Van woord tot zin Tallerman
Chapter 2
Determinering word classes:
- Discovering the distribution of a word
- Looking at the form a word takes in different contexts.
Morphology: forms a word can have
Distribution: places a word occurs
Function: what work the word performs
Predicate: the event
Argument: the participant in the event.
Transitive verbs: predicates that require two participants. Ditransive is: X verb Y to/for Z
Determiners: Paired with nouns; they are typically initial to a NP as in English and Japanese or final to
a NP, and almost never in the middle.
Definite article: a word for ‘the’
Indefinite article: a word for ‘a’
Languages that don’t have those articles often use word order to separate their NPs. NPs have a
function that’s called grammatical relations because they define NPs in terms of their relationship
with the ferbs of which they are an argument.
Subjects in English have the following properties:
- Normal position immediately before the verb
- Control subject/ verb agreement: Verbs and auxiliaries in the present tense agree with the
subject in person and number.
- Pronominal subjects (subjects that are pronouns) have a special subject form, known as the
nominative case. These subjects are: I, we, he, she, they.
Adjectives pair with a special set of closed class words: degree modifiers. They always have two
functions:
- Attributive function; modifies a noun and normally has a fixed position
- Predicative function; same as with the noun phrase
Prepositions pair up with their own set of closed class modifiers. In English these are words such as
“Straight, right, well, just”. Words that follow the NP which is their object don’t follow as
prepositions, they are called postpositions. The most typical role of both is to mark locative and
temporal information.
Chapter 3
Predicate for linguists: verb and any phrases modifying the verb.
A clause is a sentence that contains only one single predicate. An independent sentence stands alone
and must contain a finite verb, which is in some way marked to show tense and/or person and
number. If there is an auxiliary, it always co- occurs with a main verb. The generalization is that the
finite element always occurs first in the sequence of verbs. A main verb typically has much more
semantic content than an auxiliary. Modal auxiliaries express such concepts as permission, necessity
or ability. Have and be can both be main verbs or auxiliaries.
The –ing participle, together with the auxiliary ‘be’ gives a sentence its progressive aspect. However,
not all words with that –ing ending are (past) participles, they could also be an adjective.
The past participle mostly has a regular ending and together with the auxiliary ‘have’ it makes a
sentence have the perfect aspect.
Both participles can be used in mostly the shorter and simpler sentence without any finite verb.
Co-ordinating conjunctions: And, or, but.
When several clauses join together in a sentence, there usually is a matrix clause, or a main clause,
and a subordinate clause. In these sentences, the classes do not all have to have an equal syntactic
status.
Not all subordinate clauses are option, some are required. And not all subordinate clauses would be
possible, independent clauses, because they don’t always contain a finite element which an
independent clause requires.
Subordinate clauses may precede and or follow the verb in the main clause. You can’t tell which
clause is which from their position.
In a complex sentence there is just one matrix clause, but a potentially indefinite number of
subordinate clauses and each clause contains a main verb.
All matrix clauses contain a finite verb, embedded clauses may contain a finite verb too, but not all
do. Any clause that only has a non-finite verb, and no finite element at all, must be a subordinate
clause. Only embedded clauses can have a complementizer. Complementizers are a class of words
that introduce clauses. Only matrix clauses have subject/ auxiliary inversion.
Infinitival clause: a clause containing an infinitive with no finite element.
Only matrix clauses can have tag questions, which have a pronoun as their subject which matches the
subject of the matrix clause. If there’s no finite auxiliary in the matrix clause, then do-support is
required.
Chapter 4
The head is the most important word in a phrase, because it bears the crucial semantic information;
it determines the meaning of the entire phrase. The word class of the word that’s head therefore
determines the word class of the entire phrase. The head is the only word that has the same
distribution as the entire phrase. Heads are also the only obligatory item in the phrase. Heads can
select certain dependents as their complement; they may select an obligatory dependent, a phrase
of a particular class.
The subject of a clause is a phrase of one word or more, which is headed by an X. The predicate of a
clause is normally a VP, this phrase may contain a head verb, or else the VP can contain dependents.
In all languages, heads select dependents of a particular word class; only dependents of a certain
class can occur with each kind of head:
- NOUN  adjective but not an adverb.
- VERB  adverb rather than an adjective
Heads may determine properties of their dependents by requiring the dependents to agree with
various grammatical functions of the head. In many languages, certain heads require their NP
dependent to occur in a particular grammatical case. Case is a property of NPs, specifically the NP
dependent of verbs and prepositions often occur in a special form. For instance, a transitive verb has
two arguments, therefore two dependent NPs; the subject and the object.
