Introduction to

linguistics: Syntax
November 2, 2023
  Students will be able to define syntax

Learning  Students will be able to describe the fact that syntactic categories
consist of lexical and phrasal categories
objectives  Students will be able to distinguish lexical categories from phrasal
categories
  Syntax is a branch in linguistics that studies sentence patterns of
What is languages

syntax?  It includes studying how words are put together to form phrases
and clauses/sentences
 Maria saw the man that was standing behind the moon
 Maria saw the man that was standing behind the moon
  Behaviorism
 Imitate – repeat – reinforce
Language  Innateness (Chomsky)
Acquisition
 LAD
Input (Lang Acquisition Output
Device)
 LAD

A few sentences Universal Grammar Output

Word Order

SVO
VSO
SOV
…….
 Mee
 Nota ani naine
 Petatas saya makan
 O – S –V
Universal  A set of rules innate of all human language
Grammar
  Observationally adequate grammar
 Accounts for observation in the data
 Descriptively adequate grammar

Objectives of  Abservation+acceptability judgement - Generalization

 Explanatorily adequate grammar
Grammar
 Abservation+acceptability judgement +Generalization – Language
Descriptions Acquisition
 Descriptive Grammar/Rules
 Prescriptive Grammar/Rules
 Can I go to the toilet?
 Can you swim?
 No, I can’t
 I hope you can
 May I go toilet?
  Words are made up of smaller parts, i.e. morphemes
 Morpheme: The smallest meaningful unit
 Per-
 -an
Morphology  Cakap
 Percakapan
 -s
 Student
 Students
  What make up phrases and clauses?
Syntax  What are the building blocks of phrases and clauses?
  Syntactic categories are the building blocks of syntactic structures
(phrases or clauses)
Syntactic  Two subtypes of syntactic categories:
Categories  Lexical categories and phrasal categories
 Each lexical category has its corresponding phrasal category
 Lexical categories Phrasal categories
Noun (N) Puppy, boy, man, Noun Phrase Man, the man,
soup, happiness, (NP) the man with a
fork, kiss, pillow telescope
Verb (V) Find, run, sleep, Verb Phrase (VP) See, always see,
throw, realize, rarely see the
see, try, want, man, often see
believe the man with a
Lexical and Preposition (P) Up, down, Prepositional
telescope
Over, nearly
Phrasal across, into, Phrase (PP) over, nearly over
from, by, with, the hill
Categories over, at
Adjective (A) Red, big, happy, Adjective Phrase Happy, very
candid, hopeless, (AP) happy, very
fair, idiotic, lucky happy about
winning

Adverb (Adv) Again, always, Adverbial Phrase Brightly, more

brightly, often, (AdvP) brightly, more
never, very, fairly brightly than the
sun
 Many of these categories maybe familiar to you
 Traditionally referred to as parts of speech
 There are other less familiar categories: determiner,
demonstratives, quantifiers, tense
 Determiner: a, an, the
 Demonstrative: this, that, these, those
 Quantifier: each, every
 Tense: modal auxiliaries (may, might, can, could, will, would, shall,
should)
 Tense and determiner have grammatical function rather than
descriptive meaning
 E.g. determiners tell whether the noun is definite or not (a boy or
the boy);
 E.g. demonstratives specify the proximity of the person/object to
the context (this boy or that boy)
  Each lexical category usually has a meaning related to it
 Verbs usually refer to actions, events, and states (kick, marry, love)
How to  Adjectives refer to qualities or properties (lucky, old)
 Common nouns refer to general entities (dog, table, elephant,
identify lexical house)
and phrasal  Proper nouns refer to specific individual (Diego Maradona, Donald
Trump) or specific place (Stadion Papua Bangkit, Stadion Lukas
categories? Enembe) or to specific things that people give names to (Coca-
Cola, Sutra)
  But the relationship between syntactic categories and meaning is
more complex
 E.g. ‘Seeing is believing’
 Seeing and believing are nouns but they are not entities
 Some nouns refer to events (marriage, destruction)
 Some nouns refer to states (happiness, loneliness)
 John’s father is nice
 John fathered the boy
But…
 John’s father country is Argentina
 Prepositions usually specify a location (the boy is in the room, the
cat is under the bed)
 But this is not always the case
 Some prepositions (by, about, of, with) often have other than
locational meanings
 Because of the difficulty to assign precise meaning to lexical
categories
 Linguists define categories not based on meanings but on where
they occur in a sentence, what categories co-occur with them, and
their morphological characteristics
 Nouns co-occur with determiner (the boy) and can take the plural
marker (boys)
 Verbs can co-occur with adverbs (run fast) and modals (will run,
can run) can take tense marker (running)
  Syntactic categories are part of a speaker’s knowledge of syntax
Practice  The following is a list of expressions
A A bird
B The red guitar
C Have a nice day
D With a balloon
E The woman who was laughing
F It

