© BTexact Technologies 2001 Syntax Wu Heping MA Program in Linguistics and Language Teaching Northwest Normal University

© BTexact Technologies 2001

Syntax

Wu HepingMA Program in Linguistics and Language Teaching

Northwest Normal Universityhttp://wuhpnet.googlepages.com/linguistics

http://group.google.com/group/linguistics_nwnuLanzhou·2006

http://wuhpnet.googlepages.com/linguistics


Key Points Highlighted

Syntax Types of Grammar American structuralism and its brief history IC Analysis Syntactic Categories Lexical Categories Chomsky and UG


Syntax

Syntax: the study of the structure of sentences and the grammatical rules governing the way words are combined to form sentences.


Types of Grammar

Prescriptive Grammar Descriptive Grammar Universal Grammar


Prescriptive Grammar

Traditional Grammar and the prescriptive approach: Grammar as ‘linguistic etiquette’, i.e. the identification of the best/proper structures to be used;


Descriptive Grammatical Rules

Descriptive rules are more general and more basic than prescriptive rules in the sense that all sentences of a language are formed in accordance with them, not just the subset of sentences that count as correct or socially acceptable.


Prescriptive Rules

Grammar is a collection of rules concerning what counts as socially acceptable and unacceptable language use. These rules in question primarily concern the proper composition of sentences in written language.

- Don’t start a sentence with a conjunction- Don’t end a sentence with a preposition- Don’t use sentence fragments- Don’t use dangling participles- Don’t use a plural pronoun to refer back to a singular noun; etc.

e.g. Over there is the guy who I went to the party with


Descriptive Grammar

Rules of descriptive grammar have the status of scientific observations, and they are intended as insightful generalizations about the way that human language is used in fact, rather than about how it ought to be used.

- Articles precede the nouns they belong to- Relative clauses follow the noun that they modify- Prepositions precede their objects


Grammatical sentences

An ungrammatical sentence is conventionally prefixed with an asterisk (*) while the grammatical sentences are usually not specifically marked.

- ( ) Over there is guy the who I went to party the with

- ( )Over there is the man I went to the party with guy

- ( )Over there is the guy who I went to the party with

- ( )Over there is the guy with whom I went to the party


Prescriptive vs. Descriptive

Rules of etiquette or laws of society

Rules about correct or socially accepted sentences

Rules explicitly taught Based on the more favored

variants- …The verb SHOULD agree

in number with the logical subject

There’s some boxes left on the porch There are some boxes left on the porch

Rules of scientific observations

Rules about all sentences of a language

Rules followed effortlessly and consistently

Document all variants without discrimination

- …the verb CAN agree in number with EITHER the expletive subject OR with the logical subject


Universal Grammar

Grammar as a form of internal linguistic knowledge that operates in the appropriate production and comprehension of natural languages.


Goals of a theory of grammar

- Universality: a theory of grammar should provide us with the tools needed to describle the grammar of any natural language adequately.

- Descriptive adequacy: a grammar of a given language has descriptive adequacy if it explains observed language data and the intuitions of native speakers about the grammaticality of sentences of a language

- Explanatory adequacy: a theory of grammar has explanatory adequacy if it explains how native speakers of a language can arrive at the knowledge of that language.

- Learnability: an adequate linguistic theory must provide adequate grammars which are learnable by young children in a relatively short period of time. i.e., it must account for the uniformity and rapidity of language acquisition, given the poverty of stimulus.


American Structuralism

A brief history How is descriptive linguistics done? IC Analysis


American Structuralism: A brief history

Descriptive linguistics is the study and analysis of spoken language. The techniques of descriptive linguistics were devised by German American anthropologist Franz Boas and American linguist and anthropologist Edward Sapir in the early 1900s to record and analyze Native American languages.

Franz Boas: Handbook of American Indian Languages (1911- He saw grammar as a description of how human speech in a

language is organized. A descriptive grammar should describe the relationships of speech elements in words and sentences.

Leonard Bloomfield, - best known for his commitment to linguistics as an independent

science and his insistence on using scientific procedures. - His major work, Language (1933) is regarded as the classic text of

structural linguistics, also called structuralism. Norm Chomsky

- had studied structural linguistics, was seeking a way to analyze the syntax of English in a structural grammar.

