![What the Syntax Rules Do
• Syntax rules also tell us how words form groups and are
hierarchically ordered in a sentence
“The captain ordered the old men and women off the ship”
• This sentence has two possible meanings:
– 1. The captain ordered the old men and the old women off the ship
– 2. The captain ordered the old men and the women of any age off the
ship
• The meanings depend on how the words in the sentence are
grouped (specifically, to which words is the adjective ‘old’
applied?)
– 1. The captain ordered the [old [men and women]] off the ship
– 2. The captain ordered the [old men] and [women] off the ship](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/syntax-231117173717-4bd4260c/85/syntax-ppt-pdf-6-320.jpg)
![Sentence Structure
• We could say that the sentence “The child
found the puppy” is based on the
template:
Det—N—V—Det—N
– But this would imply that sentences are just
strings of words without internal structure
– This sentence can actually be separated into
several groups:
• [the child] [found a puppy]
• [the child] [found [a puppy]]
• [[the] [child]] [[found] [[a] [puppy]]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/syntax-231117173717-4bd4260c/85/syntax-ppt-pdf-9-320.jpg)
syntax.ppt.pdf
- 1. 01:615:201 Introduction to Linguistic Theory Adam Szczegielniak Syntax: The Sentence Patterns of Language Copyright in part: Cengage learning
- 2. Learning Goals • Hierarchical sentence structure • Word categories • X-‐bar • Ambiguity • Recursion • Transforma=ons
- 3. Syntax • Any speaker of any human language can produce and understand an infinite number of possible sentences • Thus, we can’t possibly have a mental dictionary of all the possible sentences • Rather, we have the rules for forming sentences stored in our brains – Syntax is the part of grammar that pertains to a speaker’s knowledge of sentences and their structures
- 4. What the Syntax Rules Do • The rules of syntax combine words into phrases and phrases into sentences • They specify the correct word order for a language – For example, English is a Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) language • The President nominated a new Supreme Court justice • *President the new Supreme justice Court a nominated • They also describe the relationship between the meaning of a group of words and the arrangement of the words – I mean what I say vs. I say what I mean
- 5. What the Syntax Rules Do • The rules of syntax also specify the grammatical relations of a sentence, such as the subject and the direct object – Your dog chased my cat vs. My cat chased your dog • Syntax rules specify constraints on sentences based on the verb of the sentence *The boy found *Disa slept the baby *The boy found in the house Disa slept The boy found the ball Disa slept soundly Zack believes Robert to be a gentleman *Zack believes to be a gentleman Zack tries to be a gentleman *Zack tries Robert to be a gentleman
- 6. What the Syntax Rules Do • Syntax rules also tell us how words form groups and are hierarchically ordered in a sentence “The captain ordered the old men and women off the ship” • This sentence has two possible meanings: – 1. The captain ordered the old men and the old women off the ship – 2. The captain ordered the old men and the women of any age off the ship • The meanings depend on how the words in the sentence are grouped (specifically, to which words is the adjective ‘old’ applied?) – 1. The captain ordered the [old [men and women]] off the ship – 2. The captain ordered the [old men] and [women] off the ship
- 7. What the Syntax Rules Do • These groupings can be shown hierarchically in a tree • These trees reveal the structural ambiguity in the phrase “old men and women” – Each structure corresponds to a different meaning • Structurally ambiguous sentences can often be humorous: – Catcher: “Watch out for this guy, he’s a great fastball hitter.” – Pitcher: “No problem. There’s no way I’ve got a great fastball.”
- 8. What Grammaticality Is Not Based On • Grammaticality is not based on prior exposure to a sentence • Grammaticality is not based on meaningfulness • Grammaticality is not based on truthfulness
- 9. Sentence Structure • We could say that the sentence “The child found the puppy” is based on the template: Det—N—V—Det—N – But this would imply that sentences are just strings of words without internal structure – This sentence can actually be separated into several groups: • [the child] [found a puppy] • [the child] [found [a puppy]] • [[the] [child]] [[found] [[a] [puppy]]
- 10. Sentence Structure • A tree diagram can be used to show the hierarchy of the sentence: The child found a puppy
- 11. Constituents and Constituency Tests • Constituents are the natural groupings in a sentence • Tests for constituency include: – 1. “stand alone test”: if a group of words can stand alone, they form a constituent • A: “What did you find?” • B: “A puppy.” – 2. “replacement by a pronoun”: pronouns can replace constituents • A: “Where did you find a puppy?” • B: “I found him in the park.”
- 12. Constituents and Constituency Tests – 3. “move as a unit” test: If a group of words can be moved together, they are a constituent • A: “The child found a puppy.” ! “A puppy was found by the child.”
