Transcript Prove or Disprove…

451 Chapter 5: Syntax
Making it stick together…
Covering Sections 1-3…
Why Syntax?
Key Vocab
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Grammatical (& ungrammatical)
Transformational Grammar
Universal Grammar
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Lexicon
Computational System
Merge
Move
Get Some Exercise
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(ex. 1)
Grammatical or Ungrammatical?
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The pilot landed the plane
The plane landed
The journalist wrote the article
The article wrote
The instructor told the students to read
The instructor suggested the students to read
Syntactic Categories
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Lexical
Nonlexical
- N, V, Adj, Adv
- Articles, Prepositions, etc
Identification Strategies
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Meaning
Inflection
Distribution
Key Vocabulary
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Constituent
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Groups and subgroups of words that
“go together”
Syntactic category
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Constituents that can be substituted for
one another with loss of grammaticality
NP, PP, Art, Conj, S, VP, Adj, Pro…
Get Some Exercise
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(ex. 2)
Identify the category of each word:
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That glass broke suddenly
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My paintings never seem quite right
Don’t forget to supplement coming to class with
reading the textbook & doing the exercises
Syntactic Category: NP
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_________ was given a flag.
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The son of Isabel and Sam
Isabel’s son
The boy
Joe
Identify NPs
Syntactic Category: VP
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Joe __________________.
Finish the sentence
Constituency Tests
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Substitution
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Pronoun
Question Word
Relocation
Conjunction
…. but
Ambiguity
≠ All for 1 & 1 for all
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Phrase Structure Rules
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Define possible constituent groups
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What can a ____ look like…
NP
VP
Etc.
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Enable generalizations
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Describe constituent groups without
long lists of possible words…
Link to phrase structure trees
Phrase Structure Rules: English
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NP
NP
NP
NP
NP
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NP 
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N
Art + N
Art + Adj+ N
Art + Adj2 +N
Pro
{
Joe
the boy
the smart boy
the big smart boy
he
(Art) + (Adj)* + N
Pro
}
Phrase Structure Rules: Cont’d
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NP  Art (Adj)* + N
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(not Standard English)
(can be predicted by the rule…)
Spanish:
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*the boy smart
el muchacho inteligente
?el inteligente muchacho
(default style)
(¿special situations?)
You tell me… a NP ‘default’ rule for Spanish
Write a rule for Korean
The following data is from Korean.
a) Terry-ka ku yeca-lul coahanta.
Terry-NOM that girl-ACC likes
‘Terry likes that girl.’
b) I noin-i hakkyo ey kassta.
this man-NOM school to went
‘This man went to school.’
c) Sue-ka chinkwu eykey chayk-ul ilkessta.
Sue-NOM friend to book-ACC read
‘Sue read the book to a friend.’
(just 1 is OK)
Key Vocabulary
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Constituent structure tree
AKA: Phrase-structure tree
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Diagram of a phrase or sentence that
reduces repetition by the use of syntactic
category labels in the branches of a tree
NP  (Art) + (Adj) + Noun
Noun Phrase
Article Adjective
The
smart
Noun
boy
NP
Art
Adj
N
The smart boy
Get Some Exercise
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Treeing NPs & OtherPs
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The zoo
Always try
Very competent
(ex. 3)
Using Trees: Ambiguity
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The son of Isabel and Sam
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You tell me…
Where is the ‘break’ for each meaning?
Ambiguity Illustrated
NP
NP
Art
PP
N
P
NP
N
the
son
of
Conj. N
Isabel and Sam
Ambiguity Illustrated: Cont’d
NP
NP
NP
art
Conj
PP
N
The son
NP
NP
Prep
N
of
Isabel
N
and
Sam
Ambiguity Resolved
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The trees disambiguate the meaning…
…of course, they do other stuff too…
Verb Phrases & Sentences
More Rules & Trees…
You tell me:
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John found a ball.
John found a ball in the grass.
*John found.
*John found in the grass.
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A VP phrase-structure rule would be:
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VP  Vt + NP (PP)
Key Vocabulary: New
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Subcategorization
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Restricts how lexical items can occur
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Examples:
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Transitive Verb: VP  Vt + (adj)* NP
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Find, love, destroy
Intransitive Verb: VP  Vi (adv)*
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Die, sleep
Key Vocabulary: Review
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Phrase Structure Rules
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Specify grammatical ways of putting
sentences together
Lexical insertion rules
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Match syntactic categories with words or
morphemes at the bottom of a tree
Joe got a flag
IP
NP
N
VP
I
+pst
Joe
NP
Vt
Det
N
got
a
flag
Diagram THIS!
(ex. 4-5)
Start with “Play ball” (Beware the subject here…)
then try “You’re going down, Roberts”
Get Some Exercise
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Are these constituents?
Use Substitution & Movement tests…
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I’ve got [a date] with Paris Hilton
When [does she] arrive?
(ex. 6-7)
Key Vocabulary
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Transformational rule
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an operation that moves, deletes, or
inserts a category
a rule that applies to a syntactic tree to
yield a new syntactic tree.
Transformations
Transformations (Movement)
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CP
Questions
Yes / No
Wh-
IP
Do Insertion
CP =
Complement
Phrase
Surface &
Underlying
Structures…
NP
C
VP
I
V
- pst
Is That seat
is
X
taken
Another Transformation?
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What is the “underlying” sentence?
What should the “tree” look like after transformation?
Complement Clauses
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Key words (English)
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(ex. 9)
That
Whether
If …
This is the house that Jack built…
Sentence embedded in a sentence
Universal
Transformation Safari
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Find at least one TRANSFORMATION
from a naturally occurring source
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Y/N?
WH-?
DO insertion
Relative
Passive
Copy
(or print screen)
and bring to class
Get Some Exercise
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Diagram the following sentences:
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(ex. 10-11)
Who should the director call?
Who should call the director?
HINT:
Only one of the sentences has visible movement…
Additional Notes
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Structure Dependent Rules
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(value of trees)
Surface words ≠ important
Transformational rules  constituents
Head NP agrees with Main VP
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Regardless of intervening structures
Regardless of transformations
Internalized Syntax allows us to:
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produce and understand an infinite set of utterances
distinguish between grammatical and ungrammatical strings
interpret certain strings as well-formed grammatically but illformed semantically
interpret certain strings as well-formed semantically but illformed grammatically
understand the full meaning of a sentence from a string of
words, which may not contain all the words necessary for an
accurate interpretation
perceive when two or more strings are synonymous
(paraphrase)
perceive structural ambiguity in a grammatical string
account for grammatical and logical relations within a sentence
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Just Do It: Provide examples for each of the above…
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Additional Structures
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Coordination
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Pulls two parts together
Relatives
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(section 5…)
Tells more about an NP
Passives
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Changes the focus
De-emphasizes or obscures the ‘actor’
Exercises
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Recommended:
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1-7, 9-11
You can skip 8 & 12-14
Explore the poetry on pages 198-200…
Tomorrow
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Chapter 6: Semantics
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Understand trees,
Focus on concepts