Final Review Ling 3001 Spring 2026 Comprehensive Study Guide

Syntax: Fundamentals and Definitions

• Syntax Definition: The study of how different languages put their words together to form sentences and other phrases.
• Grammaticality Judgments: The process of how native speakers judge a sentence based on whether they feel it is "good" (grammatical) or "bad" (ungrammatical).
• Principle of Compositionality: States that the meaning of a linguistic expression is a function of the meanings of its parts (the individual words) and the specific way those parts are put together.
• Syntactic Property: These are properties that dictate how a well-formed expression is able to combine with other well-formed expressions to result in another well-formed expression.
• Syntactic Category: A collection of expressions in a language that share certain syntactic properties, most notably their syntactic distribution.
• Syntactic Constituent: A grouping of words that form natural "clumps" which native speakers have internalized as a single unit.

Syntactic Properties and Co-occurrence Conditions

• Word Order: Refers to the standard linear arrangement of constituents in a language, such as Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) or Subject-Object-Verb (SOV).
• Co-occurrence Conditions: Rules determining what an expression can or must appear with in a sentence.
• Arguments: Expressions which must co-occur with a given expression to make the sentence well-formed.
• Adjuncts: Expressions which can co-occur with a given expression but are not required.
• Agreement: The morphological form of words used to indicate shared grammatical information between constituents.

Distinguishing Arguments from Adjuncts

1. Obligatory vs. Optional Test:    - Argument: Removing a required argument results in ungrammaticality (e.g., "Sally persuaded Bob to go on vacation" is grammatical, but "Sally persuaded to go on vacation" is not).    - Adjunct: Removing an adjunct leaves the sentence grammatical (e.g., "Sally left early to go on vacation" -> "Sally left early").
2. Movement Test:    - Arguments: Often have fixed positions relative to the head (e.g., "Sally put the book on the table" vs. "*Sally put on the table the book").    - Adjuncts: Can often be reordered or moved more freely (e.g., "Sally left yesterday around noon" vs. "Sally left around noon yesterday").
3. Add More Test:    - Argument: You generally cannot add multiple instances of the same argument type without coordination (e.g., "*Sally likes dogs cats").    - Adjuncts: Multiple adjuncts can be stacked (e.g., "Sally likes small fluffy brown dogs").

Syntactic Categories and Constituency Tests

Category Abbreviations and Test Environments

• Sentence (S): Test: "Sally thinks that ______."
• Noun Phrase (NP): Examples: the dog, some cats, Jupiter, she.
• Noun (N): Test: "I am talking about the ______."
• Determiner (Det): Test: "______ dog(s) barked."
• Adjective (Adj): Examples: happy, fluffy, carnivorous.
• Verb Phrase (VP): Examples: slept, believed she liked that man, stands ten feet tall.
• Transitive Verb (TV): Examples: likes, devoured.
• Ditransitive Verb (DTV): Examples: gave, sent.
• Sentential Complement Verb (SV): Examples: believed, said.
• Adverb (Adv): Examples: quickly, nonchalantly, tomorrow.
• Preposition (P): Test: "The plane flew ______ the clouds."
• Prepositional Phrase (PP): Examples: at the table, for Sally, among the defeated hellbeasts.

Constituency Tests

1. Short Answers: If a group of words can serve as a standalone answer to a question, it is likely a constituent. (Q: "What was the cat doing?" A: "Sleeping on the desk.")
2. Clefting: Moving a group of words to the front of a sentence in the frame "It was [X] that/who…". (Example: "It was the fluffy cat who was sleeping on the desk.")
3. Pro-form Substitution: Replacing a group of words with a single word like "there," "then," "he," or "do so." (Example: "The fluffy cat was sleeping there.")

Phrase Structure Rules and Trees

• Rule Format: Rules take the shape $X \rightarrow Y$   - $X$ is always a syntactic category.   - $Y$ is either a single lexical entry (word) or a sequence of syntactic categories.   - Lexical Entry Example: $N \rightarrow \text{dog}$   - Category Sequence Example: $NP \rightarrow \text{Det } N$
• Order Sensitivity: The order on the right side matters. For example, "the dog" fits $NP \rightarrow \text{Det } N$, but "dog the" does not conform to English NP rules.
• Tree Conversion Shortcut: The left side of the arrow is higher in the tree. As arrows point right, the structure goes further down the tree.
• Example Tree Construction:   - Rules: $N \rightarrow \text{dog}$, $Det \rightarrow \text{the}$, $NP \rightarrow \text{Det } N$   - Structure: The NP node is the root, pointing down to Det and N. The Det points to "the" and N points to "dog."

Semantics Definitions and Relations

• Semantics: The study of the meaning of linguistic expressions.
• Lexical Semantics: Focuses on the meanings of individual words and the relationships between them.
• Compositional Semantics: Focuses on how individual word meanings combine to form meanings for larger phrases and sentences.
• Sense: The mental representation of what an expression means.
• Reference: The link between the Sense of an expression and the actual things in the outside world that the Sense describes.
• Proposition: The specific type of meaning expressed by sentences; propositions are entities that can be assigned a truth value (True or False).

Entailment Relations

• Entailment: Sentence S1 entails S2 if, whenever S1 is true, S2 must also be true. (Example: "All dogs bark" entails "Sally's dog barks").
• Mutual Entailment: Occurs when S1 entails S2 AND S2 entails S1. (Example: "John is a bachelor" and "John is an unmarried man").
• Incompatible: Two sentences are incompatible if they cannot both be true at the same time. (Example: "John is a bachelor" and "John is married").
• Compatible: Two sentences are compatible if they can be true at the same time, though they do not have to be; there is no inherent entailment relation. (Example: "Hamsters make great pets" and "Arthur is a mechanic").

