Ch 3. Syntax and Phrases

Foundations of Syntactic Knowledge - Grammatical Competence

• Native speakers of a language possess innate implicit knowledge of syntactic rules that allows them to recognize grammatical sentences and determine the precise linear order and grouping of words required to convey specific meanings.

• Speakers possess infinite generative capacity, enabling them to produce and comprehend an unlimited number of novel sentences that have never before been spoken or heard.

• Structural and Semantic Relations:

  • Ambiguity Recognition: Speakers naturally identify structural ambiguities, recognizing when a single linear sequence of words can correspond to multiple distinct structural arrangements and interpretations.

  • Sentence Ambiguity: can take primary forms

    • Lexical- a defintion problem

      •     “She is good at catching flies”

      • -the sentence has two potential means it's ambiguous. The two meetings depend upon applying to possible definition to the word flies.

    • Structural: a word grouping problem

      • “the clown hit the acrobat with an umbrella”

      • this sentence is also ambiguous as it raises the question of who is doing the hitting. It could either mean that the clown is using an umbrella to hit the acrobat or that the acrobat is being hit while holding an umbrella. This illustrates how the arrangement of words leads to multiple interpretations, highlighting the importance of syntax in clarifying meaning.

  • Paraphrase and Equivalence: Syntactic knowledge allows speakers to discern when structurally distinct sentences express identical core meanings.

  • Grammatical Relations: Native competence provides immediate, correct interpretation of underlying grammatical relations within a sentence, including identifying the subject and direct object.

Overview of the Rules of Syntax

• Syntax- describes the compoinetn of the mental grammar that represents speakers knowledge of the structure of phrases and sentences

  • Grammar is not based on : Meaning,

• Definition and Function: The rules of syntax are principles of mental grammar that govern how words combine into phrasal categories and how phrases arrange into sentences.

• Core Types of Syntactic Rules:

  1. Phrase Structure Rules: Generative rules specifying the explicit hierarchical organization and linear order of syntactic categories.

  2. Selectional Rules: Lexical requirements governing categorical ($C$-selection) and semantic ($S$-selection) properties of complements and arguments.

  3. Transformational Rules: Mapping operations (such as movement and insertion) that transform deep structures ($d$-structure) into surface structures ($s$-structure).

  4. Universal Constraints: Invariant principles (such as structure-dependence and locality constraints) specified by Universal Grammar ($UG$).

Phrase Structure, Trees, and Syntactic Categories

Tree Diagrams; allow us to illustrate the way discrete parts related to the whole. for syntax we will work with constituents as well as individuals words, showing how they relate to one another

—if a sentence is ambiguous there will be more than one diagram

Phrase Structure Trees:

• Phrase structure trees depict the hierarchical structural organization of sentences, serving as explicit representations of a speaker's internal mental grammar.

• Trees reveal both the linear order of words and the syntactic constituency (grouping) of phrases.

• Structurally ambiguous sentences correspond to more than one phrase structure tree representation.

• Constituency and Constituency Tests:

  • Constituency Definition: A constituent is a word or group of words that functions together as a single hierarchical structural unit within a phrase structure tree.

  • Ex. The Monster ate the turnip

    • -is the underlined portion a constiuent?

    • -move as a unit

    • it was the turnip that the monster ate.

    • the turnip the monster ate

    • turnip the monster ate the

  
  

• Constituency Tests: only one needs to be passed for it to work

• Stand Alone (Question Test): A group of words that can stand alone as a coherent answer to a question forms a constituent.

• Pro-form Replacement (Substitution): A group of words that can be replaced by a single pro-form (e.g., pronouns like it, they, or pro-verbs like do so) forms a constituent.

• Movement (Fronting / Clefting): A group of words that can move together as a unit to another sentence position (e.g., clefting "It was [X] that…") forms a constituent.

• Coordination: Only constituents belonging to the same syntactic category can be joined together using coordinating conjunctions (e.g., and, or).

• Syntactic Categories:

  • Phrasal Categories: The class of syntactic categories that contain heads within an X-bar structure. These include:

  • Noun Phrase ($NP$)

  • Verb Phrase ($VP$)

  • Adjective Phrase ($AP$)

  • Prepositional Phrase ($PP$)

  • Adverbial Phrase ($AdvP$)

  • Complementizer Phrase ($CP$)

  • Tense Phrase ($TP$)

  • Phrasal categories are hierarchically composed of other syntactic categories.

