Transcript Introduction to Syntax

Introduction to Syntax
Linear structure
Hierarchical structure
Ambiguity
Syntax is:
Syntax, n. []The study of grammatical
relations between words and other units within the sentence.
• The study of sentence formation
• Subconscious grammatical
knowledge
• Word order
What do children know?
• Children, when acquiring language
learn the following from the
language surrounding them:
– Word order (SVO, SOV, etc.)
– N-Adj or Adj-N
– What do you think (what’s) in there?
• How do kids master this so
quickly?
Universal Grammar? (UG)
• Child hears the surrounding language
• Detects patterns and matches them
with already stored structures
• Switches on those that match; switches
off those that don’t (subconsciously)
• Kids seems to develop, instead of learn
language.
(Human children construct language!
Clark p. 222 (Heny)
)
What do native speakers know?
• Grammaticality
• Implied interpretations
• Ambiguity
• Synonymy
Grammaticality Judgments:
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We went to my grandmother’s house.
Visiting relatives can be a nuisance.
The children might being sing.
We fed her snail poison.
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
Me and Beth are watching a movie.
Swedes like fish more than Italians.
She ain’t got nothing to hide.
Grammaticality Judgments:
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We went to my grandmother’s house.
Visiting relatives can be a nuisance.
The children might being sing.
We fed her snail poison.
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
Me and Beth are watching a movie.
Swedes like fish more than Italians.
She ain’t got nothing to hide.
A: ambiguous,
*: ungrammatical,
#: grammatical, but nonsensical,
%: grammatical in a non-standard v.
Ambiguous?
• I scratched the dog with a stick
I love linguistics!!!
I’m a stick
I’m a dog (I
think!)
Do I mean this?
• I scratched (the dog with a stick)
Nice doggie!
Or do I mean this?
• I scratched (the dog) with a stick.
scratch
scratch
The two meanings are a
result of:
HIERARCHICAL STRUCTURE
Sentences are more than just ordered sequences of words.
They have internal hierarchical structure as well.
scratched the dog with a stick
dog has stick
scratched the dog with a stick
I have stick
Unavoidable Ambiguity
• Why can’t we convey these internal
hierarchical structures and avoid
ambiguity?
• LINEAR ORDER
– Human verbal communication is limited by
linear production. Consequently, sentences
are organized linearly.
Two kinds of ambiguity:
• She called her boyfriend from
Australia.
– STRUCTURAL AMBIGUITY
• We went down to the bank
yesterday
– LEXICAL AMBIGUITY
Basic Word Order
• SVO (English, Chinese)
– The boy saw the man.
• SOV (Russian, Turkish, Japanese)
– Pensive poets painful vigils keep.
(Pope)
• VSO (Irish, Arabic, Welsh)
– Govern thou my song. (Milton)
Basic Word Order
• OSV
(Jamamadi & Yoda)
– When nine hundred years you
reach, look as good you will not.
– So…put subject in front of the
verb, would you? Fail this test
you will.
• OVS
(Apalai - Amazon basin)
• VOS
(Malagasy (Madagascar)
Word Order
(cont’d)
Word Order
(cont’d)
How would you say…
• English (SVO)
– Susie
brings
coffee
• Japanese (SOV)
– sushi-ga
– Susie
co:hi:-o
coffee
mottekuru
bring
• Malagasy (VOS)
– Entin’
– bring
kafe
coffee
Susie
Susie
Two principles of sentence
organization
• 1. LINEAR ORDER
– not only a limitation, we actually make use
of the linearity of the language
• In English, limited morphology forces
us to use word order to distinguish
subject from object.
– Tom chased Jerry.
– Jerry chased Tom.
Two principles of sentence
organization
• 2. HIERARCHICAL STRUCTURE
– As we saw with the ambiguous sentence,
this structure is ‘invisible’ upon first glance.
– However, there are tests we can perform to
discover the hierarchical structure of
sentences.
Constituency
CONSTITUENT
a group of words in a sentence that behave syntactically
and semantically as a unit.
dog has stick
scratched the dog with a stick
I have stick
scratched the dog with a stick
How to determine
constituency
• Semantic intuitions
– sometimes, we just know that certain
strings of words go together as a unit.
• Constituency Tests (more reliable)
– tests that can be applied to string of words
in a given sentence to determine if the
string is a constituent or not.
Next ….
• Constituency tests
• Phrase Structure Rules