Transcript Chapter 7 From word..

Chapter Seven
From Word to Text

Syntax is the study of
the rules governing the
ways different
constituents are
combined to form
sentences in a
language, or the study
of the interrelationships
between elements in
sentence structures.
1. Syntactic relations
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Syntactic relations can be analyzed into
three kinds:
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relations of position
relations of substitutability
relations of co-occurrence
1.1 Positional Relations
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Positional relation, or WORD ORDER, refers
to the sequential arrangement of words in a
language.
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If the words in a sentence fail to occur in a fixed
order required by the convention of a language,
one tends to produce an utterance either
ungrammatical or nonsensical at all.
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Positional relations are a manifestation of
one aspect of Syntagmatic Relations
observed by F. de Saussure.
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They are also called Horizontal Relations or
simply Chain Relations.
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Word order is one of the basic ways to
classify languages in the world:
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SVO, VSO, SOV, OVS, OSV, and VOS.
According to this, we can say there are six types
of language in the world.
English belongs to SVO type, though this does
not mean that SVO is the only possible word
order.
1.2 Relation of Substitutability
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The Relation of Substitutability refers to
classes or sets of words substitutable for
each other grammatically in sentences with
the same structure.
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The ______ smiles.
man
boy
girl
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This is also called Associative
Relations by Saussure, and
Paradigmatic Relations by
Hjemslev.
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To make it more understandable,
they are called Vertical Relations
or Choice Relations.
1.3 Relation of Co-occurrence
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It means that words of different sets of
clauses may permit, or require, the
occurrence of a word of another set or
class to form a sentence or a particular
part of a sentence.
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Relations of co-occurrence partly belong to
syntagmatic relations, partly to paradigmatic
relations.
2. Grammatical construction and its
constituents
2.1 Grammatical Construction
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Any syntactic string of words ranging from
sentences over phrasal structures to words.
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Mary
ate an apple
Mary ate an apple
2.2 Immediate Constituents
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Constituent is a part of a larger linguistic
unit. Several constituents together form a
construction:
The girl ate the apple
the girl
ate the apple
Immediate Constituent Analysis
(IC Analysis)
Immediate constituents are constituents
immediately, directly, below the level of a
construction, which may be a sentence or a
word group or a word. For example, in the
sentence, the girl ate the apple, the girl and ate
the apple are immediate constituents of the
sentence, then in turn, the and girl are the
immediate constituents of the nominal phrase
while ate and the apple are the immediate
constituents of the verbal phrase.
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Immediate constituent analysis, IC analysis for
short, refers to the analysis of a sentence in
terms of its immediate constituents – word
groups, which are in turn analyzed into the
immediate constituents of their own, and the
process goes on until the constructions can be
not be further analyzed. The IC analysis of a
sentence may be carried out with brackets or
shown with a tree diagram.
Tree diagram
S
NP
Det
VP
N
V
NP
Det
N
The girl ate the apple
Bracketing
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Bracketing is not as common in use, but it is
an economic notation in representing the
constituent/phrase structure of a
grammatical unit.
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(((The) (girl)) ((ate) ((the) (apple))))
2.3 Endocentric and Exocentric
Constructions
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Endocentric construction is one whose
distribution is functionally equivalent to
that of one or more of its constituents, i.e.,
a word or a group of words, which serves as
a definable centre or head.
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Usually noun phrases, verb phrases and
adjective phrases belong to endocentric types
because the constituent items are subordinate
to the Head.
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Exocentric construction refers to a group of
syntactically related words where none of
the words is functionally equivalent to the
group as a whole, that is, there is no
definable “Centre” or “Head” inside the
group, usually including
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the basic sentence,
the prepositional phrase,
the predicate (verb + object) construction, and
the connective (be + complement) construction.
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The boy smiled. (Neither constituent can
substitute for the sentence structure as a
whole.)
He hid behind the door. (Neither constituent
can function as an adverbial.)
He kicked the ball. (Neither constituent
stands for the verb-object sequence.)
John seemed angry. (After division, the
connective construction no longer exists.)
2.4 Coordination and Subordination
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Endocentric constructions fall into two main
types, depending on the relation between
constituents:
Coordination
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Coordination is a common syntactic pattern
in English and other languages formed by
grouping together two or more categories of
the same type with the help of a conjunction
such as and, but and or .
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These two or more words or phrases or clauses
have equivalent syntactic status, each of the
separate constituents can stand for the original
construction functionally.