Pragmatics: Context and Evaluation

• Pragmatics: The study of meaning derived from language use in specific contexts.
• Utterance: A specific event where a linguistic expression (usually a sentence) is actually spoken or signed.
• Linguistic Context: Refers to the sentences uttered prior to the current one in a conversation.
• Situational Context: Refers to the physical environment and events surrounding the speaker and listener while communicating.
• Social Context: Refers to the social relationship and status between the speaker and the listener.
• Felicity: A judgment by native speakers on whether an utterance is "appropriate" or "fitting" for a given context.
• Cooperative Principle: The implicit assumption that all participants in a conversation are trying to contribute meaningfully and truthfully to facilitate communication.

Gricean Maxims and Implicature

The Four Maxims

1. Maxim of Quality: Be truthful.    - Do not say what you believe to be false.    - Do not say things for which you lack evidence.
2. Maxim of Relevance: Be relevant to the topic at hand.
3. Maxim of Quantity: Provide the right amount of information.    - Make your contribution as informative as required.    - Do not be more informative than required.
4. Maxim of Manner: Be clear and organized.    - Avoid obscurity and ambiguity.    - Be brief and orderly.

Flouting and Inference

• Maxim Flouting: An utterance that appears to violate a maxim on the surface but actually conveys extra information through that violation.
• (Conversational) Implicature: The inference a listener makes based on the assumption that a speaker is flouting a maxim to convey a deeper meaning.

Speech Acts

• Definition: Actions that people perform through their utterances.
• Types of Speech Acts:   - Assertion: Conveys information (e.g., "John cleaned the bathroom.")   - Question: Elicits information (e.g., "Who cleaned the bathroom?")   - Request: Elicits an action or information politely (e.g., "Please clean the bathroom.")   - Order: Demands an action (e.g., "Clean the bathroom!")   - Promise: Commits the speaker to a future action (e.g., "I promise to clean the bathroom.")   - Threat: A promise of an action the hearer likely finds undesirable (e.g., "If you don't clean the bathroom, I will scream.")
• Performative Speech Act: An utterance where the specific action being performed is named by the verb itself (e.g., "I promise…").
• Felicity Conditions: The set of conditions required for a specific speech act to be considered successful or appropriate.
• Direct vs. Indirect Speech Acts:   - Direct: "Tell me what time it is."   - Indirect: "Do you know what time it is?" (Phrased as a question about knowledge, but acts as a request for time).

Historical Linguistics

• Historical Linguistics: The study of language change over time.
• Synchronic Linguistics: Analyzing a language at one specific point in time.
• Diachronic Linguistics: Analyzing how a language has developed or changed across different time periods.
• Relatedness Hypothesis: The theory that two or more languages were once a single ancestor language before splitting and diverging.
• Theories of Spread: Family Tree Theory vs. Wave Theory.
• Linguistic Reconstruction: The process of inferring older forms of a language using data from modern descendants.   - Internal Reconstruction: Uses synchronic data from a single language to hypothesize its older forms.   - Comparative Reconstruction: Uses data from multiple related languages to reconstruct a common ancestor.
• Cognate: Words in different languages that are hypothesized to have descended from a single shared source.

Sociolinguistics

• Sociolinguistics: Study of the relationship between language varieties and social structure.
• Language Variety: Any form of language distinguished by systematic features.
• Idiolect: An individual person’s unique way of using their native language(s).
• Dialect: A variety of language spoken by a specific group (speech community) characterized by systematic differences from other varieties.
• Accent: Systematic variation specifically related to phonology/pronunciation.
• Mutual Intelligibility: The ability of speakers of two different language varieties to understand one another.
• Speech Styles: Different ways a person uses language depending on the context.
• Register: A speech style defined by its level of formality or informality.
• Standard/Prestige Variety: The variety often viewed as the "correct" version of a language, held in high social regard.
• Identity: Language is a tool for expressing identity through direct, semi-direct, or implicit performance.

Psycholinguistics and Neurolinguistics

• Psycholinguistics: Study of the mental processes involved in performing linguistic tasks.
• Neurolinguistics: Study of the physical brain structures associated with language.
• Brain Anatomy: Key parts include Hemispheres, Lobes, Gyri (e.g., Angular Gyrus), Cortex (Motor, Auditory, Visual), and the Corpus Callosum.
• Language Disorders (Aphasia):   - Broca’s Aphasia: Difficulty in speech production; often "telegraphic" speech.   - Wernicke's Aphasia: Difficulty in speech comprehension; speech may be fluent but nonsensical.   - Conduction Aphasia: Difficulty in repeating heard speech.   - Alexia: Loss of the ability to read.   - Agraphia: Loss of the ability to write.

Lexical Access and Parsing

• Lexical Access: The mental process of recognizing a word through speech, sign, or text.
• Mental Lexicon Theories:   - Full Listing: Every word form is stored individually.   - Affix-Stripping: Root words and affixes are stored separately and combined/deconstructed as needed.
• Activation: The "firing" of a neuron leading to word recognition.   - Includes concepts like Resting Activation, Spreading Activation, Activation Threshold, and Frequency Effects.
• Recognition Models: Cohort Model vs. Neural Network models.
• Sentence Parsing: Reconstructing the syntactic structure of an input sentence.
• Incrementality: The principle that humans interpret linguistic input as they receive it, rather than waiting for the end of the sentence.
• Ambiguities:   - Global Ambiguity: The sentence remains ambiguous even after it is finished.   - Temporary (Structural) Ambiguity: The sentence is ambiguous only until more information is received.
• Garden Path Sentences: Sentences that lead the listener to a specific structural interpretation that turns out to be incorrect as the sentence progresses (e.g., "The horse raced past the barn fell").