- This effort led him to see grammar as a theory of language structure rather than a description of actual sentences.


How is descriptive linguistics done?

A corpus of data Segmentation Identification of the phonemes Which phonemes can combine to form

morphemes How morphemes combine into phrases and

sentences.


IC analysis

The basic concern of the descriptive approach is to investigate the distribution of forms in a language. The method used is one of substitution.

Constituent: a grammatical unit which is part of a larger grammatical unit -- e.g., sentence = noun phrase + verb phrase; noun phrase = determiner + noun; "subject", ”verb", "determiner" and "noun" etc. are constituents

IC analysis is designed to show how small constituents in a sentence combine to form larger constituents.

My || parents | bought ||| two tickets || at ||| Christmas.


More exercises on IC analysis

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously John found a fly in the soup the young king who gave up his throne the man from the city in the little country from

Western Europe


Labelled Tree Diagram and Bracketing

S

NP VP

Pron N VP PP

V NP P N

Det N

My parents bought two tickets at Christmas

[S[NP [Pron my][N parents]]VP[VP[V bought]NP[Det two][N tickets]]PP[P at] [N Christmas]]]]

Three aspects of a speaker’s syntactic knowledge are explicitly represented in tree diagrams:

- The linear order of the words in the sentence- The groupings of words into syntactic categories - The hierarchical structure of the syntactic categories


Syntactic categories

A family of expressions that can substitute for one another without loss of grammaticality is called a syntactic category.

- The cat chases the mouse. - The dog chases the mouse- The policeman chases the mouse. - The mother mouse chases the mouse.

If words and phrases could not be assigned to a small group of categories, it would be very hard to learn or use a language.


Syntax: Lexical Categories

Lexical Categories: - every word is a member of a category.- a word’s category type determines the kind of phrase it

can form- a phrase is a word or string of words that functions as a

unit in a sentence, built around a head- Every language has specific phrase structure rules

determining how phrases can be combined to form sentences



Noun (N):- real, imaginary, abstract things- In English, if nouns refer to countable things, the

regular plural is made by suffixing -s/-es- In English they can be paired with articles and

demonstratives EX: the book, this book, that book, etc.

- In English they can be modified with descriptive words (adjectives)


Noun Phrases (NP)

NP

Det N

the student

[NP[Det the [N student]]

NP NP

Det A N N

the controversial book it

Evidence that NPs are syntactic units comes from the fact they can often be replaced by a single word such as the pronoun they or it

- The students read the controversial book. - The students read it. - *The students read the controversial it.



Verb (V):- refer to states of affairs and events- express time, in most languages take a specific forms

corresponding to the time of the event EX English: walk expresses past by adding -ed

- express manner (aspect) of event, in many languages take a specific form corresponding to the completedness of event.

EX English: walk expresses ongoing action by adding -ing


Verbal Phrase (VP)

VP

V NP

Det N

drop the ball

[VP [V drop NP[Det the][N ball]]]

VP

V PP

P NP

Det N

trip on the bat

[VP[V trip [PP[P on[NP[Det the[N bat]]]]

Evidence that VPs are syntactic units comes from the fact they can often be replaced by the word(s) did (it).

- The catcher dropped the ball, and the pitcher did (it) too.



Preposisions (P): Express roles- Instrument

EX Eng: with, He cut the bread with the knife- Possessor

EX Eng: of, Monday is the best day of the week.- Spatial, directional and Temporal relations

EX English: The food was on the table before it fell to the floor.


Prepositional Phrase PP

P NP

Det N

in the park

The substitution test confirms that PP is a unit since it can be replaced by a single word like there.

- The team practiced in the park, and Lisa practised there, too.

- *The team practiced in the park, and Lisa practised there the park, too.



Adjectjective (A):- describe things that nouns refer to- In English can be used in a sentence with the verb be:

EX English: He is happy. They should be ripe.- In English can be modified with degree adverbs:

EX English: He is very happy. They should be completely ripe.- In English have comparative form by adding -er:

EX English: happi-er rip-er


Adjectival Phrases (AP) AP

Adv A

very intelligent

[AP [Adv very] [A intelligent]]

An adjectival phrase can be replaced by the word so. - Linda is very intelligent, and Mark appears so too. - * Linda is very intelligent, and Mark appears very so

too.