G John
H Went
  Insert each expression into these three contexts
 Remember: only NP can fit in all three contexts
 What/who I heard was _________________.
 Who found __________________?
 ________________ was seen by every one.
Contexts A A bird
B The red guitar
C Have a nice day
D With a balloon
E The woman who was laughing
F It
G John
H Went
 Thank you!
 SYNTAX:
CONSTITUENCY
Monday, 6/11/2023
Learning Objectives
◦ Describe that sentences have internal structure
◦ Explain and identify constituency
◦ Explain and practice the constituency tests
Check this out
◦ The students in the dorm room are eating from a plate

◦ Yosep eats the apple

◦ The apple eats Yosep

Internal structure
◦ The students in the dorm room are eating from a plate

◦ The students

◦ Students in
Yes/no Questions
◦ The man who is winning has been cheating
◦ Has the man who is winning been cheating?
Yes/no questions
◦ John is nice
◦1 2 3
◦ Is John nice
◦ Try a hypothesis
◦ Hypothesis: Move 2nd word to the first
◦ The man is nice
◦ Man the is nice (terrible sentence!)
◦Hypothesis: move the verb
◦Try: The man is eating
◦Eating the man is?
◦Hypothesis: Move the auxiliary verb
◦Is the man eating?
◦ How about this
◦ The man has been eating
◦ Which auxiliary? First or second?
◦ Has the man been eating?
◦ Hypothesis: Move the first auxiliary verb
How about this?
◦ The man who is winning has been cheating
◦ What is the first auxiliary verb?
◦ Has the man who is winning been cheating?
◦ So what is the rule?
◦ Hypothesis: move the first auxiliary verb after the
subject is finished
◦ So there is structure in the sentence
◦ Structure in a sentence is called the constituent
◦ A constituent is a word or a group of word that
functions as a unit
◦ John is nice
Constituency Tests
◦ Replacement
◦ Movement
◦ Modification
◦ Ellipsis (for verbs)
◦ Stand-alone
◦ Coordination/conjunction
Replacement
◦ The guy in the store is my friend
◦ The person the store is my friend
◦ The guy in the store is my friend
◦ The guy in prison is my friend
◦ The guy in the store is my friend
◦ The guy there is my friend
◦ The guy in the store is my friend
◦ John in the store is my friend
◦ The guy in the store is my friend
◦ John is my friend
◦ John is my friend
◦ John is nice
◦The guy in the store is my friend
◦The guy in the store smells
◦We can show constituency using brackets
◦The guy in the store is [my friend]
◦The guy in the store [is [my friend]]
◦The guy in [the store] [is [my friend]]
◦The guy [in [the store]] [is [my friend]]
◦[The guy [in [the store]]] [is [my friend]]
◦[The guy [in [the store]]] [is [my friend]]
1 2
Warning!!
◦ Using 1 test is not enough
◦ We must try other tests
Movement
◦ Clefting
◦ Preposing
◦ Passive
Clefting
◦It was/is ______________ that _____________
◦The man bought a new phone at the store
◦It was at the store that the man bought a new
phone
◦The man bought a new phone at the store
◦It was new phone at that the man bought a
the store
◦ The man bought a new phone at the store
◦ It was the new phone that the man bought at the store
Preposing
