451 Chapter 5: Syntax

Making it stick together…

Covering Sections 1-3…

Why Syntax?

Key Vocab

Grammatical (& ungrammatical) Transformational Grammar Universal Grammar

Lexicon Computational System Merge Move

Get Some Exercise (ex. 1)

Grammatical or Ungrammatical?

The pilot landed the plane The plane landed

The journalist wrote the article The article wrote

The instructor told the students to read The instructor suggested the students to read

Syntactic Categories Lexical - N, V, Adj, Adv Nonlexical - Articles, Prepositions,

etc

Identification Strategies Meaning Inflection Distribution

Key Vocabulary

Constituent Groups and subgroups of words that

“go together”

Syntactic category Constituents that can be substituted for

one another with loss of grammaticality NP, PP, Art, Conj, S, VP, Adj, Pro…

Get Some Exercise (ex. 2)

Identify the category of each word:

That glass broke suddenly

My paintings never seem quite right

Don’t forget to supplement coming to class with reading the textbook & doing the exercises

Syntactic Category: NP

_________ was given a flag.

The son of Isabel and Sam Isabel’s son The boy Joe

Identify NPs

Syntactic Category: VP

Joe __________________.

Finish the sentence

Constituency Tests

Substitution Pronoun Question Word

Relocation Conjunction …. but

Ambiguity≠ All for 1 & 1 for all

Phrase Structure Rules

Define possible constituent groups What can a ____ look like…

NPVP

Etc.

Enable generalizations Describe constituent groups without

long lists of possible words…

Link to phrase structure trees

Phrase Structure Rules: English NP N Joe NP Art + N the boy NP Art + Adj+ N the smart boy NP Art + Adj2 +N the big smart

boy NP Pro he

NP (Art) + (Adj)* + N

Pro{ }

Phrase Structure Rules: Cont’d NP Art (Adj)* + N

*the boy smart (not Standard English) (can be predicted by the rule…)

Spanish: el muchacho inteligente (default style)

?el inteligente muchacho (¿special situations?)

You tell me… a NP ‘default’ rule for Spanish

Write a rule for Korean (just 1 is OK)

The following data is from Korean.

a) Terry-ka ku yeca-lul coahanta.Terry-NOM that girl-ACC likes‘Terry likes that girl.’

b) I noin-i hakkyo ey kassta.this man-NOM school to went‘This man went to school.’

c) Sue-ka chinkwu eykey chayk-ul ilkessta.Sue-NOM friend to book-ACC read‘Sue read the book to a friend.’

Key Vocabulary

Constituent structure treeAKA: Phrase-structure tree

Diagram of a phrase or sentence that reduces repetition by the use of syntactic category labels in the branches of a tree

NP (Art) + (Adj) + Noun

NP

Art Adj N

The smart boy

Noun Phrase

Article Adjective Noun

The smart boy

Get Some Exercise (ex. 3)

Treeing NPs & OtherPs The zoo Always try Very competent

Using Trees: Ambiguity The son of Isabel and Sam

You tell me… Where is the ‘break’ for each meaning?

Ambiguity Illustrated

NP

NP PP

Art N P NP

N Conj. N

the son of Isabel and Sam

Ambiguity Illustrated: Cont’d

NP

NP Conj NP

NP PP NP

art N Prep N N

The son of Isabel and Sam

Ambiguity Resolved

The trees disambiguate the meaning……of course, they do other stuff too…

Verb Phrases & Sentences

More Rules & Trees…

You tell me:

John found a ball. John found a ball in the grass. *John found. *John found in the grass.

A VP phrase-structure rule would be: VP Vt + NP (PP)

Key Vocabulary: New

Subcategorization Restricts how lexical items can

occur

Examples: Transitive Verb: VP Vt + (adj)* NP

Find, love, destroy Intransitive Verb: VP Vi (adv)*

Die, sleep

Key Vocabulary: Review

Phrase Structure Rules Specify grammatical ways of putting

sentences together Lexical insertion rules

Match syntactic categories with words or morphemes at the bottom of a tree

Joe got a flagIP

NP VP

N I NP

+pst Vt Det N

Joe got a flag

Diagram THIS! (ex. 4-5)

Start with “Play ball” (Beware the subject here…)

then try “You’re going down, Roberts”

Get Some Exercise (ex. 6-7)

Are these constituents? Use Substitution & Movement tests… I’ve got [a date] with Paris Hilton When [does she] arrive?

Key Vocabulary

Transformational rule an operation that moves, deletes, or

inserts a category a rule that applies to a syntactic tree

to yield a new syntactic tree.

Transformations

IP

NP VP

I V- pst

That seatistakenX

Transformations (Movement) Questions

Yes / No Wh-

Do Insertion

CP = Complement Phrase

Surface &UnderlyingStructures…

CP

C

Is

Another Transformation?

What is the “underlying” sentence? What should the “tree” look like after transformation?

Complement Clauses (ex. 9)

Key words (English) That Whether If …

This is the house that Jack built…

Sentence embedded in a sentence Universal

Transformation Safari Find at least one TRANSFORMATION

from a naturally occurring source Y/N? WH-? DO insertion Relative Passive

Copy (or print screen) and bring to class

Get Some Exercise (ex. 10-11)

Diagram the following sentences:

Who should the director call? Who should call the director?

HINT: Only one of the sentences has visible movement…

Additional Notes (value of trees)

Structure Dependent Rules Surface words ≠ important Transformational rules constituents

Head NP agrees with Main VP Regardless of intervening structures Regardless of transformations

Internalized Syntax allows us to: produce and understand an infinite set of utterances distinguish between grammatical and ungrammatical

strings interpret certain strings as well-formed grammatically

but ill-formed semantically interpret certain strings as well-formed semantically but

ill-formed grammatically understand the full meaning of a sentence from a string

of words, which may not contain all the words necessary for an accurate interpretation

perceive when two or more strings are synonymous (paraphrase)

perceive structural ambiguity in a grammatical string account for grammatical and logical relations within a

sentence

Just Do It: Provide examples for each of the above…

Additional Structures(section 5…)

Coordination Pulls two parts together

Relatives Tells more about an NP

Passives Changes the focus De-emphasizes or obscures the

‘actor’

Exercises

Recommended: 1-7, 9-11 You can skip 8 & 12-14 Explore the poetry on pages 198-

200…

Tomorrow

Chapter 6: Semantics Understand trees, Focus on concepts