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Introduction To Syntax Constituents Presentation 1

The document introduces syntax and syntactic analysis, including determining sentence constituents, breaking sentences into smaller parts through top-down and bottom-up analysis, and classifying units like morphemes, words, and phrases. It also discusses constituency tests to determine syntactic structure.

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Bojana Jovanovska
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26 views

Introduction To Syntax Constituents Presentation 1

The document introduces syntax and syntactic analysis, including determining sentence constituents, breaking sentences into smaller parts through top-down and bottom-up analysis, and classifying units like morphemes, words, and phrases. It also discusses constituency tests to determine syntactic structure.

Uploaded by

Bojana Jovanovska
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Introduction to Syntax:

Constituents

What is syntax or syntactic analysis?


a. Determining the relevant component parts of a sentence
b. Describing these parts grammatically

 Constituents (component parts)


a. Breaking down the sentence into its constituents
b. Assigning some grammatical label to each constituent, stating what type of constituent
(grammatical/syntactic category) it is, and what grammatical/syntactic function it has.
 Top-down analysis – the sentence is broken down into smaller and smaller constituents.
sentence – largest unit of syntactic description clauses
phrases (groups)
words
morphemes – the smallest unit of syntactic description
 Bottom-up analysis – constituents at different levels combine to form larger units.
 The purpose of syntax to discover the ways in which constituents combine to form the structure
of sentences.
Traditional hierarchy of sentence constituents:

SENTENCE CLAUSE PHRASE WORD MORPHEME

E.g. The snake killed the rat and swallowed it.

CLASSES OF UNITS:

Classes of morphemes:

The smallest meaningful and functional unit in a word.

 Free vs. bound


house -s
 Lexical vs. grammatical
house -s
 Inflectional vs. derivational
houses household

Classes of words:

 nouns
 verbs
 adjectives
 adverbs
 prepositions
 pronouns
 articles
 conjunctions
 Open classes: Admit new members into the vocabulary
nouns
verbs
adjectives
adverbs
 Close classes: Do not easily admit new members
prepositions
pronouns
articles
conjunctions

Classes of groups/phrases:

Groups/phrases are classified according to the class of the word operating as the main element (the
head). The head cannot be omitted. The head can replace the whole structure. Prepositional phrase (PP)
both elements are obligatory: on the floor.

 noun phrases (NP): wonderful films by Fellini


 verb phrases (VP): will return
 adjective phrases (AdjP): quite good at languages
 adverbial phrases (AdvP): very fluently indeed

CONSTITUENCY TESTS:

a. Anne saw the man in the service station.


b. Anne saw the man in the service station.

 Coordination:
Anne saw the man in the service station and the woman in the shop.
Anne saw the man in the service station and in the shop.
 Wh-questions:
Who did Anne see? - The man in the service station.
Where did Anne see the man? - In the service station.
 Clefting:
It was the man in the service station that Anne saw.
It was in the service station that Anne saw the man.
 Wh-clefting:
The one Anne saw was the man in the service station.
Where Anne saw the man was in the service station.
 Passivisation:
The man in the service station was seen by Anne.
The man was seen by Anne in the service station.
 Fronting:
The man in the service station Anne saw.
In the service station Anne saw the man.
 Pronominalisation:
Anne saw him.
Anne saw him in the service station.

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