- 13. Constituents and Constituency Tests • Experimental evidence shows that people perceive sentences in groupings corresponding to constituents • Every sentence has at least one constituent structure – If a sentence has more than one constituent structure, then it is ambiguous and each constituent structure corresponds to a different meaning
- 14. Syntactic Categories • A syntactic category is a family of expressions that can substitute for one another without loss of grammaticality The child found a puppy. The child found a puppy. A police officer found a puppy. The child ate the cake. Your neighbor found a puppy. The child slept. • All the underlined groups constitute a syntactic category known as a noun phrase (NP) – NPs may be a subject or an object of a sentence, may contain a determiner, proper name, pronoun, or may be a noun alone • All the bolded groups constitute a syntactic category known as a verb phrase (VP) – VPs must always contain a verb but may also contain other constituents such as a noun phrase or a prepositional phrase (PP)
- 15. Syntactic Categories • Phrasal categories: NP, VP, PP, AdjP, AdvP • Lexical categories: – Noun: puppy, girl, soup, happiness, pillow – Verb: find, run, sleep, realize, see, want – Preposition: up, down, across, into, from, with – Adjective: red, big, candid, lucky, large – Adverb: again, carefully, luckily, very, fairly • Functional categories: – Auxiliary: verbs such as have, and be, and modals such as may, can, will, shall, must – Determiners: the, a, this, that, those, each, every
- 16. Phrase Structure Trees • The core of every phrase is its head – In the VP walk the pugs, the verb walk is the head • The phrasal category that may occur next to a head and elaborates on the meaning of the head is a complement – In the PP over the river, the NP the river is the complement • Elements preceding the head are specifiers – In the NP the fish, the determiner the is the specifier
- 17. Phrase Structure Trees • The internal structure of phrasal categories can be captured using the X-bar schema:
- 18. examples This should be A The subject will later in Spec-T
- 19. Phrase Structure Trees Phrase structure (PS) trees show the internal structure of a sentence along with syntactic category information:
- 20. Phrase Structure Trees • In a PS tree, every higher node dominates all the categories beneath it – S dominates everything • A node immediately dominates the categories directly below it • Sisters are categories that are immediately dominated by the same node – The V and the NP are sisters
- 21. Phrase Structure Trees: Selection • Some heads require a certain type of complement and some don’t – The verb find requires an NP: Alex found the ball. – The verb put requires both an NP and a PP: Alex put the ball in the toy box. – The verb sleep cannot take a complement: Alex slept. – The noun belief optionally selects a PP: the belief in freedom of speech. – The adjective proud optionally selects a PP: proud of herself • C-selection or subcategorization refers to the information about what types of complements a head can or must take
- 22. Phrase Structure Trees: Selection • Verbs also select subjects and complements based on semantic properties (S-selection) – The verb murder requires a human subject and object !The beer murdered the lamp. – The verb drink requires its subject to be animate and its optional complement object to be liquid !The beer drank the lamp. • For a sentence to be well-formed, it must conform to the structural constraints of PS rules and must also obey the syntactic (C-selection) and semantic (S-selection) requirements of the head of each phrase
- 23. Building Phrase Structure Trees • Phrase structure rules specify the well-formed structures of a sentence – A tree must match the phrase structure rules to be grammatical
- 24. Building Phrase Structure Trees The majority of the senate became afraid of the vice president. N (9) Corrections to the textbook typos are in red.
- 25. Building Phrase Structure Trees The majority of the senate became afraid of the vice president.
- 26. The Infinity of Language: Recursive Rules • Recursive rules are rules in which a phrasal category can contain itself • Recursive rules allow a grammar to generate an infinite number of sentences –the kindhearted, intelligent, handsome, … boy
- 27. What Heads the Sentence • All sentences contain information about tense— when a certain event or state of affairs occurred, so we can say that Tense is the head of a sentence – So sentences are TPs, with T representing tense markers and modals
- 28. What Heads the Sentence The girl may cry. The child ate.