Adverbs (Adv): - Manner of action

Ex Eng: quickly, He ran quickly.- Attitude of speaker

EX Eng: unfortunately, Unfortunately,he cut the bread. - Temporal frequency

EX Eng: soon, They’ll be here soon.- Can be modified by “very” in English


Syntax definitions, cont.

Determiner: a closed set of morphemes that “specify” nouns, indicating definiteness or indefiniteness. Includes articles plus other morphemes (a, an, the those, these, many,most, some)

Degree word: very, completely (type of adverb)


Lexical categories

Major Lexical categories

Examples

Noun (N) Pierre, butterfly

Verb (V) Arrive, discuss

Adjective (A) Good, tall

Preposition (P) To, in, near

Other Lexical categories

Examples

Determiner (Det)

The, this, these

Auxiliary (Aux) Will, can, may

Pronoun (Pro) He, she, her, his

Adverb (Adv) Yesterday, silently

Conjunction (Con)

And, or



Head (of a phrase): The constituent fundamental to the phrase, from which the phrase derives its name. (e.g. a noun phrase is “headed” by a noun).

Each phrase (NP, VP, etc) is the projection of the head.NP is headed by N

VP is headed by V, etc. Complement: The other constituents contained in the

phrase that complete its meaning is called complements.


General Phrase Structure (XP)

XP

Spec X’

X (head) Comp

[XP [Spec] [ X’[X Comp]]]

Spec=Specifier

Comp=Complement

X=N, V, A, P, etc.

Key Points Highlighted


More exercises: tree-diagram or bracket the following the structures

The teacher put the answers on the board He ran towards the red post Colorless green ideas sleep furiously John found a fly in the soup the young king who gave up his throne the man from the city in the little country from

Western Europe


Chomsky and UG

Chomskyan revolution Universal Grammar (UG) A historical review of UG From PS rules to X-bar theory Parameters and Cross-linguistic Variation From Transformation to Movement UG and language acquisition


Chomskyan revolution Chomsky,

- has attracted worldwide attention with his ground-breaking research into the nature of human language and communication.

- has become the center of a debate that transcends formal linguistics to embrace psychology, philosophy, and even genetics.

- his "formulation of 'transformational grammar' has been acclaimed as one of the major achievements of the century.

- his work has been compared to the unraveling of the genetic code of the DNA molecule."

- his discoveries have had an impact "on everything from the way children are taught foreign languages to what it means when we say that we are human."

- is also an impassioned critic of American foreign policy, especially as it affects ordinary citizens of Third World nations.


Central Claims

Main features of TG Grammar Chomsky’s TG Grammar differs from the structural grammar

in a number of ways: - (1) rationalism; - (2) innateness; - (3) deductive methodology; - (4) formalization;- (5) emphasis on linguistic competence; - (6) strong generative powers;- (7) emphasis on linguistic universals.


Universal Grammar Knowledge of Language

- Lexicon -Grammar- Knowledge of words -Knowledge of rules- Learned -Innate- Language specific -Language Universal

Universal Grammar- The grammar which characterizes the innate

predisposition to learn language. UG is a set of rules that all human possess by virtue of having certain common genetic features which sitinguish them from other species.


A historical review of UG

50-60s- Standard theory- Extended Standard Theory- Rule-based

80s- Government and Binding Theory- Principle and Parameter Theory (PPT) - Principle-guided

90s- Minimalism Program- Economy-driven


Generative-Tranformational Grammar

TG developed in the 1950s in the context of “cognitive revolution”, which marked a shift of focus from a concern with human behaviour to the mental processes underlying human behaviour.


Deep Structure and Surface Structure

Deep structure Semantic rules Semantic representation

PS-rules

Lexicon

T-rules

Phonological Rules

Semantic

representation

Phonetic

representation

T-rules

Surface

Structure


Principle and Parameter Theory

knowledge of language comprises a lexicon, together with a set of innate principles (that means, X-bar Theory, -Theory and Case Theory, etc.) and set parameters.

