ENG332 Syntactic Analysis

Course Overview

  • Course: ENG332: English Syntactic Analysis

  • Lecturer: Professor Oko Okoro

  • Focus: English syntax using traditional/structuralist approaches.

Key Topics in English Syntax

  • Sentence Types and Functions

    • Simple Sentences

    • Compound Sentences

    • Complex Sentences

  • Noun Phrase components:

    • Nouns, Pronouns, Determiners, Adjectives

  • Verb Phrase aspects:

    • Verbs, Predication, Subclasses of Verbs

  • Additional structures: Person, Number, Mood, Voice, Tense, Aspect, Adverbials, and Prepositions.

Sentence Structures

  • Traditional Sentence Definition:

    • Consider both form (structure) and function (meaning).

    • Example: "John has a bicycle" contains a finite verb ('has') linked to the subject ('John').

Types of Sentences

  1. Simple Sentence:

    • Contains one finite verb.

    • Example: "The boy killed the snake."

  2. Compound Sentence:

    • Contains two independent clauses joined by a coordinating conjunction.

    • Example: "Olu kicked the ball, and Ade caught it."

  3. Complex Sentence:

    • Involves subordination of clauses.

    • Example: "The boy [who came here in the morning] is my cousin."

Noun Phrase Analysis

  • Components:

    • Head: Main item that dictates agreement (e.g., "The pretty girl").

    • Premodifiers: Items before the head (e.g., determiners, adjectives).

    • Postmodifiers: Items following the head (e.g., relative clauses, prepositional phrases).

Verb Phrase Analysis

  • Components:

    • Lexical Verbs: Main verbs, can occur alone or with auxiliaries.

    • Auxiliary Verbs: Helping verbs (e.g., be, have, do) that provide tense, mood, or voice.

Modal and Auxiliary Distinctions

  • Primary Auxiliaries: (can act alone)

    • e.g., be, have, do

  • Modal Auxiliaries: (never act alone)

    • e.g., can, may, will.

Adverbials and Prepositions

  • Adverbial Clauses: Describe conditions, time, or manner in which actions take place.

  • Prepositional Phrases: Involve a preposition and noun phrase that modifies the verb or complements it.

The Structural Approach

  • Emphasizes structure over meaning; uses objective procedures like substitution and structural signals.

  • Immediate Constituents Analysis: Breaks sentences into binary parts to understand structure better.

Summary of Key Terms

  • Phonemes: Smallest contrastive sound units (e.g., /k/, /p/ in "cat" and "pat").

  • Morphemes: Smallest meaningful units (e.g., "cats" = /kæt/ + /s/).

  • Inflectional vs. Derivational Morphemes: Inflectional affect grammatical function; derivational change the word class.

Principles of Structural Grammar

  1. Excludes meaning for grammatical definitions.

  2. Focuses on structural signals and categorizing words based on their forms.

  3. Analyzes language through immediate constituents and identifies patterns based on position and inflection.