◦Moving a constituent to the beginning of the
sentence
◦I like hard boiled eggs
◦*Hard boiled is what I like eggs
◦Hard boiled eggs is what I like
Passive
◦ Take object and make it the subject
◦ Albert kissed the girl
◦ *girl was kissed by Albert the
◦ Albert kissed the girl
◦ *kissed the Albert was girl by
◦ Albert kissed the girl
◦ The girl was kissed by Albert √
Therefore…
◦The girl forms a constituent or a unit
◦It moves as a unit
Modification
◦ Limiting the meaning of the word you modify
Banana
Yellow banana
Stand-alone test
◦ Yemima bought bread and eggs
◦ What did Yemima buy?
◦ bread and eggs √
◦ *bought bread
◦ *bread and
Ellipsis/Deletion
◦ Only for verbs
◦ Markus didn’t try to finish his homework and neither
did Siti
◦ Markus didn’t try to finish his homework and neither
did Siti (try to finish her homework)
◦ The entire verb phrase functions as a unit, therefore
a constituent
Coordination/Conjunction
◦If you can coordinate or group two things
together then they are of the same type
◦Elis and the man sitting next to Mary are
nice people
◦Elis is an NP
◦the man sitting next to Mary is also an NP
Exercise
◦Susan got [a passionate love letter from
Adrianus]
◦Test 1: stand alone
◦What did Susan get?
◦Test 2: replacement
◦Susan get it
◦Test 3: movement (clefting)
◦It was…………that……
◦It was a passionate love letter from Adrianus that
Susan got
◦Conclusion: the group of words [a passionate
love letter from Adrianus]
◦ is a constituent
Your Assignment
◦Do constituency tests to determine whether the
strings of words provided are constituents or not
◦https://forms.gle/e56Yu9AH5XihJrwN7
Thank you!
SYNTAX: PHRASE
STRUCTURE RULES
Monday, 13/11/2023
Learning Objectives
◦ Lexical and functional categories
◦ Noun phrases
◦ Phrase structure rules
◦ Tree diagram
Lexical vs functional categories
Lexical categories: provide the
content of the sentence
◦Nouns
◦Adjectives
◦Verbs
◦Adverbs
Types of nouns
➢R-expressions (common nouns, proper names)
❖Common nouns: dog, water, fire, eyes, banana
❖Proper names: John, Maria, Yakobus
➢Pronouns (she, he, it, they, you, etc.)
➢Anaphors (herself, himself, themselves, etc.)
Functional categories: provide
grammatical information; function
like glue
◦ Determiners
◦ Prepositions (on, in, behind, below, under, at, to, by, for, between, from,
about)
◦ I’m thinking about my parents
◦ Complementizers (if, that, whether)
◦ I know that Gideon likes wine
◦ Conjunctions (and, or, although, but, therefore, even though, because,
neither…..not, either….or)
◦ Negations (not)
◦ Tense (auxiliaries: have, has, do, does, am, is , are, did, modals: can, may, will,
could, would, might, should)
2 weeks ago:
◦ Noun in traditional definition: person, place, thing
◦ Example: anger
◦ The boy can’t contain his dog.
◦ The boy can’t contain his anger.
◦ Linguists define categories not based on meanings but
on where they occur in a sentence, what categories
co-occur with them, and their morphological
characteristics
Look at this sentence!
◦ The yinkish dripner blorked quastofically into the nindin with the
pidibs

