English Linguistics
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Summary
Fromkin – Linguistics
Knowing a language  ability to put words together to form phrases and sentences that express
our thoughts
Syntax: the part of grammar that represents a speaker’s knowledge of the structure of phrases
and sentences
Meaning of a sentence mainly depends on meaning of the words it is composed of
Every sentence is a sequence of words BUT not every sequence of words is a sentence
well formed or grammatical sentences: conform to the rules of syntax  otherwise ill-formed or
ungrammatical
Chomsky: The fundamental aim in the linguistic analysis of a language L is to separate the
grammatical sequences of L from the ungrammatical sequences which are not sentences of L
and to study the structure of the grammatical sequences
Grammaticality is not based on what is taught in school but on the rules acquired or constructed
unconsciously as children
Sometimes sentences are
o grammatically correct but meaningless (“Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.”)
o ungrammatical but understandable (“The boy quickly in the house the ball found.”)
o grammatical but uninterpretable due to the use of “nonsense words/strings”
(Lewis Carroll “Jabberwocky”: ‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves, did gyre and gimble in the
wabe;”)  obey syntactic rules and sound like good English
Grammaticality is independent of the truthfulness/correctness of the content of a sentence
Syntactic knowledge goes beyond being able to decide which strings are grammatical and which
are not  it accounts for the double meaning or the ambiguity of expressions (Cartoon: “Ask for
the synthetic buffalo hides”  example for structural ambiguity)
o Difference in meaning due to different structures that are permitted by the rules of syntax
Also lexical or word-based ambiguities (“This will make you smart.”  “Smart” has a double
meaning, either “clever” or “burning sensation” for example due to a wound)
 Syntactic rules reveal the relations between the words of a sentence  tell us when structural
differences result in meaning differences
The syntactic rules in a grammar must account for
1. grammaticality of sentences
2. word order
3. structural ambiguity
4. meaning relations between words in a sentence
5. similarity of meaning of sentences with different structures
6. speaker’s creative ability to produce and understand any of an infinite set of possible
sentences
 theory of grammar: must provide characterization of what speakers implicitly know about
their language
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English Linguistics
Summary
Fromkin – Linguistics
Syntactic rules determine the order of words in a sentence
 Sentences can be divided into groups of words which can be divided into further subgroups until
only the individual words remain  tree diagram (see above)
 the tree diagram exhibits the linear order of words but also the groupings and sub-groupings of
these words  hierarchical structure
Syntactic categories (traditionally called “parts of speech”)
 a family of expressions that can substitute for one another without loss of grammaticality
Different categories
1. NP = Noun Phrases: function as subject or object in a sentence, always contain a noun
(common n., proper n, or pronoun), ask for NP with questions like “Who...?”
2. VP = Verb Phrases: always contain a verb, may be followed by other categories such as NP
3. S = Sentence
4. Art = Article
5. N = Noun
6. V = Verb
Phrase Structure Tree
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a diagram with syntactic category information provided
shows that a sentence is a linear string of words as well as a hierarchical structure with phrases
nested in phrases
includes 3 aspects of speakers’ syntactic knowledge of sentence structure
1. linear order of words in a sentence
2. groupings of words into syntactic categories
3. hierarchical structure of the syntactic categories
the trees is not an arbitrary diagram but represents in precise notational form the linguistic
properties that are part of speakers’ mental grammars
The syntactic category of each word appears above that word  lowest categories in the tree
are called lexical categories
The larger syntactic categories like the Verb Phrase are identified as consisting of all the words
below that point or node in the tree
The phrase structure also makes clear that some syntactic categories are composed of
combinations of other syntactic categories (e.g. Sentence consisting of a NP and a VP, which in
turn consist of Verbs and/or Nouns)
A syntactic category includes all the smaller categories beneath it in the tree
English Linguistics
Summary
Fromkin – Linguistics
Prepositional Phrase (PP): A Preposition (P) followed by a Noun Phrase
Example 1: here the PP modifies the verb “saw”
Example 2: PP modifies “the man” (PP is part of the NP that includes the man)
Note:
 one can repeat the number of NPs under PPs under NPs without limit  this property is
called recursion  a syntactic category may occur over and over again in a sentence