Transcript Chapter 4
Chapter 4 Syntax (From Word to Text) Jabberwocky …… By Lewis Carroll ’ Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. Many of the words in the poem are playful nonce words of Carroll's own invention, without intended explicit meaning. When Alice has finished reading the poem she gives her impressions: “It seems very pretty,” she (Alice) said when she had finished it, “but it’s RATHER hard to understand !” (You see she didn’t like to confess, even to herself, that she couldn’t make it out at all.) “Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas— only I don’t exactly know what they are! However, SOMEBODY killed SOMETHING: that’s clear, at any rate—” —Lewis Carroll from Through the LookingGlass and What Alice Found There, 1872 Introduction In Lewis Carroll’s poem Jabberwocky, there are many non English words. But by reading the poem carefully, we soon find that we can actually classify each word on the basis of its grammatical ending and its position in the sentence. For example, borogoves is a noun because it ends in –s, and because it follows the ,and slithy is an adjective because it comes between the and the plural noun toves. What is Syntax? The use of language ,like games, has its own rules. To play the games well, you should know the rules. Words, word groups and phrases, and clauses cannot occur at random, they have to follow certain rules of ordering. Such grammatical endings as –ing and –s are studied in morphology as inflectional morphemes and the range of position in which a particular word occurs is studied in syntax, another subfield of linguistics. 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. In short, syntax is a branch of linguistics that studies the rules that govern the formation of sentences, which is concerned with the rules how words are put together in certain patterns to form different clauses 句法研究的是语言中不同成分组合句子的支 配规则，或者句子结构中各要素间的相互关 系。 In this chapter, we are concerned with composition of sentences by introducing some of the most categories of words in English as well as some simple rules that govern the organization of these categories into larger units. Categories Category in some approaches refers to classes and functions in its narrow sense ,e.g., noun, verb, subject, predicate, noun phrase, verb phrase, etc. More specifically, it refers to the defining properties of these general units: the categories of the noun, include number, gender, case and countability; and of the verb, for example, tense, aspect, voice, etc. 范畴这一术语在一些学派中指的是狭义的词 类和词语的功能，例如名词、动词、主语、 谓语、名词短语、动词短语等。更具体一些， 范畴指的是这些一般性单位的甄别性特点： 例如名词的范畴包括数、性、格和可数性； 而动词范畴则含有时、体、式等。 In our textbook, categories refers to a group of linguistic items which fulfill the same or similar functions in a particular language such as a sentence, a noun phrase or a verb. In this section, we are talking about the categories in the second sense 范畴指的是某一种特定的语言中执行相同或 相近功能的一组语言项目，如句子、名词短 语、或者动词。 Word-level categories The most central categories to the syntactic study are the word-level categories. 对于句法研究最核心的范畴是词层次范畴。 Here word level categories are divided into two kinds: major lexical categories and minor lexical categories. Major lexical categories play a very important role in the sentence formation. They differ from minor lexical categories in that they are often assumed to be the heads around which phrases are built. Major lexical categories are Noun, Verb, Adjective, and proposition. While determiners (Det), Degree words (Deg), Qualifier (Qual), Auxiliary (Aux) and Conjunction (con) belong to the Minor lexical categories Word categories are not so clear-cut as shown above because some words belong to more than one category. For example, in English, the word book have two word forms-the singular book and the plural books. Together they constitute the category of NUMBER indicated by the inflectional endings -s. Similarly, the present work and the past worked of the word work form the category of TENSE indicated by the suffix –ed. Apart from number and tense, they are CASE and GENDER for nouns and adjectives, and ASPECT,VOICE and MOOD for verbs. These grammatical categories are essential part of the inflectional languages such as French and Russian. The term GRAMMATICAL CATEGORY ,in more general use, refers to certain properties of word classes often represented by inflectional endings. To determine a word’s category, three criteria are usually