Chapter 2 syntax

Chapter 3: Syntax
Presented by Kak Sovanna
Academic Year: 2014-2015
16/28/2015 Presented by Mr. Kak Sovanna (+85593600021)

6/28/2015 2Presented by Mr. Kak Sovanna (+85593600021)

Read the following sentences and try to
identify various meanings in each sentence.
 The camper saw a bear with binoculars.
 I once shot an elephant in my pajamas.
 Flying planes can be dangerous.
 A: I just saw someone carrying a monkey and
an elephant go into the circus.
 B: Wow, that someone must be pretty strong.

The camper saw a bear with binoculars.

Content
What is syntax?
Generative Grammar
Syntactic Description
References

What is syntax?
It comes from Greek, syntaxis (syn
‘together’ + taxis ‘to arrange’ -> ‘to
arrange together’)
Syntactic is the adjective from
syntax.

What is syntax? (1)
Syntax is the study of rules that govern
the ways in which words combine to form
phrases, clauses, and sentences.
(About.com)
It could also refer to the arrangement of
words itself in a sentence. (About.com)

What is syntax? (3)
 Linguistically, Syntax is also defined as a major
component of the grammar of a language that
concerns the ways in which words combine to
form sentences and the rules which govern the
formulation of sentences, making some
sentences possible and others not possible
within a particular language. (Dictionary of
Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics,
4th edition)

Generative Grammar
A type of grammar, inspired by Noam
Chomsky, that attempts to define and
describe, by a set of rules or principles,
all the grammatical sentences of a
language and no ungrammatical ones.
This type of grammar is said to generate,
or produce, grammatical sentences.

Generative Grammar (1)
Language is seen as consisting of a
set of finite numbers of rules, which
enable the production of infinite
numbers of well-formed sentences.

 This is very similar to mathematics.
 E.g. 3x + 2y = z
 If x=5 and y=10 then z=35
 If x=2 and y=1 then z=8
 •“If the sentences of a language can be seen
as a comparable set, then there must be a set
of explicit rules that can produce all those
sentences.”

Deep and Surface Structure
Generative Grammar also attempts to
describe (a) how to 2 different sentences
are closely related, and (b) how to 2
similar sentences are different.

Charlie broke the window.
The window was broken by Charlie.

 Deep and Surface Structure (2)
 The first sentence is active, focusing on
Charlie.
 The second is passive, focusing on window.
 The meaning is still the same, and therefore,
what makes them different is just their written
forms. This is called the Surface Structure.

 In fact, the all the aforementioned examples
derive from a common basic structure, which
consists of the same constituents or
components (Charlie, window, break).
 This is called the Deep Structure.

Deep Structure is an abstract
underlying level of structural
organization in which all the
elements determining structural
interpretation are represented.

Deep and Surface Structure (4)
Suppose we have a deep structure:
NP + V + NP

 The following sentences can be derived:
 a)Charlie broke the window.
 b)The window was broken by Charlie.
 c)It was Charlie who broke the window.
 d)Was the window broken by Charlie?

In short,
Deep Structure = Basic Structure
Surface Structure = Transformed Structure

Sometimes, 2 different deep structures
could also be expressed in the same
surface structure.

 Eg. The camper saw a bear with binoculars.
 (1) would mean that the camper use
binoculars to see a bear
 (2) would mean that the camper see a bear
who is using a binocular

Deep and Surface Structure (7)
6/28/2015 Presented by Mr. Kak Sovanna (+85593600021) 23

Deep and Surface Structure (8)

 This is called Structural Ambiguity.
 Structural Ambiguity occurs when a particular
sentence (or structure) could have two or
more underlying interpretations that have to
be represented differently in deep structure.

 E.g. Those small boys and girls have been selected
for the contest.
 E.g. Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend;
inside it’s too hard to read.
 Everybody knows dogs are man's best friend, right?
Well, books are, too-in a way. You can read books
and understand them, but dogs aren't easy to
understand. that's what "inside if a dog it's too dark
to read" means.

Recursion
Recursive rules have the capacity to
be applied more than once in
generating a structure.

Recursion
E.g. The gun was on the table near
the window in the bedroom of the
old house.
E.g. John believed that Cathy knew
that Mary helped George.