◦ Yinkish :N V Adj Adv

◦ Dripner :N V Adj Adv
◦ Blorked :N V Adj Adv
◦ Quastofically :N V Adj Adv
◦ Nindin :N V Adj Adv
◦ Pidibs :N V Adj Adv
◦
Noun Phrase
◦ Morphological form
◦ Syntactic distribution
Morphological distribution of nouns
◦ Derivational suffixes: -ment, -ness, -ity, -ty, -tion, -ation, -ist, -ant……
◦ Inflectional suffixes: -s, -es, -en, -ren, -a, -i, -er, -est
◦ Happy (adjective)
◦ Happiness (noun)
◦ Happier (adj)
◦ Happiest (adj)
◦ Special (adj)
◦ Specialist (noun)
◦ Dog (noun)
◦ Dogs (noun)
Syntactic distribution of nouns
◦ Appear after a determiner
◦ The cat
◦ Appear after an adjective
◦ The yellow cat
◦ Can appear as subject or direct object of a sentence
◦ We can test this
◦ Example
◦ I saw people run all over the place
◦ I saw John run all over the place
◦ Nouns can be negated by ‘no’
◦ No students were eaten by the monster
Constituency
◦ Constituent: a group of words that function together
as a unit
◦ One way to represent constituents is to use brackets
◦ The student loved his literature professor
◦ The student seem to form a constituency
◦ They two words are a constituent
◦ (The student) loved his literature professor
◦ Another way to represent this unit is by a tree structure or a tree diagram
Constituents are embedded one
inside another
◦ (TP(NP(DThe) (Nstudent)) (VP(Vloved) (NP(Dhis) (AdjP(Adjliterature) (Nprofessor))))
PHRASE STRUCTURE
RULES
Nov 16, 2023
Phrase Structure Rules
◦ Parts of speech/word classes
◦ Constituent (a group of words that functions as a unit)
◦ In generative grammar: remember the innateness theory?
◦ We are born with a pre-programmed language device that can
generate rules
◦ This is the reason why human are able to produce an infinite
number of sentences
◦ And understand an infinite number of sentences despite (these
sentences are) never being heard before
Phrase Structure Rules (PSR)
◦ Noun Phrase
◦ Short: NP
◦ To generate a PSR for an NP we must ask:
◦ What must occur in an NP?
◦ What is optional?
◦ What can be repeated?
◦ In what order must an NP exist?
What must occur?
◦ John is handsome
◦ John is an NP that functions as subject of the sentence
◦ John can stand alone
◦ John is a noun
◦ Therefore, an NP can occur only by itself as a noun
◦ An NP must have a noun
◦ A noun must occur
◦
What is optional?
◦The governor is ill
◦The country is collapsing
◦Bananas are cheap
◦The beautiful girl is nasty
◦A good obedient teacher must wear skirts
◦John is handsome
◦Everything else is optional
Noun Phrase (NP)
◦ We give the name of the phrase NP
◦ Based on the element that must occur
◦ We call this element the HEAD of the phrase
◦ The HEAD is the element that must occur in a phrase
◦ The smart student passed the exam
◦ *The smart passed the exam
◦
PSR
◦XP XYZ
◦XP: label for the constituent
◦ :‘consists of’
◦XYZ: elements that make up the constituent
PSR for NP
◦ NP N
◦ This rule generates tree like:
◦ NP

◦ N
What is optional?
◦John is handsome
◦The governor is ill
◦The country is collapsing
◦The girl is nasty
◦A teacher must wear skirts
◦Everything else is optional
PSR for NP
◦ NP DN
◦ NP (D) N
◦ The parentheses indicate that the element in them is
optional
◦ The man is nice.
◦ *The is nice.
◦ John is nice.
◦
Can we change the position?
◦ The man is nice.
◦ Man the is nice.
◦ NP (D) N
PSR for NP
◦The big box
◦An adjective can also modify the noun
◦NP DN
◦NP (D) (Adj) N
◦The parentheses indicate that the element in
them is optional
◦
What can be repeated?
◦the big ugly green box
◦We can have more than one adjectives
◦Adjectives can be repeated
◦We can add this to the rule
◦ NP (D) (Adj+) N
◦Can we repeat the determiner?
◦ The man
◦ A man
◦ The a man
◦Can we repeat the noun?
◦Spiderman Ironman are nice
◦No