employed, namely, meaning, inflection and distribution. MEANING Word categories often bear some relationship with its meaning. For example, nouns typically denote entities such as human beings and objects like Sally and Jennet, mobile and helicopter. Verbs, characteristically designate action, sensations and states like run, hate and exist. To determine a word’s category by its meaning only is often not reliable. Sometimes we resort to other criteria .The second criterion to determine a word’s category is inflection. Words of different categories take different inflections. Nouns take the plural affix –s Verbs take the past tense affix –ed and progressive affix –ing . Adjectives take comparative affix –er and superlative affix –est Although inflection is very helpful in determining a word’s category, it doesn’t suffice. Some words don't take inflections DISTRIBUTION The last and more reliable criterion of determining a word’s category is its distribution. That is what type of elements can co-occur with a certain word. For example, noun can typically appear with a determiner like the girl and a card, verbs with an auxiliary such as should stay and will go ,and adjectives with a degree word such as very cool and want desperately. Thus, a word’s distributional factors together with in formation about its meaning and inflectional capacities help identify its syntactic category. PHRASE PHRASE is a single element of structure containing more than one word, and lacking the subject-predicate structure typical of clauses. Traditionally, it is seen as part of structural hierarchy, positioned between clause and word. 短语(PHRASE)是含有一个以上词语的单一 结构要素，它没有分句所特有的主谓结构 (subject-predicate structure)。从传统上讲， 短语被视为层级结构的一部分，位居分句和 词语之间。 Therefore, first , a phrase must be a group of words which form a constituent. Second, a phrase is lower on the grammatical hierarchy than clauses. More precisely, simple clauses may (and usually do) contain phrases, but simple phrases do not (in general) contain clauses. 因此，短语应该是构成一个成分(constituent) 的一组短语。 其次，短语在语法层级上要低于分句。 更精确地说，简单分句可以（通常的确）包含 短语，但是简单短语（一般）不包含分句。 So we can see that in a sentence words are grouped together .These groups are grammatical units .Big units contain some smaller ones and the smaller ones may in turn contain some still smaller ones. These are units ,subunits and sub-subunits, each corresponding to certain syntactical categories. These units can be ordered in terms of five hierarchical：/,haiE‘ra:kikl/ ranks: 1.sentences(each consists of one or more clauses) → 2.clauses(each consists of one or more phrases) → 3.phrases(each consists of one or more words) → 4.words(each consists of one or more morphemes) → 5.morphemes Syntactic units that are built around a certain word category are called PHRASE, the category of which is determined by the word category around which the phrase is built. If the word around which the phrase is built is a noun, then the phrase is a noun phrase and so on. 围绕某一次范畴构成的句法单位称为短语。 它的范畴由该短语构成时所围绕的词的范 畴决定。短语构成所围绕的词是名词，那 么该短语就是名词短语依此类推。 In English syntactic analysis, the most commonly recognized and discussed phrasal categories are noun phrase (NP), verb phrase (VP) ,adjective phrase (AP) and propositional phrase (PP). Phrase Categories and Their Structures Phrases can consist of just one word ,but more often they contain other elements as well. Whether formed of one or more than one word, they consist of two levels, phrase level and word level. NP N VP AP V A PP ←phrase level P ←word level Phrases that are formed of more than one word usually contain the following elements: head, specifier and complement. The word which a phrase is formed is termed head. The words on the left side of the heads are said to function as specifiers. The words on the right side of the heads are complements. 由多个单词构成的短语通常包括以下成分： 中心语、标志语和补语。短语围绕所构成的 词叫做中心语。出现在中心语左边的词叫做 标志语，出现在中心语右边的词叫做补语。 By a closer observation of PS rules, one may find that many of the PS rules have a similar formulation. For example,NPs always contains an N,PPs a P and VPs a V,ec.In another word,XPs always contain an X,which stand for either N,or V,or A or P. The X is the head of the XP,and other categories in the XP are there either for the specification (限 定) or complmentation（补充） of the head X. Phrase Structure Rule As we have seen, a certain word can only concur with certain other words. There must be certain grammatical mechanism that ensures the appropriate positions that specifiers, heads, and complements occupy in phrase structure. 