Syntax

what is syntax?

syntax = the study of how words are organized into phrases and sentences, hierarchical

how words are combined to form larger structures, such as phrases and sentences
each lang has diff syntax, but also many langs have syntactic properties in common

ungrammatical = inconsistent with the grammatical system of a language user

English has a very fixed word order
change → ungrammatical or change of meaning
e.g. subject noun must come before the verb, and if verb is transitive*, it must be followed by the object

clause = includes a subject and a predicate

predicate = state, event or activity that the sentence attributes to its subject
verbs often express predication; an event in a sentence

arguments = phrases/ words that correspond to the participants or actors involved in predicate
e.g. Vinja loves chocolate. (Vinja = argument, loves = predicate, chocolate = argument)

classifying predicates

can classify predicates by their transitivity
(the number of arguments they take)

intransitive = one argument (the subject); no object

*transitive = two arguments (subj and direct object)
e.g. ‘Susie kissed.’ but ‘kissed’ is transitive, it requires an object

ditransitive = three arguments (subj + direct obj + indirect obj)
cannot have an indirect object w/o a direct obj in a sentence

verb classes

transitive, intransitive and ambitransitive (either transitive or not)
respectively, kissed, laughed ate (which can be ‘She ate the [object]’ or just ‘She ate.’)

classifying arguments

by their position in a sentence

Subject = appear before predicate, and control agreement on the verb
(incl pronouns in their nominative case eg he)

Direct Object = usually appear after the verb
(incl pronouns in accusative case eg him)

Indirect Object = recipient of direct object, often marked by a preposition like ‘to’
(pronoun → accusative)

classifying sentences

according to function

Interrogative, Declarative, Imperative, Simple, Compound, Complex

nouns and noun phrases

phrase = set of words that act together as a unit

noun phrase = phrase that contains a noun which is the most important element
ie it determines category, and the noun is the head
the words in a phrase form one unit, can replace noun with noun phrase
the properties of this unit are determined by the head

NPs often occur with determiners (articles, demonstratives, quantifiers)
→ you can’t double up determiners e.g. *Let’s take the this large slow train.heads: a phrase’s head is the main syntactic and semantic element of the phrase

the head determines the category, properties and meaning of the phrase
e.g. the number must agree with the verb (The puppies are vs The puppy *are)

the head projects its properties, but there can be other material in a phrase

the sister of a head is called its complement
transitive verbs have objects as their complements
e.g. in ‘ate chocolate’, the complement is chocolate
other word classes can also have complements

in English, head precede their complements → ‘head initial’

phrase structure

can represent phrases using tree diagrams
→ graphs with particular properties and terminology
→ A,B, and C are called nodes
→ A is the root (node), it dominates all other nodes
→ B and C are terminal nodes

phrases consist of head, complement and specifier

recursion = the ability of a structure to contain another structure
e.g. a noun phrase containing another noun phrase

apositions

prepositions + postpositions

English has mostly prepositions
e.g. ‘under the table’

other langs mostly have postpositions
e.g. in Hungarian ‘az asztal alatt’ = ‘the table under’

postposition phrase example = one year ago

open and closed classes

easy to come up with new nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs
^ referred to as open classes
words from these classes are often innovated, loaned etc
e.g. ‘to DM someone’ → DM used as verb

hard to come up with new function words
→ so, referred to as closed classes
determiners, quantifiers, auxiliaries, and adpositions are closed classes

exception: new pronouns being used/ used in diff way

word order

in addition to categories, order also matters for syntax
e.g. Amal ate chocolate vs Amal chocolate ate

→ we can generalise about English word order
declarative clauses have subject-verb-(object) order, SVO

Amal ate chocolate
My good friend from Glasgow ate chocolate

^replace noun with a noun phrase, but both still function as the subject
can do the same with the object e.g. chocolate → her favourite fruit