Scribd
Upload
53 views

Lingg 206: Grammatical Analysis I Angelina A. Aquino

This document provides an overview of the key concepts and evolution of generative grammar from Chomsky's early work developing transformational grammar to his more recent Government and Binding framework. It begins by defining generative grammar and its basic concepts. It then outlines Chomsky's early theories including Standard Theory, Extended Standard Theory, X-Bar Theory, and Revised Extended Standard Theory. Finally, it discusses Government and Binding Theory and its core concepts like universal grammar. Applications to analyzing Philippine languages are also briefly mentioned.

Uploaded by

AkinoTenshi
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
53 views

Lingg 206: Grammatical Analysis I Angelina A. Aquino

This document provides an overview of the key concepts and evolution of generative grammar from Chomsky's early work developing transformational grammar to his more recent Government and Binding framework. It begins by defining generative grammar and its basic concepts. It then outlines Chomsky's early theories including Standard Theory, Extended Standard Theory, X-Bar Theory, and Revised Extended Standard Theory. Finally, it discusses Government and Binding Theory and its core concepts like universal grammar. Applications to analyzing Philippine languages are also briefly mentioned.

Uploaded by

AkinoTenshi
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 19

Lingg 206: Grammatical Analysis I

Angelina A. Aquino
I. What is generative grammar?
- overview and key concepts
II. Chomsky’s standard theory and its evolution
- standard theory
- extended standard theory (EST)
- X-bar theory
- revised extended standard theory (REST)
III. Government and binding theory
- overview and key concepts
- universal grammar
IV. Applications to Philippine languages
- grammar: a set of rules for grouping and ordering symbols
+ a lexicon of symbols and words

- language: set of all sentences “generated” by the grammar


- may be natural (e.g. English) or formal (e.g. mathematics)

- well-formedness determined by the intuition of an “ideal” native speaker

- competence vs. performance (compare langue vs. parole)


- phrase structure rules (constituency grammar)

- example: S → NP VP
NP → (Det) N
VP → V (NP)
Birds fly. *Birds fly over the rainbow.
Jun teaches language. *Jun teaches the Japanese language.
The cat wears a hat. *The cat is in the hat.
That car hugged its dog. An monkeys swims Shakespeare.
“What's the point of trying to figure out what the sentences
must be, except to see what they mean? The evidence is all
semantic evidence. The facts are: Look, we understand the
sentences this way, that way, the other way. Now how must
language be working so as to yield those results?”
- Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Chomsky, 1965)

- two levels of syntactic structure: deep and surface


Fiona is easy to please. It is easy to please Fiona.
Fiona is eager to please. It is true that Fiona wishes to please.
Fiona seems to be successful. It appears that Fiona is successful.
Fiona tries to be successful. Fiona attempts to be successful.
- deep structure → transformations → surface structure
- obligatory transformations (necessary to represent full semantic structure)
e.g. Bill kisses Mary Bill may kiss Mary
Bill kissed Mary Bill has kissed Mary
- optional transformations (such as passivization, subject-auxiliary inversion)
e.g. Mary was kissed by Bill Has Bill kissed Mary?
- generalized transformations (generate complex sentences out of simple ones)
e.g. Sue said _ + Bill kissed Mary Sue said Bill kissed Mary.

- kernel: sentence which has only undergone obligatory transformations


- i.e. simplest sentence forms, “seeds of meaning”
Base component
(categories + lexicon)
↓
Deep structure → Semantic component
[+/- human], [+/- parent], [+/- female], ...
↓
Transformations
(T1, T2, ..., Tn)
↓
Surface structure → Morpho-phonemic component
“mother” → /ˈmʌðəɹ/, “father” → /ˈfɑːðəɹ/, ...
- subcategorization restrictions
- lexicon specifies syntactic behavior

- lexical items require or allow certain types of arguments

e.g. work [NP ___ ] Pete worked.

eat [NP ___ (NP)] Don ate oysters.

wait [NP ___ (for NP)] Stan waited for Peggy.


- Remarks on nominalization (Chomsky, 1970)

- increase in range of semantic rules


- deep structure does not solely determine semantic representation
- surface-level semantic features include:
- prosodic features (e.g. stress, intonation)
- quantifiers (e.g. “all”, “some”, “every”)
- sentence focus, presuppositions
- more general syntactic constraints
- replaced phrase structure rules with X-bar schema
- Remarks on nominalization (Chomsky, 1970)
- X-bar Syntax: A Study of Phrase Structure (Jackendoff, 1977)

- syntactic categories are projected from lexical heads


- syntax assembly rules:
- an X Phrase consists of an optional specifier and an X-bar
XP → (specifier) X’
- one kind of X-bar consists of an X-bar and an adjunct (optional rewrite rule)
(X’ → X’ adjunct)
- another kind of X-bar consists of an X and any number of complements
X’ → X (complement, ...)
- large amount of sentence structure, highly layered (“tall”) trees
- endocentric sentence structure
- all phrasal units necessarily have a head
[NP [A big] [N house] ]
[VP [V sing] [N songs] ]
[AP [Adv very] [A long] ]
- inflected phrase stands as head of the sentence
- compare exocentric representations
we saw him [in the park]
*we saw him [park]
*we saw him [the park]
- Conditions on Transformations (Chomsky, 1973)
- Reflections on Language (Chomsky, 1975)

- three levels of structure: deep, shallow, and surface


- two levels of semantics: logical form, and full semantic representation
e.g. “Everyone speaks two languages.”
a. there are two languages that everyone speaks
[two languages]j [S everyonei speaks tj ]
b. everyone is bilingual
[everyone]i [S ti speaks [two languages]j]
- single transformation rule: move α
- “move any constituent anywhere”
- shift towards more general principles governing all languages
- trace theory of movement
- elements that have been moved leave a “trace” or marker of their former position
- trace: position originally occupied; remains bound to its constituent
e.g. “Annie will show the forest to Andrew”
→ [Who]2 [will]1 [Annie t1 show the forest to t2 ]?
→ *Who will Annie should show the forest to Parley?
- On Binding (Chomsky, 1980)
- Lectures on government and binding (Chomsky, 1981)

- government: principle whereby movements are restricted by trace constraints


- binding: conditions which relate or bind sentence elements
e.g. co-referencing of noun phrases (“John1 visited his1 mother”)
- three levels of structure: D-structure, S-structure, and logical form
D-structure → move α → S-structure → move α → logical form
- main GB theory + various sub-theories
e.g. X’ theory, θtheory, case theory, bounding theory, control theory
- principles: types of grammatical statements which are much broader than rules
e.g. basic sentence structure, existence of major lexical categories
- parameter: a type of variation across languages
e.g. adjacency - English: adjectives precede nouns
- Irish: adjectives follow nouns
pro-drop - Italian, Irish: pronouns are excluded for certain verbs
- universal: a property claimed to hold true for all human languages
formal universals: necessary conditions for grammatical construction, operation
e.g. rules, transformations, ordering restrictions
substantive universals: primitive elements required for linguistic analysis
- X-bar analysis
- Phrase structure and grammatical relations in Tagalog (Kroeger, 1991)
- Saturating syntax: Linkers and modification in Tagalog (Scontras & Nicolae, 2014)

- Government and binding paradigm


- Tagalog: a null subject language with variant morphology (M. & S. McHale, 1992)
- On raising in Tagalog (Nakamura, 2000)

You might also like