如我们所见，某一特定的词只能与另一类 特定的词组一起出现。这其中必定存在着 某种语法机制确保标志语、中心语和补语 在短语结构中处于恰当位置的。 Such special type of grammatical mechanism that regulates the arrangement of elements that make up a phrase is called phrase structure rule （PS rule）. 这种规定构成一个短语的成分的排列的特殊 语法机制类型被称作是短语规则。 consists of ” “branches into NP → VP → AP → PP → (Det) (Qual) (Deg) (Deg) N V A P Other complement options are available (PP) (NP) (PP) (NP) … … … … The parentheses the element in them is optional 箭头可以读作“由…构成”或者“扩 展为…”，括号表明其中的成分可以 省略，每个规则后面的三点表示可以 选择加入其他的补语。 XP Specifier NP → VP → AP → PP → (Det) (Qual) (Deg) (Deg) X Head N V A P Complement (PP) (NP) (PP) (NP) … … … … The XP rule: XP→ (specifier) X (complement) [NP the lady] or [NP the tiger] [VP go to the library] and [VP read a book] [PP down the stairs] or [PP out the door] [AP quite expensive] and [AP very beautiful] [S John loves Mary] and [S Mary loves John too]. [NP A man, a woman, a boy, a cat and a dog] got into the car. The common syntactic patterns are formed by grouping together two or more categories of the same type with the help of conjunction such as “and”, “or” and “but”. 在英语中，有些结构是借助于象and或者是or 这样的连词将同种类型的两个或者是多个成 分连接起来而构成的。 Coordination Rule Such phrases are called coordinate structures and this phenomenon is called coordination. 这样的短语称为并列结构，这种现象叫做并列。 Such a structure is usually considered to be doubly headed, since both of the conjoined elements function as heads of the larger unit. That is , in a coordinate sentence, two or more S constituents occur as daughters and co-heads of a higher S. 人们通常认为这种结构有两个中心成分，因为两个连接成分都能 作为更大的单位。这就是说，在一个并列句中，两个或者更多的 句子成分是更高一级句子的姊妹和并列的中心成分。 The four important properties of Coordination (P46) Coordination occupies its own place in the creativity of language: i.e.recursiveness. Recursiveness Recursiveness means that a phrasal constituent can be embedded within (i.e.,be dominated by) another constituent having the same category –a means to extend a sentence. 一种短语成分可以被镶嵌即被支配与另一个 属于同一范畴的成分中。 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. Coordination and Subordination Endocentric constructions fall into two main types, depending in the relation between constituents: Coordination and Subordination. 根据组成成分之间的关系，向心结构可分为 并列与从属。 Subordination 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. 从属指的是将语言单位连接以使各单位具备不同句 法地位的过程和结果，其中一个单位依赖于另一个 单位，且通常是该单位的一个成分。 Endocentric and Exocentric Constructions 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. 向心结构的分布和它的一个或多个成分的分 布在功能上相同，该成分是一个词或一组词， 是整个结构的核心或中心。 Usually noun phrases, verb phrases and adjective phrases belong to endocentric types because the constituent items are subordinate to the Head. 名词短语、动词短语和形容词通常都属于向 心结构，因为各成分从属于短语中心词。 These two oldest stone bridges Head Will be leaving Head very late Head Exocentric EXOCENTRIC construction is just the opposite of endocentric construction. It 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. Exocentric construction usually includes basic sentence, prepositional phrase,predicate (verb+object) construction,and connective (be+complement) construction. 离心结构恰好与向心结构相反。它指的是一 组句法上相关的词中没有一个词在功能上与 整个词相同，也就是说，词组内没有“核心” 或“中心词”。离心结构通常包括：基本句， 介词短语，谓语结构，和连词结构。 The boy smiled. (Neither constituent can substitute for the sentence structure as a whole.) 两个成分均不能替代整个句子结构 He hid behind the door . (Neither constituent can function as the adverbial.) 两个成分均不能单独起到状语的功能 He kicked the ball. (Neither constituent stands for the verb-object sequence .) 两个成分均不能单独表示动-宾排列。 John seemed angry. (After division, the connective construction no longer exists.) 分开后，连词结构不复存在 Phrase Elements Specifiers The syntactic category of the speicfier differs depending on the category of the head. If the heads are Ns, the specifiers are determiners. If the heads are Vs, the specifiers are qualifiers . If the heads are As and Ps, then the specifiers are degree words. Specifier Heads determiner N the tree this book no water Qualifier V always fail never surrender seldom drink Degree A/P less interesting Almost in 标志语的句法范畴因中心语范畴的不同而不 同。限定语是作为名词的标志语，修饰语则 是典型地作为动词的标志语，而程度词则作 为形容词（有时是介词）的标志词。 Complements Complements are themselves phrases and provide information about entities and locations whose existence is implied by the meaning of its head. They are attached to the right of the head.6(P,48 4-1) 补语自身就是短语，它们为中心词意义中所 必须包含的实体与位置提供了信息。在英语 中，它们依附在中心词的右边。 Subcategorization The information about a word’s complement is included in the head and termed SUBCATEGORIZATION. 