Transcript Global Desk
SYNTAX Introduction to Linguistics •BASIC IDEAS •What is a sentence? •Grammaticality • • • Grammatical vs. ungrammatical • well formed vs. ill formed • words must conform to specific patterns determined by the syntactic rules of the language based on • syntactic rules NOT based on • what is taught in school • whether it is meaningful • whether you have heard the sentences before. Syntactic categories Lexical categories Phrasal categories •Lexical categories Open lexical categories • nouns • verbs • adjectives • Adverbs Closed lexical categoreis • Pronouns • prepositions • Auxiliary verbs • determiners (articles, demonstratives, quantifiers) •PHRASE STRUCTURE •Phrasal categories • • • Verb phrase (VP) Noun phrase (NP) Prepositional phrase (PP) •Phrase structure (PS) rules • • What are PS rules? • How words of different parts of speech are connected. Different languages have different PS rules • English • An adjective is placed before a noun. • A beautiful woman • French • An adjective is placed either before or after a noun. • Une belle femme ‘a beautiful woman’ • Une femme fatale ‘an attractive woman’ •Writing PS Rules • • • • • • Books • NP->N • Read: An NP is composed of a noun. A book • NP -> Det N John’s book • NP -> Pos N Good books; a good book • NP -> Det Adj N • NP -> Adj N • NP -> (Det) (adj) N Books on the table • NP -> N (PP) The PS rule of an NP • NP -> (Det) (adj) N (PP) •Phrase structure (PS) rules in English • NP -> (Det) (adj) N (PP) • NP -> Pronoun • VP -> ? • AP -> ? • PP -> ? • CP -> COMP (that) S • •S COMP: complementizer=that, if, unless -> ? •Phrase structure (PS) rules in English • NP -> (Det) (adj) N (PP) • NP -> pronoun • VP -> V (NP) (PP) (CP) • AP -> Adj (PP) • PP -> P NP • CP -> COMP (that) S • •S COMP: complementizer=that, if, unless -> NP (Aux) VP •A Tree Diagram S VP NP Det NP N PP V Det P The boy N N from Taiwan knew the answer •What does a tree diagram show? • Speakers’ syntactic knowledge of sentence structure the linear order of the words • the categorization of words into particular syntactic categories (i.e. constituents) • the hierarchical structure of the syntactic categories • •Grow your own trees. • The sun melted the ice. • A fast car with twin cams sped by the children on the grassy lane. • The boy put the toy in the box. • The reporter realized that the senator lied. • A stranger whispered to the Soviet agent on the corner that a dangerous spy from the CIA loved coffee. •What can tree diagrams explain? • Structural ambiguity • long-distance relationships •Structural ambiguity •A sentence may have two interpretations due to different structural compositions of constituents. • Example : • The boy left Mary with a broken heart. •Structural ambiguity S NP Det VP N NP V N PP P The boy left Mary with NP a broken heart •Structural ambiguity (2) **更正** S NP Det VP N NP V PP N P The boy left Mary with NP a broken heart •Long-distance relationshipsThe guy who has two houses and three cars (seem, seems) kind of cute. •How do we know that it is a constituent? • The substitution test • • • Clefts: It is/was X that Y • • • It was in this house [PP] that they had a party _____[PP]. *It was this house [NP/PP?] that they had a party in _____[PP]. The movement test • • • Mr. Smith asked the students to leave. Mr. Smith asked them to leave. They had a party in the house [PP]. In the house [PP] they had a party. The coordination/conjunction test • • They went into the bookstore [VP] and bought a book [VP]. *They went into the bookstore [VP] and a book [NP]. Questions?