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Coordination of NPs:
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Coordination of VPs:
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[PP down the stairs] and [PP out the door ]
Coordination of APs:
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[VP go to the library] and [VP read a book ]
Coordination of PPs:
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[NP the lady] or [NP the tiger]
[AP quite expensive] and [AP very beautiful]
Coordination of Ss:
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[S John loves Mary] and [S Mary loves John too].
Subordination
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Subordination refers to the process or result
of linking linguistic units so that they have
different syntactic status, one being
dependent upon the other, and usually a
constituent of the other.
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The subordinate constituents are words which
modify the head. Consequently, they can be
called modifiers.
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two dogs
Head
(My brother) can drink (wine).
Head
Swimming in the lake (is fun).
Head
(The pepper was) hot beyond endurance.
Head
Subordinate clauses
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Clauses can be used as subordinate
constituents. There are three basic types of
subordinate clauses:
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complement clauses
adjunct (or adverbial) clauses
relative clauses
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John believes [that the airplane was invented by an
Irishman]. (complement clause)
Elizabeth opened her presents [before John
finished his dinner]. (adverbial clause)
The woman [that I love] is moving to the south.
(relative clause)
3. Syntactic Function
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The syntactic function shows the relationship
between a linguistic form and other parts of
the linguistic pattern in which it is used.
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Names of functions are expressed in terms of
subjects, objects, predicators, modifiers,
complements, etc.
3.1 Subject
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In some languages, subject refers to one of
the nouns in the nominative case.
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The typical example can be found in Latin,
where subject is always in nominative case,
such as pater and filius in the following
examples.
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pater filium amat (the father loves the son)
patrum filius amat (the son loves the father)
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In English, the subject of a sentence is often
said to be the doer of the action, while the
object is the person or thing acted upon by
the doer.
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The semantic roles of subject and object can be
identified as agent (施事) and patient (受事).
But, this definition does not seem to work for
sentences in passive voice.
To solve the problem, we use “grammatical
subject” and “logical subject”.
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Another traditional definition of the subject
is “what the sentence is about” (i.e., topic).
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Again, this seems to work for many sentences,
e.g.,
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Bill is a very crafty fellow.
but in some sentences, the topics are not
subject, e.g.,
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(Jack is pretty reliable, but) Bill I don’t trust.
As for Bill, I wouldn’t take his promises very seriously.
What characteristics do subjects have in English?
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Word order (subject+verb)
Pro-forms (the pronouns are in the nominative
case)
Agreement with verb
Content questions
Tag question
3.2 Predicate
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Predicate: refers to a major constituent in a
binary analysis of sentence structure, predicate
include all constituents (such as verb, object,
complement) other than the subject.
It usually expresses actions, processes, and
states that refer to the subject.
predicator (谓词) is the word for verb or verbs in
a predicate.
3.3 Object
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Object traditionally refers to the “receiver” or
“goal” of an action, and it is further classified
into Direct Object and Indirect Object.
In some inflecting languages, object is marked
by case labels: the accusative case (宾格）for
direct object, and the dative case （与格）for
indirect object.
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In English, “object” is recognized by tracing its
relation to word order (after the verb and
preposition) and by inflections (of pronouns).
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Modern linguists suggest that object refers
to such an item that it can become subject
in a passive transformation.
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Although there are nominal phrases in the
following, they are by no means objects because
they cannot be transformed into passive voice.
试比较：
下列各句中的名词短语的句法功能有什么不
同？
 He broke the window.
 He died last week.
 He changed trains at Fengtai.
3.4 Relation between classes &
functions
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Classes and functions determine each
other, but not in any one-to-one relation.
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A class item can perform several functions.
A function can be fulfilled by several classes.
4. Category
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The term category refers to the defining
properties of the general linguistic units
such as noun and verb. For example, the
categories of the noun include number,
gender, case and countability and the
categories of the verb include tense,
aspect, voice, etc.
4.1 Number
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Number is a grammatical category used for
the analysis of word classes displaying such
contrasts as singular, dual, plural, etc.
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In English, number is mainly observed in nouns,
and there are only two forms: singular and plural,
such as dog: dogs.
Number is also reflected in the inflections of
pronouns and verbs, such as He laughs: They
laugh, this man: these men.
4.2 Gender
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Gender display the contrast between
“masculine : feminine : neuter” for the
analysis of word classes.
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Natural gender vs. grammatical gender
Arbitrary assignment of gender
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English gender contrast can only be
observed in pronouns and a small number of
nouns, and, they are mainly of the natural
gender type.
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he: she: it
prince: princess
author: authoress
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In French, gender is manifested also both in
adjectives and articles.