Principle and Parameter (P&P) approach has proved fruitful for

- constraining the core of innate grammatical knowledge (Pprinciples)- defining the differences found between individual languages

(parameters)- describing diachronic change (parameter resetting) and- the investigation of first and second language acquisition (parameter

setting and resetting).

.


Minimalism Program

Central Claims - Language is basically simple - The working hypothesis is that there should not be

any redundant elements in a linguistic theory and that the computational system of language (CHL) operates optimally.

- CHL is so designed that its outputs are naturally ‘well-formed’ and ‘economical’.

the minimisation of linguistic levels; the economy principles of derivation and

representation.


From PS-Rules to X-bar Theory

PS-rules- set up the general configurations of the phrasal

structures of a language- the arragement of the elements that make up a phrase- Rewrite rules

S NP VP NP (Det) N (PP) VP (Aux) V (NP) AP (Deg) A (PP) PP (Adv) P (NP) CP (Spec) C S


Tests of Phrase Structure

Substitution- The cow attacked him (the man with the gun)- The cow attacked him (the man) with it (the gun)- Q: Who attacked the man with a gun?

A: The cow did. (attacked the man with a gun)

What did he do?

Run up the hill and up the mountain.

*Ring up his mother and up his sister. Deletion

- The cow was planning to. (attack the man with the gun)


Tests of phrase structures

Movement- The cow will attack whoever is in the field.

- Whoever is in the field, the cow will attack

- Who will the cow attack (the man with a gun)?

- Who will the cow attack (the man) with a gun?

- What will the cow attack the man with (the gun)?



Head (of a phrase): The constituent fundamental to the phrase, from which the phrase derives its name. (e.g. a noun phrase is “headed” by a noun).

Each phrase (NP, VP, etc) is the projection of the head.NP is headed by N

VP is headed by V, etc. Complement: The other constituents contained in the

phrase that complete its meaning is called complements.


Generalizing the rules

S NP VP XP (Specifier) X (Complement)

- where X = {N, V, A, P, etc} Fundamental insight about the architecture of

sentence structrure: - Sentences do not simply consist of word strings.

Rather, within any sentence, words are grouped together to form phrases, which then combine with each other to form still larger phrase.


General Phrase Structure –X’ category

XP

Spec X’

X (head) Comp

[XP [Spec] [ X’[X Comp]]]

Spec=Specifier

Comp=Complement

X=N, V, A, P, etc.

X’’ = XP X’=X’ X0 = X

According to this viewpoint, all phrases have the tri-level structures as shown in the tree diagram, in which the head and its complement form an X’-level constituent and the specifier is attached at the higher XP level.

The existence of X’ categories can be verified with the help of the same sort of tests for phrase structure

- Deletion tests- Substitution tests- Movements tests


S

NP VP

Pron N’ V’ PP

N V NP P’

Det N’ NP

N P N’

N


S

NP VP

Pron N VP PP

V NP P N

Det N



Adjuncts

Can be loosely defined as an extension of a category

- a big red car of his

NP

Spec N’

Adjunct N’

Adjunct N’

N Comp

a big red car of his

XP

Spec X’

Adjunct X’

X’ Adjunct

X Comp


S

NP VP

Det N’ Aux V’

N N’ V’ PP

N V NP P’

Det N’ P N

`N

The fourth-year undergrads will leave the university in June.


More exercises: tree diagram the following with tri-structure and explain the ill-formedness of the starred sentences

Mary’s solution to the problem *Mary’s the solution to the problem Mary’s latest solution to the problem the student of archeology from Canada the students from Canada and (from) the U.S *the student of archeology and from Canada *the student from Canada of archeology The man found a fly in the soup The lady found the man in blue jacket


NP

Pron N’

N PP

P’

P NP

Det N’

N

Mary’s solution to the problem

The ill-formedness of the NP *Mary’s the solution to the problem lies in the observation that both Mary’s and the are candidate specifiers of solution but they can’t occupy the [Spec] position of NP simultaneously.

NP

Pron N’

A N’

N PP

P’

P NP

Det N

N

Mary’s latest solution to the problem


NP

Det N’

N’ PP

N PP P’

P’ P NP

P NP N’

N’ N

N

the student of archeology from Canada

the ungrammaticality of the NP *the student from Canada of archeology lies in the fact that candidate compliment of archeology can’t be adjacent to the head N and can’t occupy the [Comp] position because of another PP from Canada, which is more eligible as an adjunct.


