Syntax Notes
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Syntax deals with sentences—specifically, the phrases that combine to make up a sentence.
When a sentence is ungrammatical, we use a * to indicate its syntax is “off”.
Syntax is not about meaning. (See Noam Chomsky’s famous example “Colorless green ideas
sleep furiously.”) Although we do use meaning as a tool to help us understand syntax.
Basic ideas of syntax
1) word order
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English is an SVO language
Syntax goes beyond basic subject-verb-object; verbs assign “roles” to other “things” in
the sentence
See chart on page 202 for major roles
Other languages use morphological endings instead of word order to mark roles
2) lexical (syntactic) categories
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Content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs) vs. function words (determiners,
prepositions, auxiliary verbs, pronouns, conjunctions)
Open lexical categories vs. closed categories
Pay attention to abbreviations of lexical categories, you’ll use these when drawing
syntax trees
Don’t ever use the word itself to determine its lexical category. Look to see how the
word is used in the sentence.
3) agreement
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Although not discussed much in our book, agreement is an important part of syntax
Some lexical categories require that they possess the same property/properties as
another lexical category in the sentence. This property could be number, gender,
person, etc. In English, the subject and verb must agree. In other languages,
determiners, adjectives, and nouns must agree.
4) constituency and hierarchical structure
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Ambiguous sentences are evidence that syntax involves constituents
Constituent = a group of words that function together as a discrete unit in the sentence
Consitutents can nest inside each other
Phrase Structure
1) Every word is a member of a lexical category that determines what kind of phrase it can form.
2) A phrase is a string of words that functions as a unit in a sentence
3) A phrase is built up around a single word, called its head.
4) In a language, there is a specific way in which phrases can be combined with another to construct
bigger phrases/sentences. These are called phrase structure rules.
5) The way in which the phrases are combine in a sentence determine the phrase structure of the
sentence.
VP = verb phrase (head is a verb)
NP = noun phrase (head is a noun)
PP = prepositional phrase (head is a preposition)
VP -> (Aux) V (NP) (Adv) (PP) (Adv)
NP -> (DET) (ADJ) N (PP)
PP -> P NP
S -> NP VP
S -> NP AUX VP
S -> NP AUX not VP
Recursion = the property of a language which gives language its capacity to express an unlimited
number of ideas with limited resources