SYNTAXIntroduction to Linguistics

•BASIC IDEAS

•What is a sentence?

• A string of random words?• If it is a sentence, does it have to be meaningful?

•Grammaticality• Grammatical vs. ungrammatical

• well formed vs. ill formed• words must conform to specific patterns determined

by the syntactic rules of the language• based on

• syntactic rules• NOT based on

• what is taught in school• whether it is meaningful• whether you have heard the sentences before.

•Lexical categories

•PHRASE STRUCTURES

• Verb phrase (VP)• Noun phrase (NP)• Prepositional phrase (PP)

•Phrasal categories

•Phrase structure (PS) rules • What are PS rules?

• How words of different parts of speech are connected.• Different languages have different PS rules

• English•An adjective is placed before a noun.

•A beautiful woman• French

•An adjective is placed either before or after a noun.•Une belle femme ‘a beautiful woman’•Une femme fatale ‘an attractive woman’

•Writing PS Rules

•Phrase structure (PS) rules in English

•NP -> (Det) (adj) N (PP)•NP -> Pronoun• VP -> ?• AP -> ?• PP -> ?• CP -> COMP (that) S

• COMP: complementizer=that, if, unless• S -> ?

•Phrase structure (PS) rules in English

•A Tree Diagram

NP

N PPDet

The boy from Taiwan

VP

NP

V

N

knew answer

S

P N

Det

the

•What does a tree diagram show?• Speakers’ syntactic knowledge of sentence structure• the linear order of the words• the categorization of words into particular syntactic

categories (i.e. constituents)• the hierarchical structure of the syntactic

categories

•Grow your own trees.• The sun melted the ice.• The boy put the toy in the box.• The reporter realized that the senator lied.• A fast car with twin cams sped by the children on the grassy lane.• A stranger whispered to the Soviet agent that a dangerous spy from the CIA loved coffee.

•What can tree diagrams explain?• Structural ambiguity

•Structural ambiguity • A sentence may have two interpretations due to different structural compositions of constituents. • Example :

• The boy left Mary with a broken heart.

•Structural ambiguity

NP

NDet

The boy a broken heart

VP

NP

V

N

left

S

Mary

PP

P NP

with

•Structural ambiguity (2)

NP

NDet

The boy

a broken heart

VP

NPV

N

left Mary

PP

P NP

with

S

Questions?