Syntax Structure Analysis of a Man who Speaks
English 1200
Introduction to Linguistics
Action Research Project:
Syntax Structure Analysis of a Man who speaks
By
Laura S. Harper
Salt Lake Community College
Syntax Structure Analysis of a Man who Speaks
ABSTRACT
The objective of this research project is to obtain a recording of natural speech and to
study the linguistics of the speech, with either an emphasis on the phonological aspects,
morphological aspects, or syntactic aspects of the language. For this study the syntax of the
subject is analysis to determine the frequency of occurrence of complimentary phrases and nonmodal auxiliary usage. The man recorded is named Casey Blu and goes by Mister Blu; he gave
full consent to the recording of this conversation. The hypothesis for the research is that the
speakers’ sentences will be long and contain complimentary phrases; also he will frequently
make use of non-modal auxiliary verbs, “to be” and “to have”. The conversation was recorded on
a Tuesday in the afternoon. It is approximately twenty four minutes long. An audio recorder was
used sitting at the table between the interviewer and then interviewee. At a later time the
recording was listened too and a number of utterances were transcribed and then treed. The
sentence structure is analyzed and evaluated. Although it is not certain whether the entire
sentence structures were drawn out correctly, the data shows that the hypothesis stated is correct
in nature. The implications of the research and the findings are inconclusive.
Syntax Structure Analysis of a Man who Speaks
In the fifth chapter of the courses text authors reiterate information on syntax, the
analysis of sentence structure. For this research project I recorded a conversation and then went
back and listened to the conversation while transcribing a number of complete sentences to
attempt at treeing out the sentences’ structures and examining the grammatical features that were
present. Through evaluating the trees it is seen that a number of syntactic grammatical features
are present. The speaker is talking in English and we find words falling into the syntactic
categories of (N) noun, (V) verb, (Adj) Adjective, and (P) preposition, as well as some sentences
with Adverbs (Adv). We also came across many determiners, auxiliary verbs, conjunctions, and
degree words, non-lexical or functional categories, which accompany the prior four more
dominant syntactic categories.
This action research project conducted for an introduction to Linguistics course is the
end product of an interview and syntactic analysis of a number of utterances of occurring
throughout the conversation. The recording is that of the interviewee speaking about different
subjects that relate to love, education, and the environment. The recording basically consists of a
continuation of a collection of conversations with the gentleman speaking. He goes by Blu and
he could be considered to be a disciple in conversing. He is fully aware of being recorded and
gives his permission to be “talent model” for this research paper and that alone. A small
OLYMPUS voice recorder is resting on the table; there may be audible noises aside from the
voices intended. The recording utilized to analyze the sentence structure is approximately twenty
four minutes. The hypothesis formed regarding the speakers syntax prior to the recording is that
he would say many longer statements that contain complimentary phrases and that the speaker
would frequently use the Non-modal auxiliary, ‘to be’ and ‘to have’, throughout his thoughts.
Based on an overview of the entirety of the recording it shows that there were seemingly many
Syntax Structure Analysis of a Man who Speaks
run on sentences. Two out of six of the sentences that were treed appeared to have
complimentary phrases. Three of the sentences contained Non-Modal Verbs; one of those
contained two, both ‘to have’ and ‘to be’. Since the hypothesis is that the speaker will use longer
sentences it is likely that any sentence trees will contain many phrase structures.
The man was chosen as the subject for this research project because he is an interesting
man with a lot to say. He finds it important to linguistically practice communication within a
community and amongst his social peers. It is within his interests to study words, their meanings,
and their uses. He is a writer whom likes to talk about many subject matters and for this project
has agreed to let me interview and record him upon a subject that he is interested in speaking on
which for this purpose is education, community, and the environment. Frequent prompt
questions are not necessary because the conversation is ongoing. He states that, “he would rather
feel as though he is talking to me rather than to the recorder.” When choosing the subject, the
intent was to capture as much natural speech as possible within the twenty five minutes of
interviewing. The five utterances that were chosen to transcribe, tree, and analyze in congruence
with the hypothesis, are as follows:
1. I have to be honest.
2. If I have unsound biases than that will taint my lessons, my learning.
3. Once you take the test you might as well forget about eighty or ninety percent of the
knowledge. ( “might as well” is altered to “will”)
4. It is much more vital to keep our eye on the ball. ( “much more” is changed to
“very”, although not necessarily to make it a degree word)
5. All questions do not necessarily have correct and incorrect answers.
6. The common grievance is the amount of the workload and the time to digest it.
Syntax Structure Analysis of a Man who Speaks
Once more, the hypothesis is that the speaker will use sentences containing
complimentary phrases and will commonly use non-modal auxiliary verbs. Upon analysis of the
recording, and particularly based upon evaluating the phrase structures, it can be deduced that the
hypothesis of the research conducted does have some validity. Sentences 1, 2, 4, and 5 all
contain non-auxiliary verbs relating to either ‘have’ or ‘be’ and in sentence 1 can be found one of
each. Also, it would seem that in all of the statements there are apparent complimentary phrases.
These sentence structures seemed exceedingly complicated and difficult to draw out. In fact,
sentence 2 even begins with a “complementizer”, if, and then later in the sentence another, that,
is used. It is quite a possibility that the sentences actually in fact contain more complement
phrases than our demonstrated in the treed structures.
Currently, I am simply a student, of life only, in truth. I study things I am interested in
and that are relevant to my life. I enjoy being around and learning with children. Also, I am a
huge fan of writing and language; upon deciding to take courses in the field of Elementary
Education I discovered that I would be given the opportunity to take a course in Linguistics.
“Yay!” throughout the class I learned a lot about language and the formation of words and
sentences. It blows my mind that it is stuff I had never really learned about or even heard of. For
the project I was given the chance to actually practice studying like linguists study and thus you
have this report in your hands. The implications are that I learned a bit about natural speech, how
it is to get recordings of people speaking, and improved my skills on constructing a paper based
around an only half understood discipline. My interests have been sparked and the imaginary
wheels in my brain are turning moderately enthusiastically and who knows what sort of results
this will have on my future career and life otherwise.
Syntax Structure Analysis of a Man who Speaks
Resources
1. William O’Grady, John Archibald, Mark Aronoff, Janie Rees-Miller: CONTEMPARY
LINGUISTICS: AN INTRODUCTION (2012) Bedford/St. Martin’s