有关词的信息是包括在中心语之中的，被称为次范 畴化。 We may revise our earlier XP rule as follows, using an asterisk after the complement to indicate that one or more of these elements is permitted. A certain lexical item requires a certain type of complements. Therefore, we can revise our earlier XP rule, using an asterisk after the complement to indicate that one or more of these elements is permitted. 一个特定的词汇项要求一种特定的补语。因此我们 可以对我们先前的XP规则进行修订，用补语后面星 号表示多个这样的成分是被允许的。 XPR1 The XP Rule (revised) XP→ (Specifier) X (Complement﹡) Complementizers Miss Hebert believes that she will win. The underlined part in the above sentence is the complement of the verb believe. It is a sentence itself but not an independent one since it is introduced by a conjunction function as a phrase. Miss Hebert believes that she will win. Words like that which introduces the sentence complement are termed complementizers (Cs). The sentence she will win introduced by complementizer that is a complement clause. The whole underlined part in the sentence is called a complement phrase (CP) Modifiers Modifiers which specifies optionally expressible properties of heads. 修饰语详细地说明了中心语具有选择性的可 表达特征。 The most common modifiers of Ns are adjective phrases and those of verbs are adverb phrases and prepositional phrases which describe manner and time XPR2 To make modifiers fit into the phrase structure ,the original XP rule can be expanded as follows so that it allows the various options. The Expanded XP Rule XP→ (Specifier)(Mod) X (Complement﹡)(Mod) Sentences (The S Rule) Many linguists nowadays believe that sentences, like other phrase ,also have their heads. They take an abstract category inflection (dubbed “infl”) as their heads ,which indicates the sentence's tense and agreement. Like other phrases, Infl takes an NP (the subject) as its specifier and VP category as its complement. Transformation We will explain some language phenomena such as yes-no question, whquestion and passive voice, which involve a syntactic movement and discuss the changes that must be made to accommodate them. Auxiliary movement/Do insertion Deep structure and surface structure Wh-movement Move and constraints on transformations Auxiliary movement/Do insertion To form yes-no question An overt infl form-auxiliary movement An invert form-Do insertion Auxiliary movement/Do insertion According to the XP rule, the auxiliary is the head of a sentence which takes a VP category as its complement on the right and an NP, the subject ,as its specifier on the left. The yes-no question structures being considered are built in two steps. In the first step, the usual XP rule is used to form a structure in which the auxiliary occupies its normal position in Infl, between the subject and VP. The second step is in forming yes-no question requires a transformation, a special type of the rule that an element from one position to another. A transformation known as inversion moves from the auxiliary from the infl position to the left of the subject. The X-bar Theory is extended to sentences by introducing a category Complimentizer (COMP) into the PS rules to indicate the subordinators of any dependent clauses, such a that,which,who,whether,what ,if for, etc., or the inverted auxiliaries in yes-no questions. X-bar理论还可以适用于句子，这是要在PS 规则中引入标补语（COMP）这个范畴，以 表示that、which 、who 、whether、 what、 if 、for 等从句中的主从连词，或者yes-no 问句中倒装的助动词 And a yes-no question, such as “Are you the new teacher” 像“Are you the new teacher”这样的yes-no 问句可以表示为： SCOMP S are you t the new teacher And to generate a sentence, we always start with its deep structures, and then transform it into its corresponding surface structure. Deep structures is generated by phrase structure rules (PS rules) while surface structures are derived from their deep structures by transformational rules (T-rules). The whole process of the dynamic study can be represented by the following diagram: Deep structures PS rules T-rules Surface structures Deep structure D1:The turkey itself is ready to eat something. (the turkey is the logical subject of to eat) D2 :The turkey as a dish is ready for people to eat. (the turkey is the logical object of to eat) Surface structure The turkey is ready to eat. The distinction between deep and surface structures enables us to explain the difference between the following pair of sentences, which appear to have the same surface structures syntactically: