TP)

A sentence - one of the proposed ideas for a sentence’s head is its tense or an inflectional element

Subject-verb-object

The basic word order of English sentences, AKA discourse-neutral word order

E.g. Maria read the newspaper

Object-subject-verb

Topicalised object sentences, where the object is said first for particular emphatic reasons in the discourse (think how Yoda talks)

E.g. The newspaper, Maria has already read

Head-initial

The syntactic property of English, where a phrase’s head appears first and precedes the complement

Dominant word order

In ~90% of attested languages, subjects precede verbs

Case

Used to indicate grammatical role in a sentence

Free word order

Some languages have such rich case inflection that they are able to have a relatively free word order, but even then are likely to have a most-commonly used default, like SOV in Latin

Grammaticalisation

Reinterpreting things that used to be independent words as having particular grammatical functions

Wh-movement

Changes made to standard word order when forming wh-questions

Base position

Where a wh-question word would be found in standard word order (pre-movement), marked with t for trace

E.g. What do you see t

Wh-in-situ

A wh-question formed without movement, typically used in English to form echo questions to ask for clarification

E.g. “You saw what?”

Island

Where a wh-word corresponds to a lot of words or is moved a significant distance

Verb fronting

AKA inversion in German, where a question is formed by moving the verb to the front

E.g. Du siehst den Baum. => Siehst du den Baum?

Do-support

Where a periphrastic form of do is inserted when forming a question with ‘main’ (ie. non-auxiliary) verbs; the form of do is fronted and the verb is place uninflected at the end

Principle of Compositionality

The meaning of a phrase is determined by two things:

1. The meaning of its parts

2. The way they are put together in the syntax

Hockett (1960)

The design feature of a language is the ability to say completely new things which can be completely understood by other speakers

Components of grammatical theories

1. Statements about what grammatical information is stored

2. Statements about how you can recursively combine those stored elements into more complex pieces

Semantic theory

Concerned with two main questions:

1. Lexical semantics: what information about lexical meaning do we store in our lexicon?

2. Compositional semantics: how do we predict the meaning of complex expressions from their parts and combinations?

Intransitive

AKA a one-place predicate, a verb that takes just one argument: the subject

Transitive

AKA a two-place predicate, a verb that takes two arguments: the subject and object

Ditransitive

AKA a 3-place predicate, a verb that takes three arguments: subject, direct object, and indirect object

Unsaturated

Where a verb does not have enough arguments to be complete

Relations

The nature of the link between individuals involved in a verb’s action and result

Dynamic

Describing events

Static

Describing states

Agent

An individual who intentionally initiates an event

Cause

An initiator that may not act intentionally but brings about a result

Theme

A participant that undergoes a ‘change of state’ due to an event, or is the target of an event

Instrument

A means with which an agent carries out an event

Experiencer

An individual in whom an object or event induces some mental state, or someone who experiences an emotion

Source

The initial location of the theme

Location

The place where an event occurs

Hierarchies of grammatical function and participant role

• Agent/cause > Experiencer > Theme > Goal/source/etc.

• Subject > Direct object > Indirect object

The roles selected and used in the first row will be mapped to the highest syntactic positions in the second

Causative alternation

Some verbs are able to lose their transitivity based on context, such as rolled in I rolled the ball => The ball rolled, where the direct object of the transitive sentence is the subject of the intransitive sentence