- 29. Structural Ambiguities • The following sentence has two meanings: The boy saw the man with the telescope. • The meanings are: – 1. The boy used the telescope to see the man – 2. The boy saw the man who had a telescope • Each of these meanings can be represented by a different phrase structure tree – The two interpretations are possible because the PS rules allow more than one structure for the same string of words
- 30. Structural Ambiguities • The boy used a telescope to see the man • The boy saw the man who had a telescope
- 31. More Structures • Adverbs are modifiers that can specify how (quickly, slowly) and when (yesterday, oNen) an event happens 17. V ! AdvP V 16. V ! V AdvP
- 32. Transformational Analysis • Recognizing that some sentences are related to each other is another part of our syntactic competence The boy is sleeping. Is the boy sleeping? • The first sentence is a declarative sentence, meaning that it asserts that a particular situation exists • The second sentence is a yes-no question, meaning that asks for confirmation of a situation • The difference in meaning is indicated by different word orders, which means that certain structural differences correspond to certain meaning differences – For these sentences, the difference lies in where the auxiliary occurs in the sentence
- 33. Transformational Rules • Yes-no questions are generated in two steps: – 1. The PS rules generate a declarative sentence which represents the basic structure, or deep structure (d- structure) of the sentence – 2. A transformational rule then moves the auxiliary before the subject to create the surface structure (s-structure)
- 34. Transformational Rules • Other sentence pairs that involve transformational rules are: – Active to passive • The cat chased the mouse. ! The mouse was chased by the cat. – there sentences • There was a man on the roof. ! A man was on the roof. – PP preposing • The astronomer saw the quasar with the telescope. ! With the telescope, the astronomer saw the quasar.
- 35. The Structural Dependency of Rules • Transformations are structure-dependent, which means they act on phrase structures without caring what words are in the structures – The Move rule can be applied to any PP as long as it is an adjunct to V. – Subject-verb agreement stretches across all structures between the subject and the verb:
- 36. Yes/No • The forma=on of yes-‐no ques=ons comes from the transforma=on Move reloca=ng the T from the corresponding declara=ve sentence: • The boy will sleep will the boy ___ sleep
- 37. C takes TP • C takes TP as its complement, C can have Q feature, but not always
- 38. Embedded CP’s • CP’s are needed not just for ques=ons: – belief that iron floats (NP complement) – wonders if iron floats (VP complement) – happy that iron floats (AP complement) – about whether iron will sink (PP complement)
- 39. Examples of embedded CP
- 41. Wh Questions Example: What will Max chase? • This Wh ques=on is formed in three steps: – 1. The PS rules generate a basic declara=ve word order: Max will chase what? – 2. Move shiNs the word what to the beginning of the sentence: What Max will chase? – 3. Move shiNs the modal will to occur before the subject NP: What will Max chase?
- 42. Wh-‐deriva=on
- 43. Wh-‐movement
- 44. Do-‐inser=on • Which toys does Pete like
- 45. Modals/ Auxiliaries 1. Spot has chased a squirrel. 2. Nellie is snoring. •Like the modals, the auxiliaries have and be move to the posi=on preceding the subject in both yes-‐no ques=ons and wh ques=ons. 3. Has Spot ____ chased a squirrel? 4. Is Nellie ____ snoring? 5. What has Spot ____ chased ____? •The ques=on is: where do have and be originate in the d-‐structure? •Note that have and be can occur in the same sentence with a modal: – Nellie may be snoring. – Spot must have found a squirrel.
- 46. recursive v • Our analysis leads us to conclude that have/ be originate under V in a recursive Vd structure,as follows.
- 47. Tense/Modal • When there is no modal, T is occupied by a tense feature, which is realized on have/be, as would be the case for other verbs like snore:
- 48. Movement from V-‐>T-‐>C • What has Spot chased? • Here is the d-‐structure (from the X-‐bar derived phrase structure rules):
- 49. V-‐>T
- 50. T-‐>C
- 51. Wh-‐move • We see that V-‐>T feeds T-‐>C, which allows wh move.
- 52. PS rules – Warning, these are textbook PS rules. For ones recommended by me see my addi=onal text • 1. S → NP VP • 2. NP → Det Nd • 3. Nd → N • 4. VP → Vd • 5. Vd → V NP • 6. Vd→ V PP • 7. Vd → V AP • 8. Nd → N PP • 9. PP → Pd • 10. Pd → P NP • 11. AP → Ad • 12. Ad → A • 13. Ad → A PP • 14. Nd → A Nd • 15. Ad → Int Ad • 16. Vd → Vd PP • 17. Nd → Nd PP • 18. Vd → AdvP Vd • 19. Vd → Vd Adv • P20. Vd → V VP
- 53. UG Principles and Parameters • Universal Grammar (UG) provides the basic design for all languages, and each language has its own parameters, or variations on the basic plan – All languages have structures that conform to X- bar schema – All phrases consist of specifiers, heads, and complements – All sentences are headed by T – All languages seem to have movement rules – However, languages have different word orders within phrases and sentences, so heads and complements may be present in different orders across languages
- 54. Sign Language Syntax • The syntax of sign languages also follow the principles of UG and has: – Auxiliaries – Transformations such as topicalization, which moves the direct object to the beginning of a sentence for emphasis, and wh movement – Constraints on transformations • That UG is present in signed languages and spoken languages shows that the human brain is designed to learn language, not just speech.