John is eager to please. John is easy to please. We simply point out that they have two distinct deep structures and the syntactic difference is obliterated( removed 除去) by the application of certain T-rules. Their deep structures may be roughly presented as: S NP S VP V Someone please John is A easy S NP N John VP V A is eager S John please someone The two sentences have similar surface structure. But in spite this similarity the grammar of the two is quite different. “John” has a different logical relationship to “please” in the two sentences. In the first sentence, though it is not apparent from the surface order, “John” functions as the direct object of the verb “to please” ;the sentence means :it is easy for someone to please John. Whereas in the second sentence “John” functions as the subject of the verb “to please”;the sentence means :John is eager that he pleases someone. It cannot be paraphrased as “﹡It is eager to please John”or “﹡Pleasing John is eager”. Deep structure specifies these relationships: a.(Someone pleases John) is easy; b.John is eager (John pleases someone) John expects mother to bring a present. John persuades mother to bring a present. 这两个句子的表层结构（surface structure） 是相同的，因为都包含名词+动词+名词+带 有标记 to 的动词不定式+冠词+名词。 但是两个句子的深层结构不同， 因为句（1）可转换成为： (3) John expected that mother would bring a present. 但句（2）却不能转换为： （4）﹡John persuaded that mother would bring a present. 两个句子的不同可以用下图表示： （1a）John expected mother to bring a present. （2a）John persuaded mother to bring a present. 从上图可以看出，区别于动词expected 和 persuaded 与它们后面成分的关系的性质。 （2 a）中persuaded 仅仅和mother发生了关 系。 A sentence with structural ambiguity can be also explained by giving two different deep structures . For example, the ambiguous sentence John likes dogs more than Mary. has two distinct deep structure sentences: John like dogs more than Mary likes dogs. John like dogs more than John likes Mary. When the affirmative sentence “Jack sold his linguistics textbooks to Jill after the final examination” is transformed into “When did Jack sell his linguistics textbooks to Jill?” three transformational rules are applied. They are Do-insertion, Subject-aux Inversion and wh-movement. (武汉大学2002年考研试题) Now the XP Rule is really a general rule that can cover all phrase structure rules. Likewise ,a general rule is given to cover all the transformation rules. It is referred to as Move α, in which α(alpha) stands for any element that can be moved form one position to another in the deep structure. XP规则的确成了能够涵盖所有短语结构规则的 总规则。同样地，也提出了一条能够覆盖所有 转换规则的总规则，称为α移动，希腊字母α 代表任何在深层结构中可移动的位置的成分。 After the application of Move α , certain constituents are moved from their original positions. In order to present in the surface structure the semantic information carried by these original positions in the deep structures ,an “empty” category “Trace”, symbolized by t ,is introduced to indicate the “trace” left behind in the place any constituent formally occupied before the movement. This is already illustrated by the example “Are you the new teacher” in the previous discussion. 应用了α移动之后，有些成分就从原来的位置移走。 为了在表层结构中体现这些成分在深层结构中本来 的位置的语义信息，就引入了一个“空”范畴，叫 做“移迹”，写作t，表示任何成分从原来占据的位 置移走后的留下的“痕迹”。 Transformational-generative grammar In the 1950s,the school of linguistic thought known as transformational-generative grammar received wide acclaim through the works of Noam Chomsky. Chomsky postulated a syntactic base of language (called deep structure), which consists of a series of phrase-structure rewrite rules, i.e., a series of (possibly universal) rules that generate the underlying phrase-structure of a sentence, and a series of rules (called transformations) that act upon the phrase-structure to form complex sentences. The end result of transformationalgenerative grammar is a surface structure that, after the addition of words and pronunciations, is identical to an actual sentence of a language . All the languages have the same deep structure, but they differ from each other in surface structure because of the application of different rules for transformations , pronunciation, and word insertion. Another important distinction made in TG grammar is the difference between language competence (the subconscious control of a linguistic system) and language performance (the speaker’s actual use of language). Although the first work done on TG grammar was syntactic, later studies have applied in the theory, to the phonological and semantic components of language.