  • Lexical Categories: General term for word-level syntactic categories representing open-class lexical items

  • , including Noun ($N$),

  • Verb ($V$), Preposition ($P$),

  • Adjective ($A$),

  • Adverb ($Adv$).

  • Functional Categories: Syntactic categories corresponding to closed-class functional or grammatical elements/features (e.g., Determiner $Det$, Tense $T$).

• X-Bar Schema:

  • The hierarchical organization of phrasal categories is universal across languages and specified by the X-bar schema.

  • Phrases are projected from and headed by their respective lexical categories (e.g., $NP$ is headed by $N$, $VP$ is headed by $V$).

  • The clause or sentence ($S$ or $TP$) is headed by $T$ (Tense), encoding inflectional features such as tense and modality.

  • Linear ordering of elements within phrases is subject to language-particular variation while conforming strictly to X-bar theory.

Composite Phrase Structure Rules

• Definition: Phrase structure rules specify the explicit hierarchical organization of syntactic categories, visually expressed through phrase structure trees.

• Complete Rule Set:

  1. $S \text{ (=TP)} \rightarrow NP \times T$

  2. $T \rightarrow T \times VP$

  3. $NP \rightarrow (Det) \times N$

  4. $N \rightarrow N \times (XP)$

  5. $N \rightarrow A \times N$

  6. $VP \rightarrow (Spec) \times V$

  7. $V \rightarrow V \times (XP)$

  8. $V \rightarrow V \times PP$

  9. $PP \rightarrow P \times NP$

  10. $CP \rightarrow (Spec) \times C$

  11. $C \rightarrow C \times TP \text{ (=S)}$

  12. $AP \rightarrow A \times PP$

  13. $A \rightarrow Int \times A$

• Embedded Sentences and Recursion:

  • Embedded Sentences (Embedded Clauses): A sentence or clause contained within another larger sentence or phrasal category, introduced by a complementizer (such as that, if, or whether) to form a Complementizer Phrase ($CP$).

  • Recursive Embedding: Phrase structure rules accommodate embedded sentences through recursive rule application (e.g., $C \rightarrow C \times TP$), enabling sentences ($TP$ or $S$) to be embedded infinitely within other sentences.

Mental Grammar, the Lexicon, and Selectional Restrictions

• Linguistic Competence and Grammar:

  • A grammar is a formally stated, explicit description of native linguistic competence and mental grammar.

  • The mental lexicon contains internal knowledge regarding vocabulary and features of words.

• Lexical Information and Selection:

  • Syntactic Category: Every entry in the lexicon specifies its syntactic category.

  • Subcategorization / C-Selection (Categorical Selection): Properties of lexical items that specify the required or permitted syntactic categories of complements (e.g., transitive vs. intransitive verbs).

  • S-Selection (Semantic Selection): Semantic requirements specified by lexical items regarding argument types (e.g., requiring an animate subject).

• Structural Level of Selection: All selectional restrictions ($C$-selectional and $S$-selectional properties) must be satisfied at the deep structure ($d$-structure) representation.

Transformational Grammar and Derivational Levels

• Transformational Rules:

  • Operations accounting for systemic syntactic relationships between related sentence structures (e.g., declarative and interrogative pairs).

  • Aux Inversion: Inverts auxiliary elements to head positions in question formation.

  • Wh-Movement: Fronts interrogative phrases ($wh$-phrases) to sentence-initial specifier positions in $CP$.

  • do-Insertion: Inserts dummy verb do to carry tense features when no other auxiliary is present.

• Syntactic Levels of Representation:

  • d-Structure (Deep Structure): The underlying syntactic representation generated directly by phrase structure rules; satisfies all selectional restrictions.

  • s-Structure (Surface Structure): The representation resulting after transformational rules operate on $d$-structure; directly determines phonetic/signed execution.

• Inflectional Feature Spell-Out: Abstract inflectional features in trees are morphologically spelled out as affixes (e.g., -ed) or function words (e.g., do).

Universal Grammar and Language Acquisition

• Universal Architecture: Structural syntax design is universal across spoken and signed human languages.

• Innate Universal Constraints:

  • Structure-Dependence: All syntactic rules operate strictly on hierarchical structure rather than linear word order.

• Locality Constraints: Movement rules are restricted from extracting phrases out of certain structural domains (island constraints).

  X-Bar Principle: Phrasal structures in all natural languages conform to the X-bar schema.

• Parameters and Acquisition: A child acquiring a native language sets the innate parameters of Universal Grammar ($UG$) based on environmental input.