Syntax 1
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In your free time
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Look at the diagram again, and try to
understand it.Linguistics
Sounds of
language
Phonetics
Grammar
Phonology Morphology Syntax
Meaning
Semantics
Pragmatics
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我覺得這個教室太…冷!
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We can also say
–
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I don’t think we can really say
–
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*我覺得太冷這個教室, although we might understand it if
someone said it
But if someone said
–
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?我把這個教室覺得太冷, because it sounds very strange
And we certainly can’t say something like
–
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這個教室,我覺得太冷!
*教室這個,太冷覺得我, we would probably have no idea what
they were talking about
This is because of syntactic rules governing Mandarin.
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Why study syntax? Some answers:
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(It’s part of Linguistics)
(Simon says we must)
(There will be questions on it in the final exam)
It’s part of the grammar of every language
(what’s the other part?)
And the grammar of a language is part of a native
speaker’s linguistic knowledge (what’s the other
part?)
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Here is another reason for
studying syntax
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Infinity of expressions
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Our knowledge of a language consists of
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There is an infinite number of possible utterances in
every language
It is obvious that all these utterances cannot be stored
in our brains
A finite number of words (the lexicon; the “dictionary
in your head”), and
Rules (the grammar of the language)
It is the job of the syntactician (and the
morphologist) to find out what these rules are
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Language acquisition
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Everyone who can speak knows how to use
the rules
–
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and it is amazing that children can do it so fast
But nobody can really state exactly what
the rules are!
Understanding syntax (and morphology)
can help researchers to understand how
young children learn their native language
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Universal grammar
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Theory of Chomsky
UG has Principles, true of all languages
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All languages have the same underlying structure
» e.g. all languages have nouns and verbs
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and Parameters, whose setting varies from
language to language
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English and Chinese SVO; Japanese SOV
Spanish and Chinese pro-drop; English not pro-drop
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All languages have constituents
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Take a simple sentence
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Johnny danced
We can call the sentence S, and label the
syntactic categories N and V
S
N
V
John
danced
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Phrase structure grammar
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N and V aren’t always
very good labels
Johnny is similar to the
handsome student,
because they are both the
same kind of constituent
–
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They are both Noun
Phrases
We can remove Johnny and
add the handsome student,
and the sentence structure is
still similar
S
NP
VP
The
handsome
student
danced
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Different sentence, same
constituents
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–
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S
Now let’s add an object
danced the lambada is the
same kind of constituent
as danced
a VP
You can swap danced for
danced the lambada and
the basic structure is the
same
NP
VP
The
handsome
student
danced the
lambada
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What are the NP and VP?
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The frog ate the lizard.
The frog sat on the lilypad.
The fat frog ate the long lizard slowly.
The fat frog with a lizard in its mouth sat on
the lilypad.
The fat frog who was sitting on the lilypad
with a lizard in its mouth danced the
lambada.
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Phrase structure rules
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Now, you know this phrase structure rule:
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Here are two more phrase structure rules:
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S  NP VP (a Sentence comprises a Noun Phrase
followed by a Verb Phrase)
Draw a tree for the phrase Emma drinks
VP  V NP
NP  N
Think about that carefully
Now, draw a tree with more detail
–
For the sentence Emma drinks whisky
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Now let’s change the NP rule
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(First, DET means determiner
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NP  (DET) N
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Function words like the, a, this, several)
That means a noun phrase can have a determiner, and it must
have a noun
Now you can diagram Johnny danced the lambada in a
bit more detail than I did on the other slide
(Remember:
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S  NP VP
VP  V NP)
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Now let’s change the NP rule
again
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Such that we have
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–
–
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S  NP VP
VP  V NP
NP  (DET) (ADJ) N
Now you can diagram this sentence
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The unhappy book ate the green lambada
(The sentence is syntactically well-formed, by the
way)
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