Syntactic Description
 In describing syntax, the following symbols
should be remembered.
 S Sentence NP Noun Phrase
 N Noun VP Verb Phrase
 V Verb PP Prepositional Phrase
 Art Article PN Proper Noun

Syntactic Description (2)
 Adj Adjective * Ungrammatical sent.
 Adv Adverb → Consists of/ Rewrites as
 Pro Pronoun ( ) Optional constituent

 Prep Preposition
 { } One and only one of these
constituents must be selected.

Therefore, if we were to describe a
noun phrase (NP), the structure shall
be written as:
NP → Art N

Because a noun phrase generally consists
of an article and a noun, as in ‘The dog’.
Yet it is also possible for an NP to further
include an adjective, as in ‘The small dog’
, and therefore, could be rewritten as:
NP → Art (Adj) N

As we have learnt, an NP could consist of
a pronoun or a proper noun (Name of
people, places, etc.), then we could have
the following:
NP → Art N
NP → Pro
NP → PN

But instead of that, we can
choose to write
NP → { Art N, Pro, PN}

With these descriptions, we can go about
describing the Phrase Structure Rules
of a sentence.
1. S → NP VP
2. NP → Art N
3. VP → V NP
As in: The child found a puppy.

Sometimes, a VP might also
include a PP. To be more specific,
the structure could be written as:

 1. S → NP VP
 2. NP → {Art (Adj) N, Pro, PN}
 3. VP → V NP (PP) (adv)
 4. PP → Prep NP
 As in
 David rode a bike in the garden yesterday.

Phrase Structure Rules are not enough.
We also need Lexical Rules to specify
which words can be used when rewriting
specific constituents. We might ask ‘What
are examples of a N?’

‘What are examples of a PN?’ Thus,
based on the previous example, we have:
1. PN → { Mary, George }
2. N → { girl, dog, boy }
3. Art → { a, the }
4. Pro → { it, you }

5. V → { follow, saw }
6. Adj → {small, crazy}
7. Prep → {near, with}
8. Adv → { lately, fast }

Relying on these rules, we are
able to generate grammatical
sentences, not ungrammatical
ones as in the following.

1. The girl followed the boy.
2. A boy helped the dog.
3. George saw a dog.
4. A small dog followed Mary.

5.The small boy saw George with
a crazy dog lately.
6.*You it saw.
7.*Mary helped boy.
8.*Followed the dog.

Although phrase structure and lexical
rules are great in describing syntax,
there also exists Tree Diagram (or
Tree Structure) for description.

 An NP as ‘The girl’ can be represented below.
 •NP → Art N
 •Art → { the }
 •N → { girl }

Now, we shall try to draw a tree
diagram of the sentence below.
 The girl saw a dog.

First, we know that the S
consists of an NP and VP. Then
we have .

Next, the NP consist of the Article, the,
and the Noun, girl. Thus we obtain

The VP further consists of a V and an NP.

Finally, the NP of the VP consists of an
Art and a N. Hence,

 Practice drawing tree diagram for the following
sentences.
 1. George bought a car.
 2. The house has a room with air-conditioner.
 3. The children walk to school.

4. He wrote a letter to his lover.
5. We bought the last ticket to Paris.
6. His criticism made Jane extremely
unhappy.

 Practice drawing tree diagram for the following
sentences.
 1. They are recruiting some volunteers.
 2. She found him attractive.
 3. She said that George bought a new car.
 4. He wants to buy a new shirt.

Practice drawing tree diagram for the
following sentences.
5. Did George buy a car?
6. Who bought a car?
7. Recently Mary lost her job.

Transformational Rules
Examine the following 2 sentences.
Do they differ?
1.Mary saw George recently.
2.Recently Mary saw George.

Transformational Rules (2)
• Actually, the structure of the 2nd
sentence is said to be derived from the
1st sentence. It is said that the adverb
‘recently’ has been moved to the
beginning in the 2nd sentence.

References
 Sovannarith, L. (2011). Applied Linguistics. Phnom Penh:
Institute of Foreign Languages.
 Geldren, E. V. (2010). An Introduction to Grammar of
English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co.
 Applied Linguistics. CICI.

Chapter 2 syntax

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