NP

Det N’

N’ PP

P’ Con P’

P NP P NP

N’ Det N’

N N

the student from Canada and from the U.S

Note: the ungrammaticality of the NP *the student from canada and of archeology can be verified by the observation the grammatical status of the two PPs are different: while the PP of archeology is a candidate compliment for the NP the student, the PP from Canada is more eligible for an Adjunct. These two PPs functioning differently can’t be joined as a larger PP by the conjunction word and.

NP

Det N’

N’ PP

P’

P NP

NP Con NP

N’ Det N’

N N

the student from Canada and the U.S


S

NP VP

Det N’ V’

V’ PP

V NP P’

Det N’ P NP

N Det N’

N

The man found a fly in the soup

These two sentences otherwise identical differ in underlying structure in that the two PPs functions differently, one as an adjunct of VP and the other as a complement of NP, as illustrated in the tree diagram.

S

NP VP

Det N’ V’

V NP

Det N’

N PP

P’`

P NP

Det N’

N

The lady found fly in the plate


Parameters and Cross-linguistic variation

Principles: those aspects of syntactic structures which are invariant across languages

XP is the maximal projection of the head X.

Parameters: those aspects of structure which vary from one language to another head-first: English-type language

Kazu ate sushi, to Tokyo head-last: Japanese-type language

Kazu sushi ate; Tokyo to. A head-first language applies the headfirst rule to

all of its phrases: NPs, VPs, PPs. Everything. Similarly, a head-last language applies the head-

last rule to all of its phrases: NPs, VPs, PPs


XP

Spec X’

Adjunct X’

X’ Adjunct

X Comp

XP

Spec X’

Adjunct X’

X’ Adjunct

Comp X

Japanese English


IP

NP I’

N VP I

V’

CP V

C’

IP C V

NP I’

N’ VP I

V’

N’ V

N

Mary-ga Tom-ga hon-o yon da to omottei ru

Mary-S Tom-S book-DO read Past that think Present

Mary thinks that John read the book.


From transformation rules to Movement

Transformation rules: part of TG grammar, functions to convert a surface structure to deep structure

- I can solve this problem. - This problem, I can solve. (Move) - The dog chases the mouse. - The mouse is chased by the dot (Move and Insert)

Move alpha: Move any category anywhere.


Movement

Head movement- The movement of a word from the head position

of one phrase to the head position of another phrase

The president was lying Was the president – lying?

Wh- movement- The movement of an operator expression into the

specifier position within CP You can speak what languages What languages can you speak __?


Movement

The voters would

choose who Who would the voters

__ choose __

CP

C’

C IP

NP I’

I VP

V’

V NP


Movements are structurally dependent

The man who kicked him escaped the scene.

Did the man who kicked him __ escape the scene?

* Did the man who ___ kick him escaped the scene?


Movement are constrained

The senator knew the voters would choose who The senator knew who the voters would choose__ *The senator knew who would the voters choose__ The man might wonder the detectives found whose

shoes at which house *Whose shoes might the man wonder which house

the detectives found__ at__? *Which house might the man wonder whose shoe the

detectives found __at__ ?- NP and an embedded S containing a wh-phrase

appear to create islands.


UG and Language Acquisition

Logical Problem: is our knowledge of grammar given, or learned? Nature vs. nurture

Learning the grammar = setting the parameters. Our competence in syntax is given in part by UG, in part by parameters defined by UG. The parameters are set in the process of language acquisition on the basis of exposure to a particular language

- switchbox- Traffic rules


[+]

[-]

Principle

Parameters

[value]

[value]

Language A

Language B


The notion of modularity

•Perceptual module

•vision, hearing, etc.

•UG

•Language module

•Grammar

•Language

•Parser

•Langauge

•Learning

•principles

•Central Processes

•Memory

•Belief

•Pragmatics

•Real-word Knowledge

•Problem-solving abilities


UG and L2 acquisition

UG Other mental faculties

direct access no access

indirect access L1 L2

Documents

© BTexact Technologies 2001 Syntax Wu Heping MA Program in Linguistics and Language Teaching Northwest Normal University