Sometimes gender changes the lexical
meaning as well, for example, in French:
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le poele (the stove)
la poele (the frying pan)
le pendule (the pendulum)
la pendule (the clock)
4.3 Case
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The case category is used in the analysis of
word classes to identify the syntactic
relationship between words in a sentence.
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In Latin grammar, cases are based on variations
in the morphological forms of the word, and are
given the terms “accusative”, “nominative”,
“dative”, etc.
There are five cases in ancient Greek and eight
in Sanskrit. Finnish has as many as fifteen
formally distinct cases in nouns, each with its
own syntactic function.
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In English, case is a special form of the noun
which frequently corresponds to a
combination of preposition and noun, and it
is realized in three channels:
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inflection (teacher’s)
following a preposition (to a man)
word order (Peter kicked John)
4.4 Agreement
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When two or more words stand in specific
syntactic relationship with one another, the
forms of these words are required to be
characterized by the same category. 当一些
词处于特定的句法关系之中时，它们具有相
同的范畴特征。
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For example, English nouns and verbs, which
function as subject and predicate, should be in
agreement in number.
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Agreement of number between nouns and verbs:
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This man runs.
These men run.
The bird flies.
These birds fly.
5. Phrase, Clause and Sentence
Sentence
Clause
Phrase
Word
Sentence: traditional approach
simple
Sentence
complex
non-simple
compound
Sentence: functional approach
Yes/no
Interrogative
Indicative
whDeclarative
Sentence
Jussive
Imperative
Optative
Basic sentence types: Bolinger
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Mother fell. (Nominal + intransitive verbal)
Mother is young. (Nominal + copula + complement)
Mother loves Dad. (Nominal + transitive verbal +
nominal).
Mother fed Dad breakfast. (Nominal + transitive
verbal + nominal + nominal)
There is time. (There + existential + nominal)
Basic sentence types: Quirk
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SVC
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SVA
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SV
SVO
SVOC
SVOA
SVOO
Mary is kind.
a nurse.
Mary is here.
in the house.
The child is laughing.
Somebody caught the ball.
We have proved him wrong.
a fool.
I put the plate on the table.
She gives me expensive presents.
6. Recursiveness
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Recursiveness mainly means that a phrasal
constituent can be embedded within another
constituent having the same category, but it has
become an umbrella term such important linguistic
phenomena as coordination and subordination,
conjoining and embedding, hypotactic and paratactic.
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All these are means to extend sentences.
How long can a sentence be?
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Theoretically, there is no limit to the
embedding of one relative clause into
another relative clause, so long as it does
not become an obstacle to successful
communication.
The same holds true for nominal clauses
and adverbial clauses.
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I met a man who had a son whose wife sold
cookies that she had baked in her kitchen that
was fully equipped with electrical appliances
that were new …
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John’s sister
John’s sister’s husband
John’s sister’s husband’s uncle
John’s sister’s husband’s uncle’s daughter, etc.
that house in Beijing
the garden of that house in Beijing
the tree in the garden of that house in Beijing
a bird on the tree in the garden of that house in
Beijing
6.1 Conjoining
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Conjoining: coordination.
Conjunctions: and, but, and or.
6.2 Embedding
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Embedding: subordination.
Main clauses and subordinate clauses.
Three basic types of subordinate clauses:
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Relative clause: I saw the man who had visited
you last year.
Complement clause: I don’t know whether
Professor Li needs this book.
Adverbial clause: If you listened to me, you
wouldn't make mistakes.
7. Text and discourse
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The development of modern linguistic
science has helped push the study of
syntax beyond the traditional sentence
boundary.
Linguists are now exploring the syntactic
relation between sentences in a paragraph
or chapter or the whole text, which leads to
the emergence of text linguistics and
discourse analysis.
7.1 Sentential Connection
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Hypotactic (subordinate clauses):
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You can phone the doctor if you like. However, I very
much doubt whether he is in.
We live near the sea. So we enjoy a healthy climate.
Paratactic (coordinate clauses):
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In Guangzhou it is hot and humid during the summer. In
Beijing it is hot and dry.
He dictated the letter. She wrote it.
The door was open. He walked in.
7.2 Cohesion and cohesiveness
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Cohesion is a concept to do with discourse or text
rather than with syntax. It refers to relations of
meaning that exist within the text, and defines it as
a text.
Cohesiveness can be realized by employing various
cohesive devices:
 conjunction
 ellipsis
 lexical collocation
 lexical repetition
 reference
 substitution, etc.