Traditionally, dependents are classified into two main types: adjuncts and complements.
- Adjuncts are always optional whereas complements are frequently obligatory
- A complement has a close relationship with the head, adjuncts are more bolted on and don’t
have that relationship.
Intransitive verbs take no complement at all. They may, however, have an adjunct within the VP.
Transitive verbs take an NP complement often, a verb can be either transitive or intransitive.
A number of verbs have a particular kind of transitive/ intransitive alternation, for example: melt,
burn, sink, grow.
Some verbs also tan an NP and a PP complement, but don’t have an alternation with the NP PP
complement.
Prepositional verbs take a PP complement while some verbs select both a direct object NP and a
clausal complement. Often, a verb can appear in more than one subclass.
Prepositions havfe notable variety in their complement structure, although less than verbs. There are
also prepositions that are only intransitive, such as nearby.
Adjectives occasionally take an obligatory complement, but this is are. A much larger number of
adjectives take an optional PP complement, again headed by a specific preposition.
Nouns often take optional complements, but don’t have obligatory complements.
The clause a determiner introduces is the complement to the head C and the whole phrase can be
termed a CP, a Complementizer Phrase.
Specifier: a kind of adjunct that has a fixed position within the phrase. However, more recently
linguists have proposed that in fact the determiner is the head of the NP so that this really should be
considered as a DP. The dependent of a head are themselves grouped into phrases and each smaller
phrase has its own head which in turn as dependents.
In head initial languages, such as English, the noun precedes its complement and in head final
languages, such as Japanse or Turkish, the head follows the complement.
Head
P
V
Possessed N
N
dependent
object NP
arguments
Possessor N
Adjective
Languages often mark either the head or its dependent in some way to signal the sntactiv
relationship between them. The fact that this marking occurs gives is a broad typoloical distinction
between head marking and dependent marking languages. Typical head marking languages are those
with extensive agreement or cross- referencing. Typical dependent marking languages have welldeveloped case systems, for instnance, subjects and objects themselves would appear in a special
form to show that they bear thsese particular grammatical relations.
In German the syntactic relationship between the head P and its dependent object NP is signaled by
giving the NP a special form. Case marking is a classic form of dependent marking.
Conversely, in a PP which is head marking, the head P itself has a special form, whilst the dependendt
object receives no marking. In another way, in some languages Ps also inflect, changing form to agree
with the person/number of their P object.
The main verb in a clause has NP arguments which are its dependents. A classic indication of a head
marking construction: the head itself bears inflections, giving information about its dependents but
there are no independent pronouns present.
Genitive is a case marker which shows possession: it shows the relationship between the possessor
and the possessed. Like all case marking, this is an instance of dependent marking.
A head noun and a dependent adjective that modifies it: dependent marking means here that the
attributive adjective are not very common cross- linguistically, but they are characteristics of Iranian/
Persian/ Kurdish.
Many languages fall fairly neatly into either the head marking or the dependent marking class.
Another typological possibility is for the relationship between a head and its dependent not to be
formally marked at all. This happens most often in languages which have very little morphology such
as Chinese and Vietnamese. English has very little formal marking on either heads or dependents,
however, English does have a small amount both of dependent marking and head markings, English
pronouns also display the vestiges of a case system, meaning a system whereby dependent NPs are
marked to show their grammatical relationship.
Languages which display a mixture of head and dependent marking properties are not at all unusual.
One particularly common situation is that a language which is otherwise dependent marking will
have number and person affixes on the head verb to mark agreement. Head marking on verbs is so
common that it is regarded as a property of both marking types.
Different meanings of a sentence are called “readings” of a sentence.
You should use the ungrammatical examples to show that some sequence of words is not a
constituent of the sentence you’re working on.
Please remember from now on that in the sentence fragment test, the question you ask should
always be a grammatical one: the test is the answer itself.
If a string of words from the original sentence can form a possible sentence fragment, it is likely that
this sequence is a constituent of the original sentence.
If the string of words is not grammatical as a sentence fragment, it is likely not to be a constituent of
the original sentence.
Square brackets are used to show where a constituent begins and ends. Do not put brackets round a
phrase unless it’s a constituent.
The echo question: a wh-word can replace the constituent, if the example is ungrammatical, the
string of words which you’ve replaced is probably not a constituent.