Transcript grammar and syntax

GRAMMAR AND SYNTAX
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* the in bus * bus in the
in the bus
GRAMMAR
: a system of rules which accounts for all
grammatical sequences in a language, or expressed
differently: all the ways that words can be
combined systematically into phrases, clauses and
sentences.
i) Visiting relatives can be boring.
ii) Complaining relatives can be boring.
iii) *Relatives be can visiting/complaining boring.
TYPES OF GRAMMAR
Traditional grammar (grammatical categories;
concord/agreement, number, gender etc)
Pedagogical grammar (‘teaching grammar’)
Reference grammar (the grammar counterpart of a
dictionary)
Theoretical grammar (beyond the specific language)
Mental grammar (our intuitive knowledge of
right and wrong in a language)
Prescriptive grammar (do not end a sentence
with a preposition, do not split an infinitive)
Descriptive grammar (grammar as language
description), which leads on to the descriptive
approach…
Structural analysis (test frames)
The distribution of forms - how is it determined
what forms can go in what frames?
The ___________ is very expensive.
My ______________ costs a lot.
The dog __________________ a lot.
They _________________ porridge every morning.
Constituent analysis
They
eat
oatmeal
porridge
My tall, fat
uncle
drives
a really old car
Teachers
work
every morning
hard
Labeled and bracketed sentences
[[They] [eat [porridge]] [[every] [morning]]]
[[My tall, fat uncle][drives [a
very old car]]]
SYNTAX
: the structure and ordering of components
within a sentence (Gr. 'arrangement')
Chomsky, 1957 Syntactic structures. The goal is to
describe what the individual speaker knows, their
‘internalized language’. A limited number of rules
(phrase structure rules) generate all (an infinite
number of) grammatically correct phrases and
those.
Deep structures (the underlying level)
and surface structures (the structures we
see) should be able to deal with sentences
that look different but do in fact mean the
same thing:
The dog chases the cat.
The cat is chased by the dog.
Sentences that look similar, but are, in
fact, not so similar:
John is easy to please
John is eager to please
The rules of grammar must be able to
handle:
Structural ambiguity: She hit the man
with a stick.
Recursion: I knew that she said that they
had been told that the doctor had …
These structures are shown in tree
diagrams, which use the following
symbols:
S = Sentence
NP = Noun phrase
VP = Verb phrase
N = Noun
V = Verb
PP = Prepositional phrase
Art = Article
PN = Proper Noun
Pro = Pronoun
Adj = Adjective
Adv = Adverb
CP = Complement phrase
Prep = Preposition
→ = rewrites as
( ) = optional
{ } = only one of these constituents can
be used
Lexical rules will ensure that all generated
sentences are grammatical and stop a sentence
like
*Relatives can be complaining boring.
Phrase structure rules generate all possible
sentences.
The following rules:
S → NP VP
NP → Art (Adj) N
VP → V NP
can generate:
S
NP
Art
VP
N
V
NP
Art
N
S
NP
Art
VP
N
V
NP
Art
The
student
eats
a
N
banana
S
NP
Art
VP
N
V
NP
Art Adj N
The
child
bought
the red balloon
What would the tree diagrams for
these two sentences look like?
We met him in the park.
We saw the dog with wild eyes.
Exercise: What would the tree diagrams for
the following sentences look like?
The big cat chases the rat across the room.
The cat chases the rat with big ears.
She hit the man with the stick.
Exercise: What kind of sentences could be
generated by the following phrase
structure rules?
S → NP VP
NP →{(Art) (Adj) N (PP), Pro}
VP → V NP
PP → Prep NP
Recursion is brought about by
complement phrases (CPs):
I know that she said that the doctor
suggested that …
Movement rules change the surface structure,
eg changing a statement to a question.
She is here → Is she here?